The Spectrum

Issue date: 3/19/06 Section: Sports

Media Credit: AP Photo / Brennan Linsley Pujols may have helped his fantasy value with his play in the WBC. First round? Definitely. First Pick? We'll see.

It's mid-March and I simply can't take it anymore. Basketball is currently about as exciting as watching paint dry and opening day is still two weeks away. The anticipation for the 2006 major league baseball season is elevating by the day, and there is no better system to tranquilize the anxiousness than preparing and drafting your fantasy baseball team. Here are the full-proof methods tested by myself that should be used at your own risk, in order to enjoy a winning season on the internet.

If you haven't noticed, starting pitching is extremely thin this season, and it is highly unlikely your league will be won with talented arms. In my predicted top 30 performers for the upcoming season, only four starting pitchers made the list (Johan Santana, Chris Carpenter, Jake Peavy, and Roy Oswalt). Instead of limiting your offensive talent in order to accommodate acquiring a risky arm, continue to enhance the offensive juggernaut that should be created in the first three rounds.

By round four, those starting pitchers will be gone, plus some others depending on the league, but here is the time to take your first arms. The guys here won't be top notch names, but have just as good of a chance to compete for a Cy Young award as the others do. Having Carlos Zambrano, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, or Ben Sheets anchoring your staff is sufficient enough. In rounds five or six, the run on closers will begin to heat up, so drafting Fransisco Rodriguez, Billy Wagner, B.J. Ryan or Joe Nathan would be the best move. Brad Lidge and Mariano Rivera go too early, but the names mentioned put up equal if not better numbers. If you lose out on all of those names, don't panic. Eric Gagne, Trevor Hoffman, Francisco Cordero, and Jason Isringhausen are all 40 save closers and they will be available into the eighth or ninth rounds.

The eighth, ninth and tenth rounds are where you begin to see where you can fill some empty holes in your lineup. For example, if you don't have a first baseman by now, please address the issue immediately. Or else before you know it, it will be the 20th round and you're starter will be Mike Jacobs. Having two starting pitchers, one closer and six or seven hitters that fill up three out of the four major infield positions, excluding catcher, and the outfield should be a consistent check point by now. I excluded catcher from one of the major positions in fantasy because there are only two catchers that made my top 100 list: Victor Martinez, Jason Varitek. Pass on both, and try to steal Ramon Hernandez or Bengie Molina in the late rounds because both will hit for a solid average, which is all a team really needs from this position.

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