The Hardball Times Fantasy

2011 FSIC NL: Team Carty/Pritchett

by Derek Carty
March 31, 2011

On Sunday, draft season came to an end for me as I completed my fifth and final fantasy baseball draft of the year, the Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge (FSIC) NL. It's a 12-team, 5x5, NL-only league with 22-man rosters (one catcher). It uses a snake draft format to select rosters. The past two seasons I've partnered with Paul Singman for this league, and we finished in second in 2009. This year, however, my partner will be new THTF writer Ben Pritchett. Here's our roster.

FSIC NL roster

+-----+---------------------+-------+
| POS | PLAYER              | ROUND |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| C   | Wilson Ramos        | R25   |
| 1B  | Joey Votto          | R1    |
| 2B  | Juan Uribe          | R9    |
| 3B  | Jose Lopez          | R16   |
| SS  | Stephen Drew        | R4    |
| CI  | Brandon Belt        | R14   |
| MI  | Jonathan Herrera    | R21   |
| OF  | Shane Victorino     | R2    |
| OF  | Jay Bruce           | R3    |
| OF  | Michael Bourn       | R5    |
| OF  | Marlon Byrd         | R9    |
| OF  | Mike Morse          | R10   |
| UT  | Jay Gibbons         | R19   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| SP  | Zack Greinke        | R6    |
| SP  | Ted Lilly           | R8    |
| SP  | Tim Stauffer        | R12   |
| SP  | Clayton Richard     | R13   |
| SP  | Brandon Beachy      | R15   |
| SP  | Kyle McClellan      | R17   |
| CL  | Jonathan Broxton    | R7    |
| CL  | Sean Burnett        | R18   |
| RP  | Rafael Betancourt   | R23   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+
| BN  | Andrew Cashner (SP) | R20   |
| BN  | Mike Leake (SP)     | R22   |
| BN  | Alex Sanabia (SP)   | R26   |
| BN  | Yonder Alonso (1B)  | R24   |
| BN  | Dee Gordon (SS)     | R27   |
+-----+---------------------+-------+

Thoughts

Overall, I think we drafted a very good team. I do think we have a couple holes, like UT now that Gibbons is headed to the DL and Tony Gwynn Jr. is starting in LF. Lopez and Herrera are also both question marks in terms of how much playing time they'll get. Ramos and Belt should start for the majority of the year, but just how large a majority is still in question.

Greinke will be out for most of April, but I think we ended up with a lot of quality pitchers late to help out until he comes back. Sean Burnett is only sharing save opportunities for the time being, but we drafted him late enough where he could be a real bargain.

Aside from all that, though, we're looking quite rosy . In all honesty, I think we landed some very good players early to anchor our team in Votto, Victorino, and Bruce, and some very good supporting players with the likes of Morse, Uribe, and Stauffer, among others. I think we have enough security wrapped up in certain players, and I think we picked our spots well in terms of taking risks to complement those players.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, so let us know what you think of our team in the comments.

Derek Carty, 23, has also been published by NBC's Rotoworld, Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and USA Today. This season, he'll be contributing to FanDuel and will be linking to all of his work at DerekCarty.com. In his three years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

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