Here is my roster, with comments.

There was one more item that mattered to me when drafting my team and that was risk management. This year I decided to try using the Baseball HQ reliability scores when deciding between roughly equal commodities. So when discussing the players I will list their reliability score where it was a factor and round.

C: Dioner Navarro Round 20. He was my very last pick and as far as catchers go he is a good choice with some upside. Since it is a points league and my offense is tremendous anyway, I am not worried about him.

1B: Mark Teixeira Round 2. His reliability score is 83 and there is no reason to expect him to be anything other than he has always been, though with him there is still some upside that could vault him to an MVP caliber season. At worst I am getting a second round stud and at best a potential top five player.

2B: Aaron Hill Round 9. I love Hill this year and think he could easily be a top five 2B, and to get him in round nine. Like Teixeira he has a strong reliability score of 79 and has upside off of that, so he is a low risk pick.

SS: Michael Young Round 6. I actually don’t love Young that much though he is reliable with an 86 score. I end up with him in every league because many of the shortstops drafted ahead of him are always overdrafted so when the time comes he is the last of the top SS, with a big gap down after him. He is a poor man’s Todd Helton, putting up good batting averages based on a tremendous propensity to smoke line drives.

3B: Miguel Cabrera Round 1: Ah the sweet little joys of life. I sure hope I am right that he will be a top three player. But what I am pretty sure of is that he is a bargain at the tenth pick for sure. Getting high reliability guys (his score is 83) that have very limited downside (the definition of a high reliability player) but with some upside is fantasy gold and I got that at almost every position.

OF: Carl Crawford Round 3, Nick Markakis Round 4 Torii Hunter Round 5. Given the poor depth and quality of the OF this year, I think this was a coup to get these three guys. There aren’t too many high reliability high production OF available; Crawford is a 99 and Hunter is a 79. Markakis comes in at 22, but that is because he doesn’t have a long enough track record and has not had consistent production. That is a GOOD thing with him though; since his lack of reliability of because he is getting better.

DH: Adrian Beltre Round 7. As with my expert league team he ends up as a very solid DH. Like some of the other players on my team, he has an 88 reliability score but also is trending back up in his overall power skill set to 2004, so that there may be some upside here. I trust that we all see the pattern to my “madness.”

P: Ian Snell Round 8
P: Joe Blanton Round 10
P: Dustin McGowan Round 11
P: Gil Meche Round 13
P: Zack Greinke Round 14
RP: Bobby Jenks Round 12
RP: Joakim Soria Round 18

Reserves:
Manny Parra Round 15
Clay Buchholz Round 16
Scott Baker Round 17
Andrew Sonnanstine Round 19

With pitchers my starters are all roughly equal and all except for maybe Blanton have good upside. The key with the reserve pitchers is that all are risky propositions but are sufficiently skilled that they could easily be top 25 pitchers this year. My thought here is that as long as one of them blossoms then the rest are expendable and easily replaceable on the free agent wire.

When free agents are plentiful there is no reason not to swing for the fences, though I realize I am going against what many others think, Tim Dierkes for example. I love Parra and would be surprised if he isn’t the Brewers second best starter this year.