Today's Fantasy Rx

In each of the last few years I've spent a couple articles discussing The Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge, a league for inter-site competition and bragging rights. We head into our third AL season and sixth NL campaign this summer.

League specifications include using a snake draft, 5x5 scoring, 27-man rosters with 22-man active rosters, including all the standard positions aside from only a single catcher slot, and weekly free agent pickups. Usually both the NL and AL contests feature 12 teams, though due to last-minute cancellations, only ten teams participated in the AL draft on March 24th.

We drew the third and eighteenth picks, and after watching ARod and Santana fall first and second, we eagerly grabbed Carl Crawford, barely passing on Ichiro and Bobby Abreu. Apparently everyone else in the league valued these guys differently, since in addition to normal first rounders like Vlad and Jeter, Joe Mauer, Victor Martinez, Jermaine Dye, Justin Morneau, and Paul Konerko all went in the second round. At pick 2.8, we still had a choice between Ichiro and Abreu, respectively ranked fourth and fifth on our board. We opted for Abreu as a better complement for Crawford due to superior power numbers, and though we hoped Ichiro just might fall four more picks, he went at 2.10.

The good news for us is that Julio Lugo, also ranked in our top ten, remained available, and with only 10-game eligibility requirements, he enters the year qualifying at second, third, and short for us. A moderate closer run still left Huston Street on the board by the end of the next round, and we quickly grabbed him to anchor our bullpen.

With essentially all of the $25+ players on the board gone by the fifth round, we began slight overdrafted to insure we landed the offense we wanted. In succeeding rounds we selected Hank Blalock, Mark Teahen, Rocco Baldelli, Jorge Cantu, Ryan Shealy, Jhonny Peralta, and Milton Bradley, filling our infield and all save one outfield slot. While the Cantu pick looks especially awful now, especially since we opted for him over Raul Ibanez, Mike Piazza, J.D. Drew, Corey Patterson, and Akinori Iwamura among many others, we still believe we rostered a nicely balanced, albeit one perhaps a little short on power.

After adding Lugo and Teahen, we realized that we possessed the position flexibility to take any starting position player to fill our last couple of offensive slots, so we shifted to pitching in Round 12. Due to a general belief that a couple of free agent pitchers would excel this summer in the quest for Mechian contracts, Jake Westbrook and Mark Buehrle looked like good fits to anchor our staff. While we just missed on Joe Borowski in Round 10, we happily snagged Akinori Otsuka in 14, followed by James Shields in 15, Mike MacDougal in 16, and Justin Duchscherer in 18.

We fared rather badly on the pitching side of the ledger last year here, so while we diverted in rounds 17, 19, and 22 to respectively roster Juan Uribe, Mike Sweeney, and Gerald Laird to complete our offense, we returned to pitching in almost all the remaining rounds, eagerly gobbling the remaining set-up men and capable starters on the board. Since FSIC allows you to draft reserves before filling your starting squad if you choose, we spent six of our last eight picks on pitching with the intent of rotating our starters ahead of the strong bullpen foundation provided by Street, Otsuka, MacDougal, and Duchscherer. The second-half of our staff wound up featuring Gil Meche, Paul Byrd, Jaret Wright, Fausto Carmona, Chris Reitsma, and Julian Tavarez, who barely edged Horacio Ramirez on the basis that he generally demonstrated superior skills in the past regardless of his role.

After choosing Laird to man our catcher slot, we spent our last offensive pick on Elijah Dukes to give us a temporary fifth outfielder. Of course, right now that picks looks nicely prescient, helping to ease the sting of losing Cantu. Rather than deal with adding a reserve, we simply left Dukes in the outfield while shifting Lugo to 2B, Peralta to SS, Uribe to MIF, and Sweeney at DH.

A few other owners also drafted rosters that impressed, and we'll review those teams over the next two days. However, while we know we benefited from the smaller number of teams drafting, we also believe we accomplished our objectives to build a fairly loaded offense without sacrificing on the pitching end. We certainly grabbed more depth than we managed for our 2006 roster, which featured only Todd Jones and MacDougal in the pen and Bruce Chen as our 3rd starter. This season we believe we can avoid most of the qualitative disasters that ruined our Yoo-Hoo hopes last year, though we also will reexamine our chances on Saturday after analyzing our competitors' squads.

FSICAL Roster for Rotohelp
C:	Gerald Laird
CR:	Ryan Shealy, Hank Blalock, Mark Teahen
MI:	Julio Lugo, Jhonny Peralta, Juan Uribe
OF:	Carl Crawford, Bobby Abreu, Rocco Baldelli, 
Milton Bradley, Elijah Dukes
UT:	Mike Sweeney
AAA:	Jorge Cantu

SP:	Jake Westbrook, Mark Buehrle, James Shields, Gil Meche
	Paul Byrd, Jaret Wright, Fausto Carmona, Julian Tavarez
RP:	Huston Street, Akinori Otsuka, Mike MacDougal, 
	Justin Duchscherer, Chris Reitsma

Today's Fantasy Rx: We didn't consider Blalock a particularly good value in Round 5, nor was Teahen in 6, but after seeing who everyone else selected in those rounds, we know we didn't miss on anyone we particularly wanted. Straight drafts don't allow for the value stratification that always develops in auctions, so if you see a player available relatively near the top of the board that fills a position of need for you, feel free to grab him even if that means passing on slightly better values that will leave your team overly tilted toward certain categories or positions.