Today's Fantasy Rx

I analyzed our performance in the second 2004 NL BP-Indy draft near the beginning of the season. Today I'm going to examine both our draft and in-season moves now that the year is over.

For those of you unfamiliar with Scoresheet, you draft teams of no less than 30 players, and each week you submit a lineup with your batting orders against both right-handed and left-handed starters, as well as your preferred pitching rotation, order to deploy relievers, and several other detailed strategy instructions. Among the instructions for your team are when to bunt, how to use pinch hitters, what defensive replacements to use, and more importantly, how you want the computer to run your pitching staff. After each week of games, the Scoresheet computer takes your lineup and simulates a half-dozen games against other teams in your league based on the performances of the players on your teams over that past week.

When reviewing the draft two weeks into the season, I wrote the following: "We still expect our core players to provide the foundation for another playoff run, and if one or two of our youngsters develops quickly, hopefully we can add another top-of-the-rotation starter, dominant reliever, or upgrade our catcher or corner outfielders. While only Thomson and Encarnacion currently look like long-term solutions for us from this draft, our acquired depth nicely augmented our keeper roster. Even if we make no more moves aside from whomever we select in the mid-season drafts, we believe this team possesses enough talent and roster flexibility to keep us competitive both in 2004 and future seasons."

Following that approximate plan to improve our team and benefiting from the decision by the other teams in our division to dump during the summer, we won our division by 28 games, finishing with a 102-60 record, the best in the league by 5 games and a welcome improvement on our 89-73 mark last year. We swept the Wild Card in the first round of the playoffs and defeated the defending champion 4-1.

Here's the breakdown of how our drafted players performed in order of their selection, along with their VORP(Value Over Replacement Player):

Round	VORP	Player
1	9.3	Kevin Millwood
2	61.3	Carlos Zambrano
3	14.7	Adam Eaton
4	57.5	Jake Peavy
5	-12.8	Kurt Ainsworth
6	103.5	Albert Pujols
7	36.9	Jose Vidro
8	35.3	D'Angelo Jimenez
9	53.9	Mike Lowell
10	27.3	Edgar Renteria
11	34.7	Shawn Green
12	48.2	Brad Wilkerson
13A	27.9	Corey Patterson
13B	21.1	Jason LaRue
14	34.0	John Thomson
15	26.2	Brett Tomko
16	53.5	Lyle Overbay
17	8.7	Craig Counsell
18A	-4.0	J.J. Davis
18B	31.0	Mike Barrett
19	24.8	Braden Looper
20	6.0	Ricky Ledee
21A		Edwin Encarnacion
21B		Franklin Gutierrez
22	-7.9	Kevin Correia
23	30.2	Juan Rivera
24	7.4	Amaury Telemaco
25	16.9	Jim Brower
26	8.2	Dan Wheeler
27	0.9	Aaron Heilman
28	45.1	J.T. Snow
29	25.3	Salomon Torres
30	14.5	Endy Chavez
31A	8.0	Felipe Lopez
31B	-2.7	Chris Burke
32	-9.2	Abraham Nunez
33	-7.1	Corky Miller
34	-19.3	Edgar Gonzalez
35		Adam Wainwright

While we erred in protecting Kurt Ainsworth as our crossover over Juan Uribe or Miguel Batista, we compensated for disappointing seasons from Ainsworth, Millwood, Eaton and Gonzalez with Thomson and Tomko. Selecting Overbay, Barrett, Rivera, and Snow similarly provided us with an excellent foundation from which to deal.

The league operated somewhat differently in its second season thanks to an infusion of four new owners. Most of the teams that appeared unlikely to win playoff spots dumped by August, a somewhat surprising move given the lifetime keepers in this league. Of course, rule changes, adopted at this year's draft for the 2005 season, also affected strategies. We moved to a soft keeper list, with a five keeper minimum and rounds 6-13 treated as optional keepers. The league also voted to increase the number of crossovers available to 2.

Our team started the year fairly strong, but the ineffectiveness of Ainsworth and Tomko left us looking for pitching depth headed into the first of three supplemental drafts. We added Kevin Gryboski, Tyler Yates, Justin Wayne, Maicer Izturis, and Javier Valentin, foolishly passing on Matt Holliday and Jose Hernandez.

