Today's Fantasy Rx

Due to the merger of Fantasy Baseball Review into CREATiVESPORTS, the league formerly known as the Fantasy Baseball Review NL Challenge, or FBRNLC, unsurprisingly changed its name to CREATiVESPORTS NL Challenge. Of course, CSNLC remains one of the few inter-site keeper leagues in existence, not to mention the only on that features an auction and head-to-head scoring with points like fantasy football.

The points' breakdown for the league is as follows. For batters, .32 for every Total Base, .5 for SB, .25 for every Run Produced (RBI+R-HR), .15 for each walk, -.1 for every Strikeout, and -.12 for every at-bat. For pitchers, 1 point for every save, .63 for every IP, .5 for every Win and Shutout, .32 for every Hold, .1 for each K, -.24 for each baserunner, and -.32 for every Earned Run. Whichever team has more points in each head-to-head contest wins the week.

In the inaugural 2002 season, we finished with the second-best regular season record of the 8 teams in the league at 15-9, but we lost in the first round of the playoffs.

Last season, despite a two-team expansion that resulted in us losing Scott Rolen through bad planning for the expansion draft, we improved to 16-7, again winning our division, which earned us a the #2 seed and a first-round bye in the playoffs. While we won the second-round match-up by a comfortable margin, league founder Dave Gawron won the league for the second straight year, trouncing us in the two-week final thanks to a stable of keepers that included a $26 Albert Pujols.

CSNLC allows you "contract" with five players each season, securing them at their drafted salary for either two or three years. After the first draft, we secured Corey Patterson, Bobby Hill, Juan Uribe, Carlos Zambrano, and Nick Neugebauer at $1 each. During that year, we dealt Neugebauer for a $2 Juan Cruz contract, and while Hill, Uribe, and Cruz haven't panned out, Patterson and Zambrano at least give us good profits. We lost Uribe to the AL this winter, so the only four players we knew we'd keep were Patterson, Hill, Zambrano, and Cruz.

Aside from the contracts, the keeper process occurs in three steps. First, a restricted free agent draft is held. Each team nominates one player from another team at a $5 increase over that player's old salary, and an auction is then conducted, which concludes by giving the player's owner the option to match the high bid on the player. No team can lose more than two players in the RFA, and only our $14 Edgar Renteria was called. The bidding went to $33, and we matched the price since we believe Renteria is a decent value at that price. Following our disastrous acquisition of a $41 Jeff Kent last year, we rostered no one else.

The second phase allows each team to keep five additional players at an increase of $5 over their old salary. We had six serious contenders for these spots: Mike Lowell, who now would cost $17, a $15 Reggie Sanders, $13 Matt Mantei, $13 Hideo Nomo, $7 Ben Sheets, and $6 Mark Loretta. Keeping Lowell, Sanders, and Sheets were easy decisions, and since Loretta at $6 at least wouldn't be a loss, we decided to lock down our three MIF positions.

While we debated between Mantei and Nomo, each team must run two relievers each week, and Gagne, Hoffman, and Borowski were keepers at only a couple bucks each thanks to contracts. Thanks to Nomo's spring struggles, we didn't mind losing him.

The third phrase, an unrestricted free agent draft, allows each team to select one of the 100+ players not kept via contract, RFA, or $+5; that player retains his salary from the previous year. Since we selected next-to-last thanks to our second place finish, we missed out on solid bargains like a $1 Craig Wilson, $1 Carl Pavano, and an $11 Juan Pierre. Rostering a $25 Preston Wilson was tempting, but given his injury troubles, we settled on a $2 Marquis Grissom, who approached $20 last year and at least should earn an $8 profit this seasons.

So we headed into last night's auction with Lowell, Loretta, Renteria, Hill, Sanders, Grissom, Patterson, Sheet, Cruz, Zambrano, and Mantei under contract for a total of $98, leaving us $162 to buy one catcher, a 1B and COR, 2 OF, 2 UT, and five pitchers.

The draft started slowly with bids on Adam LaRoche, and Brett Tomko, and even Jim Thome only pulled $38 off the table. We grabbed Kevin Millwood at $19 early, which may be a little high, but considering we paid $24 for him last year, we're pleased to have him back at a discount.

