Today's Fantasy Rx

After finishing 3rd out of 8 teams during the inaugural season of FBRNLC in 2002, we at least hoped to qualify for the championship game in this head-to-head league. Finishing with the second-best record didn't help us advance out of wild card round in 2002, but even though the league expanded to ten teams this year via an expansion draft, we viewed anything less than a top-2 finish this season as a failure.

Today's Fantasy Rx: My predictions for today's games(all times CDT):

7:00: Florida@Chicago Cubs

A fantastic outing by former elite closer Derek Lowe pushed our pre-season favorite Red Sox into the ALCS. The Cubs should hold a sizable home field advantage tonight, however Josh Beckett possesses as much upside as any starter in the NLCS. Unless he suffers from more control problems than the tiring Carlos Zambrano, the Marlins should steal a win tonight before Prior evens the series tomorrow.

The lesson from our 2003 FBRNLC team is that when running a team with a deep bench, don't cut players with significant upside unless absolutely necessary, particularly if only more playing time prevents a skilled player from emerging as a fantasy stud. If your league allows a dozen or more reserves per traditional Ultra rules, make sure you keep a few decent position players on your bench for depth even if you prefer rotating starters as much as we do. While we added 35 new players throughout the season in this league, our late April decision to cut Morgan Ensberg cost us a skilled position when we instead could have dropped someone like Kevin Young or Brian Moehler but the kept the veterans due to their regular roles at the time.