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 eleven teams participated in the NL draft on March 24th.

We drew the ninth and thirteenth picks. Prior to the draft and in addition to our regular draft values, we created a short list of roughly twenty position players likely to exceed $25 in value, grouped in $5 increments. With our first few picks, we hoped to land two of the $35+ players initially and then a couple of the $25+ guys with our second two selections.

The draft opened as expected with Albert Pujols, followed quickly by Jose Reyes and Alfonso Soriano. However, we didn't expect the next three picks as Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Carlos Beltran left the board, which all appeared overdrafts given some of the pure hitters available. Subsequent selections of Miguel Cabrera and Lance Berkman left us pleasantly shocked with the opportunity to selected the lone $40+ player on the board, David Wright.

We then thought guys like Hanley Ramirez, Jason Bay, and Willy Taveras might fill, but after picks of Jimmy Rollins, Chris Carpenter, Matt Holliday, and Aramis Ramirez from the teams on the end, we eagerly grabbed Jason Bay to give us two five-category players to anchor our offense. Last year we chose Bay over Wright with the #2 pick, so landing both players this year struck as a nice coup.

While we possibly should have taken Ramirez, we instead gambled that we could land a speedster like Rafael Furcal with our next third rounder. Yet after watching several fairly obvious picks, including Ramirez, Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones, Derrek Lee, and Furcal, and a couple far more questionable selections like Brian McCann, Ryan Zimmerman, and Adam Dunn, we rather ecstatically grabbed Willy Tavares with the thirty-first pick on the draft.

Now we anticipate a career-year from Taveras, who moves into the full-time leadoff role on the Rockies with a mandate to run early and often. We priced him just back of the top quintet of Pujols, Reyes, Soriano, Cabrera, and Wright, and if not for the chance to draft the 30/100 potential of Wright and Bay, we would have taken Taveras in the first round. Finding him available in the third made our day and allowed us to breathe much easier for the rest of the draft, especially since we then landed two more $25+ players likely to exceed the 30/100 level, Carlos Delgado and Chad Tracy, with our next two picks.

Entering Round 6, we saw move particularly good values on the hitting side of the board, and with an offense already fairly loaded, we decided to grab a closer. Rather than gamble on Brad Lidge, we opted for Chad Cordero due to both his relative health and his safe role, but when only Brian Fuentes and Tom Gordon left the board in the intervening sixteen picks, we added Lidge to Cordero in the hope of landing seventy-five saves between the two closers.

We then returned to our sleeper list to continue filling the offense, rostering Marcus Giles and then Shane Victorino, though with Bob Wickman still available in Round 10, we couldn't pass on someone we expect to exceed thirty saves while improving our qualitative foundation. While we almost then drafted Ryan Dempster, we instead saw little need for a fourth closer and looked to fill other needs, obtaining Xavier Nady, Josh Bard, and then Ted Lilly to improve our power and give us one decent starter. We prepared to take Dempster in Round 14, but he finally fell two picks earlier, which doesn't really bother us despite our relative confidence in Dempster. Perhaps we should have taken him instead of Bard, and then grabbed someone like Ronny Paulino in a couple of rounds, but we never expected either Dempster or Paulino to fall as far as they fell.

With Lilly heading our rotation and a need to fill our last outfield and MIF slots, we then picked up Randy Winn, Alex Gonzalez, and Jack Wilson, solidifying our offense with starters at every position, finally allowing us to focus on pitching.

Doug Davis joined our squad in Round 17, followed by recent trade-mate Claudio Vargas five picks later. However, with three closers and three likely $10+ starters in our stable, we decided to gamble with our next two picks, taking Pedro Martinez and then Roger Clemens. Though we lost Roger if he heads to the AL and obviously will watch Pedro fill a reserve spot for half the season, the upside of both pitchers warranted these selections in our minds.

We then returned to complete our initial starting foursome by drafting David Wells, diverted for one round to add Jamey Carroll as our UT and general MIF backup, and then grabbed four more pitchers, Shawn Hill, Sergio Mitre, Jon Rauch, and Jerome Williams. Rauch gives us general insurance for Cordero while at least one of Hill, Mitre, and Williams should develop into a solid option, and we hope all three at least warrant occasional appearances in our lineup.

Perhaps we overreached with our last pick by drafting Mark Mulder, but given the decent depth of this league, we liked the idea of keeping Pedro, Clemens, and Mulder in reserve. We didn't draft anyone else that didn't break camp without at least a platoon job or rotation slot, and if injuries leave us short on healthy players, we always can drop Mulder during the year. No other decent starters remained on the board in Round 27, so we mainly grabbed him just to keep him from the other teams for now.

We departed the draft room with our best feeling since joining FSIC six years ago. On offense, we landed a roster almost completely full of starters with a projected value upward of $250. After struggling to find saves in some past years, we also rostered three fairly solid closers, a capable middle reliever, four established starters, three promising youngsters, and a trio of veterans who only need to take the field to begin providing us with value far beyond their draft round. Of course, we see a few other teams that also rostered impressive squads, and over the next two days we'll review all our competitors' teams. However, we really like our team, and if our starting rotation doesn't unexpectedly implode qualitatively, we expect to enjoy the 2007 FSICNL campaign quite thoroughly.

FSICAL Roster for Rotohelp
C:	Josh Bard
CR:	Carlos Delgado, David Wright, Chad Tracy
MI:	Marcus Giles, Alex Gonzalez, Jack Wilson
OF:	Jason Bay, Willy Taveras, Xavier Nady
	Shane Victorino, Randy Winn
UT:	Jamey Carroll

SP:	Ted Lilly, Doug Davis, Claudio Vargas, David Wells
	Shawn Hill, Sergio Mitre, Jerome Williams
RP:	Chad Cordero, Brad Lidge, Bob Wickman, Jon Rauch
DL:	Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Mark Mulder

Today's Fantasy Rx: Don't follow our example here by ignoring obvious bargains when they emerge on draft day. Yes, drafting Ryan Dempster in addition to Chad Cordero, Brad Lidge, and Bob Wickman would give us sick relief depth despite qualifying as an unnecessary pick, however we always could have dealt one of our closers for a hitter or starting pitcher selected earlier in the draft once the inevitable trawling for saves begins. Letting someone else obtain a player we considered an excellent value instead cost us someone with clearly greater upside than the players we rostered in the previous couple of rounds, a mistake which hopefully won't cause significant problems for us during the year.