While we priced Barry Bonds near $50, we stopped bidding at $45, a possible mistake, but we didn't want to commit so much money to one player after owning $40+ players in previous seasons.

Half of our next four offensive pickups occurred while price-enforcing. Despite his injury, we expect Larry Walker to earn over $20 in this league, and we weren't completely irritated to grab him at $16. After happily paying another $16 to secure Nick Johnson, we priced-enforced Austin Kearns right to his $26 value, getting him for only a dollar less thanks to my conviction that other owners would keep bidding. We like Kearns, but he cost us a shot at a Carl Everett, a similar player who we let go at $20.

We followed Kearns by immediately grabbing Adam Dunn at a comfortable $23, well below his inflation-adjusted value of over $30. In the middle of acquiring Johnson, Kearns, and Dunn, we also rostered Armando Benitez at $17. While he wasn't a bargain, he's more reliable than Jason Isringhausen and saved us at least $4 since Izzy went at $21.

With our 1B, 2 OF, 1 UT, 1 SP, and 1 RP secured, we still needed a catcher, corner, UT, and three pitchers. Letting Jose Acevedo go at $5 hurt, however we'd targeted five pitchers heading to this auction: Millwood, Benitez, Brad Penny, Edwin Jackson, and then Jose Valverde as Mantei insurance.

Despite bidding on players like Hee Seop Choi and Sean Casey, we held off on our COR slot, hoping Tony Batista would fall. We grabbed Charles Johnson at $5, and then a few picks later, rostered Ben Grieve, one of the last two players likely to earn double-digit value, at $11, and then called off Batista ourselves. At that point, we had $23 remaining for 3 players and wanted to know how much he'd cost us, especially since we were prepared to bid all $21 if necessary to avoid the risk of leaving money on the table.

We nabbed Batista for the same $11 that Grieve cost, which left us $6 to take Edwin Jackson one pick later, and another $6 to roster Valverde four picks down, completing our team with no cap room left.

While we don't love our offense and wish we allocated the $41 we spent on Kearns and Walker differently, we also didn't overpay for anyone except maybe Millwood, and we believe our team is stronger right now than after either of the last two auctions.

Following the auction, we conducted an eight-round straight snake draft of $1 reserves. Last year, we grabbed Loretta and Ensberg, followed by an unimpressive sextet of Shane Reynolds, Kevin Young, Jason Simontacchi, Todd Ritchie, Brian Moehler, and Wayne Franklin.

Unfortunately, our first-round target, Keith Ginter fell one pick before we made our selection. Of course, considering how shocked we were that Kaz Ishii remained on the board, we happily grabbed him, immediately followed by Aaron Harang. When J.J. Davis went ahead of us, we opted for Chad Moeller as the short-term alternative to Larry Walker, a disappointing move, but he was the best position available.

We opted for Chris Capuano over Doug Davis, and then happily secured Paul Wilson and Adam Wainwright. Given the uncertainty regarding Bobby Hill, we snagged Ramon E. Martinez to give us a decent backup at 2B and SS, and with our last pick, despite considering Darren Oliver, Reynolds, and a few candidates for the Expos' 5th starter's job, we gambled on Sergio Mitre, who could surprise with the Cubs.

Our primary strategy in this league is to run pitchers starting twice in a week as often as possible. Last season, while we employed 24 position players in 14 positions, 26 pitchers filled our 9 pitching slots at various times. We will run a similar gameplan this year, and barring a rash of injuries or a mass chicken pox epidemic, we again expect to remain competitive through the playoffs. Although we'll lose Patterson, Hill, Zambrano, and Cruz at the end of the season, we're hoping that owning Dunn, Johnson, Penny, Jackson, and Wainwright gives us a nice core of talent for the future. Due to the injury troubles and inconsistency of the first three players, we will give our one outstanding contract to either Jackson or Wainwright, and if Jackson breaks camp in the majors as expected, he certainly will look like the better long-term option.

Today's Fantasy Rx: I know I recommending against extreme price-enforcing only a couple days ago, but after failing to heed my own advice, I feel the need to again state: don't price-enforce within a few dollars of a player's projected salary. As price-enforcing, by definition, means you aren't specifically targeting that player, make sure you really want to own him if the bidding reaches within 20% of your bid price for him.