Jeter takes a digger, so what do you do now?

So, you dominated last year's league, but now your team is in last place, and you're thinking, "how did I draft such crappy guys?" Or, you're in first place and you think your team is sweet. Well, you're wrong either way. It's only the first week of the season. Your team batting average or ERA is way out of whack, and half of your pitchers haven't thrown yet. This is just the beginning. There are 182 days left in the season, and your team will be up and down throughout.

But, that doesn't mean that it's too early to strategize. You can't get a fair gauge of most players yet, but you can capitalize on the small things. For example, Derek Jeter separated his shoulder on Monday, and will be out for probably half the season. If you own Jeter, well, it sucks to be you.

If you don't, you might want to think about picking up the next best free agent shortstop in your league before Jeter's owner does. Then, propose a trade to Jeter's owner, explaining that you happen to have an extra shortstop and you'd like to help out with the whole injury situation. This dirty little strategy might just score me a solid starting pitcher. What could it do for you?

Sidebar: the Jeter owner in one of my leagues picked up Rey Ordonez after his three hit, four RBI game last Tuesday.

"I would have accepted a can of bitter beer and a stale chip for Ordonez," an NL General Manager regarding the Mets trading Ordonez to Tampa Bay said. "The fact that [Mets GM Steve] Phillips got two actual minor leaguers that can breathe and everything amazes me."

Needless to say, don't pick up Ordonez. Is it worth picking up the chump who the Yankees will play at shortstop? Doubtful. Although there is talk that Omar Vizquel might be traded to fill in for Jeter, which would increase his fantasy value enormously.

Right now, all your stats are misleading, especially because some star pitchers got rocked in their first start. The guys not to worry about are Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Roy Halladay, and Wade Miller. The guys you should feel skeptical about are Freddy Garcia, Matt Clement, and Cory Lidle.

On the flip side, some starters really looked sweet out there. Tony Armas Jr., at 24, is showing tremendous promise. Woody Williams, also, coming off a season of injury, gave up just two hits in 6.2 innings against Milwaukee. Veterans Al Leiter, Kevin Brown, Hideo Nomo, and Andy Pettitte all proved that they are still good enough to be on any fantasy team. Possible sleepers: Zach Day three-hit Atlanta, although no one's ever heard of him, and Joe Mays might be making a comeback. Keep watching them.

For hitters, it's too early to make a call on some hot and cool starts. I say don't bite on the Corey Patterson bug or on Jason Kendall either. Everyone's hitting home runs, but I wouldn't be making any drastic changes to your line-up just yet. My best advice at this point in the season is to use your bench spots to grab some promising starting pitchers, then wait to see if they develop into gold.

In two months you can keep them or trade them for whatever your team lacking, whether it be a third baseman or a closer. Speaking of closers, here is a write-in question:



So what's the deal with getting saves? Should I be trying to land some solid closers and get ahead? And how do I know who is going to close for sure?

-- Mikey



I say don't waste your brain cells on closers. Less than 15 teams in the baseball have every day reliable icemen, and a handful of them are currently injured -- Rob Nen, Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, and Jason Isringhausen. To find closers, ESPN.com lists the starting pitching rotation and team closer on its team roster pages, but that's not very reliable.

Saves come slowly, which makes it an exciting and close race towards the end of the season, but for now, you can scrap together a few here and there just by playing the waiver wire. Unless you can get two out of the six or so great closers pitching right now -- John Smoltz, Billy Koch, Troy Percival, Eric Gagne, Billy Wagner or Eddie Guardardo -- you're not going to get anywhere in saves right now.

Eventually you'll have to hunker down with a couple of closers in order to reduce the innings you use and to keep yourself in the running, but you won't need to worry about that until close to the All-Star break.

Until next week, e-mail your questions to elliot.freeman@tufts.edu.