New York State of Mind...

So Matty Matt and I took part in our annual fantasy draft with the New York baseball crew yesterday. Matt's Father in law, bro in law, and his buds have been running this league for ages now and, I must say, it's a brilliant league. Ricky does a great job managing, along with "Bulldog" Kevin Kline. AL Only, auction, keeper is the format and it's been running for maybe 10 years now.

With substantial outfield talent on our roster heading into the draft, and the bulk of the talent available also in the outfield, we were presented with a tricky "supply vs demand" scenario: How can we get guys to blow their cash on the available outfielders (without getting stuck with a position we don't need), leaving us with more money to spend on our needs: 2B, 1B, and Starting Pitching. It just so happened that the leanest positions for available players were, yes, 2B/SS, 1B, and Starting Pitching... so what to do???

First, Rick allows 3 National League players to be put into the player pool. Fortunately, underrated stud 1B Adrian Gonzalez was one of those players. We expected Albert Pujols to be offered up (and we were prepared to spend probably 55 dollars on Pujols) but Kevin threw the league a curveball and put Gonzalez out there instead. Gonzalez was going to be ours... and he ended up with us for a cost of 43 dollars. Fantastic! We knew our other 1B target, new Yankee Mark Teixeira, was going to be priced in the mid 50's, particularly in a NY comp... and sure enough he went for 57 dollars. Too much. The difference between Adrian Gonzalez and Mark Teixeira is, well, about 30 more strikeouts from Gonzalez. That's it. Gonzalez has proven he is a masher, even in a cavernous park like San Diego's Petco (plus, he may, down the road, be trade bait for the cash strapped San Diego Padres... Boston perhaps? We know Theo Epstein loves him.) For the difference of 14 dollars between Gonzalez and Teixeira, we added another guy we ranked high: Mike Aviles. He's got eligibility at both SS and 2B and will slot nicely into 2B for us. While we could be proven wrong, we think having Gonzalez and Aviles (particularly at a thin 2B position) for the price of Teixeira is smart, astute drafting. Plus, Aviles, assuming he produces, will slide nicely into the SS spot for us in 2010.

Our other high priced expenditure was SP John Lackey. Happy to acquire him, even if we paid maybe 5 dollars too much (max. At 32 dollars, he could be just about right, relatively speaking.) Then I woke up to the news that he's being shut down for a while with tightness in his forearm... let's hope he doesn't visit Dr James Andrews anytime soon. For now, he's getting a cortisone shot. Let's hope that works.

We took a "shopping at Costco" approach to the rest of our draft, picking up SPs Andy Pettite, Brad Penny, John Smoltz (love him for 3 dollars; let's hope Boston gets him a spot in the rotation come late May), plus a flyer on Edwin Jackson (time to succeed Edwin, Detroit needs you... and so do we.) These guys will slot in nicely next to Jon Lester and Joe Saunders.

The bullpen is led by Jonathan Papelbon. We were priced out of the closer auction but picked up Grant Balfour and Fernando Rodney. Balfour, the Thunder from Down Under Australian reliever, is likely first in line to close for Tampa Bay should Percival get hurt (which he will at some point.) And Rodney is supposedly going to split the closer job with Brandon Lyon in Detroit, so we should pick up some saves there. Presumably, he'd be line to get all the saves, should Lyon be ineffective or get hurt. Otherwise, we'll need to be active on the waiver wire for saves.

Lastly, picked up a couple of offensive bench players with big upside: Ty Wigginton, Wilson Betemit (let's hope he gets the start at 3b for Chicago), and Josh Fields (the likely starter in Chicago at 3b) who has nice power but strikes out, well, 1 time every 3 ABs... not good. But Wiggy was the prize bench pickup here and we hope he gets the start in Baltimore. Eligible at multiple positions, Wigginton can mash and we hope Baltimore do the right thing and start him. Also picked up Rod Barajas to catch... not much to say there.

So the starting lineup looks like this:

C Rod Barajas
1B Adrian Gonzalez
2B Mike Aviles
SS Jed Lowrie
3B Carlos Guillen
OF Jacoby Ellsbury
OF BJ Upton
OF Carlos Quentin
UTIL Magglio Ordonez

SP Jon Lester
SP John Lackey
RP Jonathan Papelbon
RP Grant Balfour
P Fernando Rodney
P Brad Penny
P Andy Pettite

Pitching Bench: Edwin Jackson, Joe Saunders, John Smoltz
Offensive Bench: Ty Wigginton, Wilson Betemit, Josh Fields

Pleased with the team, excited to have Adrian Gonzalez joining us. Season starts in a week... I wish it was yesterday!