Today's Fantasy Rx

Please refer to yesterday's article for a brief look at our FSICNL history as well as a detailed discussion of how we prepared for last Sunday's draft.

To briefly summarize, the lack of an IP requirement led us to decide to take no starting pitching. Aside from selecting one closer within the first few rounds, we wouldn't take any pitchers sooner than the 13th round to insure a strong and hopefully balanced 5-category offense. We then would complete our pitching staff by selecting pitchers with a strong likelihood of receiving save opportunities and/or relievers with all-around quality skills. If necessary, we would augment those relievers with injured pitchers or minor leaguers to prevent ERA/WHIP disasters.

The draft opened with the unsurprising selections of Albert Pujols, Todd Helton, Barry Bonds, and Mark Prior. We expected the next two players to go would be Juan Pierre and Eric Gagne, respectively the top 5x5 hitter and pitcher from 2003, who each easily at least should strongly echo their 2003 performances.

Instead, the next half-dozen owners each selected a multi-category offensive contributor. We watched in near amazement as Preston Wilson, Scott Rolen, Sammy Sosa, Bobby Abreu, Chipper Jones, and Marcus Giles disappeared from the board. Those selections left us with our choice of the best offensive player and the best pitcher in the draft, not to mention Edgar Renteria. The St. Louis shortstop anchored our team last year, and in our opinion, Renteria probably ranked behind only Pujols, Pierre, and Gagne at the top of the draft.

We never expected all three players to remain available at our pick. While the previous six owners each selected a quality player, we generally advise selecting the best player available in the first round.

After a few moments of overly apprehensive indecision, we opted for Eric Gagne. While he shouldn't win another Cy Young, Los Angeles will provide him with another fifty save opportunities, and he easily owns the strongest overall skills of any reliever in baseball. Gagne earned the most actual value, determined by a 50/50 hitting/pitching split rather than the 70/30 split we normally use, of any player in the game last year. As long as he remains healthy, he should manage a similar ranking in 2004. Additionally, he gave us a fantastic anchor for our pitching staff of relievers, allowing us to spend our next dozen or so picks on position players.

We realized that Brendan Roberts of The Sporting News, who owned the 13th and 14th overall picks, likely would select Renteria based on his history of choosing St. Louis players in high rounds in previous seasons, but we couldn't risk one owner ending up with the two best players in the league.

Of course, Roberts wisely took Pierre and Renteria, leaving us with Orlando Cabrera as a respectable fallback position. While the 15th pick of a draft seems high for Cabrera, we expect him to dominate early as the Expos play their full Puerto Rican schedule over the first half. We also saw no way for him to make it back to us.

With our closer and shortstop in hand, we waited to see if Vidro would fall to us. Rafael Furcal, Kazuo Matsui, and Jeff Kent all dropped off the board, as well as Randy, Wagner, Dotel, Berkman, Derrek Lee, and Lowell, but Vidro thankfully remained available at the end of the third round. We grabbed him, solidifying our all-Montreal middle infield, Roberts took Smoltz and Miguel Cabrera, and we filled our first base hole with Adam Dunn. While Dunn's a moderately questionable pick at the beginning of the fourth round, he could hit 40 homers, and with Helton, Thome, Sexson, Bagwell, and Lee off the board, he easily ranked as the best remaining first baseman.

Shawn Green and Jason Kendall, both interesting targets, fell before our next pick, but we happily added Richard Hidalgo, and then followed him with Brad Wilkerson in the 6th round, giving us two solid multi-category outfielders.

Perhaps we erred in not taking Nick Johnson at this point, but given his injury history, we wanted the safer bets in the outfield. Johnson fell two places before our seventh round pick, one selection after our other primary target, the normally underrated Placido Polanco. Consequently, we grabbed Carl Everett, who should thrive in the middle of Montreal's order. An eighth round pick of Tony Batista provided us with another good power source.

Of course, at this point, cornermen were disappearing off the board quickly, few decent middle infielders remained, and all the respectable closers had gone. We also wanted to improve our batting average, so we happily drafted Sean Burroughs one pick after Sean Casey went, and then we added Marlon Byrd in the 10th round.

With five of our six infield positions and four of our five outfield slots filled, we needed to address either our pitching staff or catching in the very near future. However, with position players disappearing and starting pitchers going to the other 11 teams, no one appeared interested in middle relievers.

By our 11th round pick, the only catchers gone were Piazza, Kendall, Phillips, Lieberthal, LoDuca, Pierzynski, and Ramon Hernandez. Unfortunately, based on the league's 10-game position qualification rule, that left us with just Craig Wilson and Brian Schneider as catchers likely able to earn double-digit value. While we like Johnny Estrada and Jason LaRue, not to mention a few others like Ramon Castro, Robby Hammock, and Chad Moeller, only Wilson and Schneider possessed both good skills and a respectable big league statistical history.

We grabbed Craig Wilson, held our breath while Roberts took Livan Hernandez and Brian Lawrence, and then grabbed Brian Schneider, our sixth Montreal starting position player, to complete our catching corps.

With the league's top closer in our bullpen and 11 quality offensive starters, we then decided to draft as much offensive upside as possible. In the 13th round, Aaron Miles filled our MIF opening, and then we chose Juan Rivera over Terrmel Sledge to complete our outfield due to Rivera's superior quantitative upside. While both players could spend the year in the minors, we planned on drafting alternatives at both positions in later rounds to help with our unimpressive team speed. Then, when Brad Lidge went in the 14th round we knew we needed to begin selecting relievers.

Tomorrow I'll conclude my discussion of our participation in the 2004 FSICNL draft.

Today's Fantasy Rx: We only felt comfortable selecting seven Montreal starting position players because we expect them to post very impressive numbers in the first half. Before the All-Star Break, the Expos spend a quarter of their games at the hitters' paradise in Puerto Rico, and even though they've enacted some changes to reduce offense there, we still believe we'll see solid batting averages and good quantitative marks from our contingent of Expos.

Conversely, many Montreal players could slump in the second half, especially if MLB makes them a lame duck franchise in Canada by announcing a new home for the team at the All-Star Break. Anyone wishing to follow our lead in stocking their team with Expos at their draft should look to trade them following their 10-day home stand in Puerto Rico immediately preceding the All-Star Break.