Today's Fantasy Rx

While all our projections are now accessible from our home page, we will not be able to respond to any e-mail until Sunday since we're leaving this evening for a draft tomorrow in Indianapolis.

Yesterday's news from the new Rangers' camp in Surprise, Arizona holds the most important fantasy ramifications for most owners: Mark Teixeira will break camp with Texas and receive significant playing time at 1B, DH, and 3B. Both Mike Young and Hank Blalock remain on the team, and 2002 A+ All-Star Laynce Nix might even open the year in the majors since Buck Showalter wants an extra OF with options remaining to give him more roster flexibility.

Based on our belief he'd see a couple months of AAA, we conservatively projected Teixeira for 250 AB and a .288/12/34/3/41 season, thereby earning $8 in standard leagues. Of course he now seems likely to play nearly full-time, so if we double our projection to 500 AB and .288/24/68/6/82, we can expect Tex to earn $18 in 2003 while challenging Hideki Matsui for Rookie of the Year. Given that he'll likely hit 6th, behind ARod, Palmeiro, and JuanGone, the RBI number even seems low.

In 48 games at AA Tulsa(TL) in 2002, Teixeira posted MLEs of .302/.380/.556 with a 21:37 BB:K in 168 AB, stats extremely comparable to the .304/.380/.490 and 32:39 BB:K posted by Hank Blalock in 263 AB over 68 G one year earlier. The primary difference is that Tex trades .07 of contact rate for a slight walk rate advantage and 66 points of SLG. I generally don't approve of this trade-off, but even if Teixeira's BA slips to a low level, he'll provide a significantly greater quantitative contribution than Blalock in 2002.

Both young Rangers' third basemen should mature into All-Stars before they reach free agency. However, based on his excellent college career and very impressive minor league and Spring Training numbers, I believe Teixeira even may be more prepared to produce for Texas this season than Blalock despite the lack of AAA time.

Two likely leadoff men, both second basemen, have lost their jobs in the last couple days. Colorado's Pablo Ozuna sprained his right knee, which means Ron Belliard both will start at second and lead-off for Colorado given his consistently decent play over the last two weeks. I'm surprised Brent Butler didn't merit more consideration, however he'll remain a mildly valuable utility player. When we finished NL batter projections over a week ago, we didn't even believe Belliard would break camp with the team, so we gave him a meager 75 at-bats. Since he's now likely at least to triple that total, a .280/15/39/6/33 season worth around $7 of value looks like his probable downside. We liked Belliard as a potential breakout a year ago, and hitting in Coors obviously drastically increases his immediate fantasy potential.

The sad news for Cubs' fans is that Bobby Hill played his way back to AAA Iowa. While he should return by summer, Chicago faces the unpleasant possibility of using either Mark Grudzielanek, Hill's probable replacement, or Corey Patterson in the leadoff hole since Mark Bellhorn's 144 strikeouts cause everyone to ignore his .374 OBP. Of course, Patterson struck out 142 times while posting a .284 OBP, so Grudzielanek's .301 OBP and 89 strikeouts in less at-bats obviously appear more attractive to Dusty Baaker.

Surprisingly Baker is quite familiar with the sleeper best candidate to replace Hill's position in both the lineup and the field. Ramon E. Martinez looks primed for a career-year now that he's escaped a stadium the suppresses right-handed hitters' power by 40% and BA by 7%; Wrigley adds 12% to right-handers HR totals while only decreasing their BA by 4%. Martinez could approach a .350 OBP, and while he wouldn't solve the secondary problem of Alex S. Gonzalez's career .306 OBP in the #2 hole, using Martinez instead of Grudzielanek or Patterson could prevent Sammy from losing 5-10 RBI. The 225 AB we projected for Martinez aren't even an overly generous allocation, making him an excellent fantasy sleeper in nearly any league in 2003 since he'll likely cost no more than a couple bucks.

The logical and relatively conventional solution is for Baker to bat Martinez first and Bellhorn second while dropping Gonzalez and Patterson to #6 and #7, thereby placing their combination of power upside with terrible OBP in a more appropriate lineup slot. However Baker also cost the Giants a couple wins by dropping Bonds to cleanup last year, so we don't expect him to try even this mild improvement to the Cubs' relatively woeful offensive situation.

Larry Bowa finally realized that the Phillies could score more runs with their best hitter in the #3 hole rather than buried in the #5, so Bobby Abreu will now follow Jimmy Rollins and Placido Polanco. Thome and Burrell will hit #4 and #5 against right-handers, reversing against lefties. We can't guarantee they'll maintain this lineup for more than a couple weeks after the Devil Rays no hit Philadelphia last night, however Abreu will see a mild bump in his runs as his RBI logically shrink. The biggest beneficiaries here are Thome and Burrell, who each could drive in 10 more runs with the Phillies' highest OBP source immediately in front of them in the batting order.

Tomorrow we'll review our BBW/CDM challenge rosters.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Both Belliard and Ramon Martinez might remain undervalued in this weekend's drafts. Either player would nicely fill your MIF slot in NL-only leagues, and Belliard merits consideration in any league as long as he starts.