Today's Fantasy Rx

Like the sister league formerly known as FBRNLC, due to the merger of Fantasy Baseball Review into CREATiVESPORTS, the league formerly known as the Fantasy Baseball Review AL Challenge, or FBRALC, unsurprisingly changed its name to CREATiVESPORTS AL Challenge. Of course, aside from the name change and a couple of new owners, the league otherwise remains the same.

CSALC features the same points-based head-to-head scoring as FSNLC, however instead of an auction with keepers, we select players in a snake draft. Despite some discussion regarding the addition of keepers, CSALC also will stay a single-season league at least through the 2004 season.

Thanks to our runner-up standing from last year, we drafted 9th in the first round and 2nd in the second round, so while we missed out on the few elite AL players, we had the opportunity to roster two of the top 12 American Leaguers.

We succeeded last year thanks to repeated roster churning as we FAABed new starting pitchers on an almost weekly basis, a strategy based on the league's a ten-man reserve list and $0 bids. By maximizing pitchers with double starts, along with employing a bullpen of Keith Foulke, Mariano Rivera, Brendan Donnelly, and Chad Bradford, we rallied after a weak start to secure a Wild Card spot. A couple of strong weeks during the playoffs pushed us to the final round, but we lost thanks to the unsurprising problems encountered by a few Tigers' starters. Of course, we probably shouldn't have made the playoffs after regularly employing every regular Detroit starter save Mike Maroth, but a respectable offense anchored by Nomar and Carlos Lee carried the team.

Our plan this season involved obtaining the same basic roster. We expected to draft two top batters, add a couple of solid closers, and then complete our offense before adding as many starting pitchers as possible over the last 10 rounds.

While the order mildly surprised us, ARod, Vlad, Soriano, Beltran, and Nomar were the logical top picks. Manny, Sheffield, and Ordonez also were respectable first rounders, giving us a choice between two top first basemen, Carlos Delgado and Jason Giambi, and two top shortstops, Miguel Tejada and Derek Jeter. Given that Delgado owns the strongest skills of these players and likely would accumulate 80 points, we decided to take Delgado, and then since the team picking 10th and 11th wasn't likely to pick two shortstops, we'd take whichever shortstop they skipped.

We didn't believe both shortstops would remain on the board following picks of Jason Giambi and Mike Sweeney, but given the upside of those players, we weren't shocked by the selections. Since Tejada's power makes him a better pick here than Jeter, we happily rostered Tejada alongside Delgado.

As we planned to take closers with our next two picks considering we drafted Foulke and Rivera in the middle of rounds 3 and 4 last year, we hoped at least one would fall to end of round 3. Unfortunately, both went at the beginning of the round, and selections of Halladay and Blalock left us with few solid offensive options. We also weren't prepared to take Arthur Rhodes here.

So after extended deliberation, we settled on Javier Vazquez; he was the only player left even likely to exceed 70 points, making him a great choice despite the departure from our plan. Following picks of Zito and Carlos Lee on the end, we opted for Eric Hinske over Ichiro, Teixeira, and Rhodes.

Of course, all three players left the board prior to our next pick, leaving us with few impressive options. We settled on Torii Hunter to give us one solid outfielder, and then we grabbed Troy Percival with our next pick to give us one decent closer.

Losing Crede, Koskie, and Jason Varitek prior to our round 7 pick irritated us, but we managed to grab a second good closer, Danys Baez, with our next choice. While we considered filling our catcher or second base openings, we opted for Josh Phelps in round 8, an outstanding value given his power potential.

Unfortunately, Matt LeCroy went one pick before us in round 9. With all the decent catchers off the board, we again looked for the best value. Jacque Jones gave us a second outfielder, and then Orlando Hudson filled our 2B slot.

We weren't surprised when our next choice, Desi Relaford, again went one pick before us. After considering Doug Mientkiewicz, we took Eric Munson for CR, and after watching Trot Nixon drop at least five rounds more than we expected, we finally grabbed him in Round 12. Looking for outfielders with our next two picks, we happily took Bobby Kielty and Kevin Mench, and after taking Darrell May as our second starter, finally filled our catching opening with Victor Martinez in Round 16.

With only our MIF and UT slots open on offense, we decided to look purely for the best available players for the remained of our 14 picks. Mike Cuddyer, Brian Anderson, Matt Riley, and Eric Young provided us with welcome upside, and then taking Chan Ho Park, Bronson Arroyo, and Jeff D'Amico to complete our pitching staff gave us a solid foundation of starting pitching.

We needed at least one position player to replace Nixon in the reserve rounds, so we opted for Jack Cust over Tony Graffanino, and then Kevin Cash over Gerald Laird. While we missed the chance to roster any more Texas starters, we spent our last five picks on Mark Hendrickson, Zach Greinke, Alan Embree, Donovan Osborne, and Justin Duchscherer. Embree is one of the safest relievers available, offering us a nice alternative in weeks with few good starts. We like Hendrickson's upside, and then Greinke, Osborne, and Duchscherer all should see some first half starts.

The good news is that we missed out on the injuries to LeCroy and Relaford, however now we'll miss Hunter and Nixon for most of the month. Fortunately, our relatively deep offense and flexible pitching staff gives us enough upside so that we expect to contend again this year, especially if we can add more starters during the season on a relatively steady basis.

Today's Fantasy Rx: We certainly advise planning your picks in advance in any straight draft that only allows you a minute or two to make each selection. However, if your league employs looser restrictions or even conducts an extended draft by e-mail, don't think too much about future picks. Maintaining a certain degree of distance from the draft prevents you from feeling overly disheartened if another owner steals a player you expected to take with a future pick. More importantly, spending much time on contingency planning is very inefficient since an unexpected position run could occur at any time. Focusing on your team only when you need to pick keeps the draft from overwhelming all your free time.