Mike Myers

The Yankees got a quality year of work out of the 37-year-old journeyman lefty. He was particularly effective against righties (.224 batting average against) and showed no problems handling the pressures of pitching in the Bronx, after spending the greater part of the past decade as an arm in losing environments. He's not going to blow hitters away, but if Myers can give the Yankees another year like 2006, he'll be a late-inning specialist for them against in 2007.

Myers bristles every time he's called a lefty specialist, but that's what he's become. Lefties hit just .158 off of him in 2005 and 50 of his 65 appearances were two outs in length or less. He'll do the same thing for the Yankees that he did with Boston last season.

Myers is the classic lefty specialist, which is a quality that should keep him employed as long as he's interested in throwing a baseball. He'll pitch about 40 innings a season, meaning good work will have little effect on a fantasy team's overall totals.

Myers had a lousy year in 2003 (5.70 ERA, 1.62 WHIP, and lefties slugged .415 off him), and the D-Backs decided that they had better, cheaper situational lefties available for their 2004 bullpen. We don't see anyone giving Myers a chance to close, so we're not sure what roto impact, if any, he'll have.

Myers had four wins and four saves for the Diamondbacks in 2002, pitching in a set-up role with a very occasional save chance on nights Bob Brenly wanted to rest Byung-Hyun Kim. His other fantasy numbers weren't that great, though (4.38 ERA, 1.5 WHIP, only 7.5 K's per nine innings). Unless Brenly's number one closer goes down in the spring, Myers will start 2003 in a similar role, which just doesn't have a lot of fantasy impact.