Immediately following the draft, we attempted to complete a trade with one team that didn't use their last two picks immediately. After extended negotiations that morphed into an expanded offer for picks later in the year, we verbally agreed to deal Ainsworth, Tomko, J.T. Snow, and Juan Rivera for Ben Sheets, Yadier Molina, and two picks in upcoming supplementrals. Yes, Tomko, Snow, and Rivera all exploded in the second half, but the chance to pick up Sheets was too tempting to ignore.

Unfortunately for us, Baltimore demoted Ainsworth one day before the other team planned to report the trade. The team opted to ignore our agreement and not report the deal, costing us not only Sheets, but Carlos Beltran, selected in August with one of the two picks we nearly acquired.

Of course, dealing four secondary players for Sheets and Beltran might have affected the balance of the league rather adversely, but at least we know now to let other teams report deals before we view any trade as completed.

The sour taste left by these negotiations, not to mention Ainsworth's move from the minors to the disabled list, prompted us to begin dealing more aggressively. We swapped Kevin Correia and Tyler Yates for Jason Isringhausen and Yorvit Torrealba, addressing our two weakest areas by moving two young starters then in rotations. After a few rounds of talks, we also obtained Milton Bradley, who we targeted from the beginning of the season as a switch-hitter with good OBP and defense, along with Conor Jackson, for Lyle Overbay and Chris Burke. Three weeks later we moved Jackson for Cory Lidle to replace the injured Kevin Millwood in our rotation

Our partner from the failed Sheets trade kindly ceded us a couple of supplemental picks for the June draft for our inconvenience. While not Sheets, the picks allowed us to add an intriguing mix of players: Matt Ginter, Ryan Church, Glendon Rusch, T.J. Tucker, Ruben Mateo, and Ben Hendrickson. Ginter, Rusch, and Tucker stabilized our pitching staff while Church and Hendrickson now look like serious assets.

Teams began dumping in earnest after the All-Star break, highlighted by a deal of Clemens, Schilling, and Kolb for Josh Beckett, Vicente Padilla, Edwin Jackson, Scott Kazmir, and Jose Capellan. With multiple prospects and/or future draft picks fetching All-Stars for the other contenders, we heartily jumped into the trade market.

The August supplemental draft allowed us to add Noah Lowry, Jayson Werth, Koyie Hill, and Willy Aybar. Deals We then moved Mike Lowell, Shawn Green, Franklin Gutierrez, and Macier Izturis for Bobby Abreu, David Bell, and four outstanding picks; we selected Josh Wilson, Carlos Quentin, Jon Rauch, and Justin Germano.

One day later, we essentially set our team for the playoffs by moving the majority of our young pitching depth for two pending free agents. We traded Adam Eaton, Adam Wainwright, Aaron Heilman, Edgar Gonzalez, Justin Wayne, Koyie Hill, and Felipe Lopez for Carl Pavano, Adrian Beltre, Akinori Otsuka, and three more picks. Dave Williams, Chris Snyder, and Zach Duke joined our team with those selections. Selecting Williams over Dan Meyer looks terrible now, but any complaining about our moves the first week of August qualifies as unnecessary nitpicking.

The short-term boost propelled us to the front of the pack even though wow we're stuck with Beltre, Pavano, and Renteria in the American League, along with possibly Millwood, but. With a lineup of Barrett, Pujols, Jimenez, Beltre, Renteria, Wilkerson, Bradley, and Abreu, a loaded bench featuring Snow, Bell, and Juan Rivera, and a rotation of Pavano, Zambrano, Peavy, Thomson, and Lowry, we unsurprisingly coasted into the playoffs.

Of course, the downside of all our moves is that we now lack spots for the twenty players we want to keep, not to mention our increased cache of prospects. Yet we can't complain about heading into the draft with a core of Pujols, Abreu, Zambrano, Peavy, and two of Beltre, Renteria, and Pavano. With the increased crossover spot, we at least should obtain a decent replacement for one of our new American Leaguers, and we remain confident that our team should continue to contend despite the young talent gathered by the rebuilding teams.

Today's Fantasy Rx: With the diverse methods of trade reporting employed by various leagues, insuring that your league specifically defines the completion of a trade could avoid significant future problems.