Today's Fantasy Rx

In each of the last two years I've spent a couple articles discussing The Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge, a relatively new league for inter-site competition and bragging rights. After three seasons in the NL contest, we added a team in the companion AL league this year.

Drafting two weeks closer to Opening Day than previous FSIC drafts reduced the risk of selecting players a month early as rosters appear largely set right now, but we still opted to attempt our FSICNL strategy from the last two years in this league. As both FSIC leagues employ a straight snake draft, NL5x5, with 23-man rosters and four reserve slots, along with no AB/IP max/mins, we decided prior to the draft to take no starting pitching at all. We instead targeted only relievers with good skills or a high chance of seeing several save opportunities, and as many of those pitchers always fall to the later rounds, we concentrated on offense throughout the first half of the draft outside of solidifying our bullpen early. The goal of this strategy is to finish no worse than third place in saves, ERA, WHIP, and every hitting category, likely insuring we finish among the top three teams.

Today's Fantasy Rx: The comparative shallowness of 12-team AL leagues compared to their NL counterparts often results in depth problems even when punting categories. We likely erred by grabbing two top closers and passing on five-category offensive stabilizers. The additional relievers we obtained in later rounds provided sufficient stability for our bullpen that we did not require KRod and Rivera, merely one of those stoppers and perhaps a relatively unheralded option like B.J. Ryan or even Miguel Batista.