Yankees Logo
New York Yankees 2003 Fantasy Report
  By Mick Doherty [RotoYanks@yahoo.com] for ESPN.com
March 14, 2003
Fare-Thee-Well, Yankee Fans and Roto GMs
To better serve the thousands of fantasy baseball enthusiasts who count on ESPN.com correspondents for key local information, The World-Wide Leader will soon be presenting a new Yankee scribe who can commit to more than once-a-week and relevant breaking news updates. Rumor has it the replacement might even be an East Coaster, meaning he or she can pick up local sports talk radio and telecasts, which can be hard to tune in here in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

ESPN.com has consistenly brought excellent correspondents on board this project, including (but not limited to) current authors John Gizzi of the A's, Kent "Coach" Williams of the Jays, Don Miller of the Rays (A's, Jays and Rays ... hmmm), Brian Abbott of the Tigers and Scott Lucas on my old beat, the Rangers, as well as former contributors Chris Trimmer of the Indians and Thor Kolnes of the Marlins. So whoever ends up in this spot next is bound to bring you terrific information. (Just noticed that all of the above except Thor have double letters in their names. Not sure what that means. But it's fun to point out.)

The spring training reviews of print fantasy publications will still conclude, as promised last week, with a look at the Sports Weekly annual insert, which is usually the best single source in print as you head into a draft or auction. The final review will appear on The Batter's Box, the baseball blog hosted by the Jays' Williams, now at its new address: http://www.battersbox.ca.

A few final thoughts ... Jeff Weaver: yes ... Nick Johnson: no ... Hideki Matsui: above average, not an all-star ... Robin Ventura: old ... Jose Contreras: wait on it ... David Wells: turn the page ... Mariano Rivera: be sure you have Steve Karsay ... Other questions? They've probably been covered in one of the six previous posts to this space since the turn of the new year, but of course, things are always changing.

An archive of those six posts -- and actually, of more than 110 columns posted since 2000 -- is available at http://dellepro.dellhost.com/doherty/sports/ESPN/. I'll leave the e-mail questions to my successor, and please note that the "RotoYanks@yahoo.com" e-mail address will be discontinued at the end of March. My heartfelt thanks to the more than 250,000 readers who've accessed my correspondence in the last 3+ years -- even those of you who started your e-mails "Dear Moron" -- and please feel free to drop me a line at mickwrites@hotmail.com. Excelsior!


OFFICIAL ESPN.COM DISCLAIMER: While these reports are filled with fantasy insight, they are based on the Correspondent's point of view and may contain speculation as well as fact. © 2003, ESPN.com and Mick Doherty.