Around this time every baseball season, one sees a variety of articles on any given year's first half fantasy all-stars.  This article is one of them, but with a slight twist:  instead of naming players that gave owners the best "bang for their buck" or all of the "sleeper picks" that have already vanished from waiver wires everywhere, this fantasy team will be selected with a few more guidelines.

Using Mock Draft Central's 2011 average draft position (ADP) list, we've picked a player from each round to assemble a Yahoo! standard fantasy league roster.  No rounds were skipped (even though there were a couple of really weak rounds) and any player with an ADP above 216 was not eligible to be included.  Conceivably, if you drafted "perfectly", this could have been your roster for a standard 5x5 Yahoo! league, and it is a very good one.

Pos	Player	Team	Round	ADP
C	Miguel Montero	ARI	11	123
1B	Paul Konerko	CHW	6	66
2B	Robinson Cano	NYY	1	8
3B	Jose Bautista	TOR	4	37
SS	Jose Reyes	NYM	3	33
OF	Matt Kemp	LAD	2	21
OF	Curtis Granderson	NYY	7	73
OF	Chris Young	ARI	8	95
UTIL	Gaby Sanchez	FLA	14	164
UTIL	Jeff Francoeur	KC	17	204
SP	Justin Verlander	DET	5	59
SP	Shaun Marcum	MIL	9	108
RP	Francisco Rodriguez	NYM	10	120
RP	Huston Street	COL	12	144
P	Gio Gonzalez	OAK	13	145
P	James Shields	TB	15	177
P	Jaime Garcia	STL	16	185
P	Jordan Walden	LAA	18	216

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Below is a comparison of this "perfect draft" team's 5-by-5 rotisserie stats and the stats of the number top-ranked Yahoo! public fantasy league team, Jump Off The Lidge.  Our perfect draft team clearly leads in all five offensive categories but trails in the quantitative pitcher stats, though it's worth noting that Jump Off The Lidge has pitched 892.2 innings and the perfect draft team has only hurled 755.2 innings this season.  Keep in mind that this is a Yahoo! standard roster.

Team	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	W	S	K	ERA	WHIP
Jump Off The Lidge	502	124	491	100	.286	65	93	754	2.97	1.15
Perfect Draft Team	557	169	552	113	.298	48	69	721	2.74	1.13

As mentioned above, some draft rounds contained difficult choices.  Robinson Cano's selection in the first round was made because there were other great first base options in later rounds, but few great second basemen.  The selections in rounds eight (Chris Young) and nine (Shaun Marcum) were also difficult because there was a lack of talent to choose from.

Ideally, I would have selected different closers, but top-tier options like Mariano Rivera and Brian Wilson would have required very high draft picks.  Adversely, cheaper options who have well outperformed their ADP like Joel Hanrahan and Craig Kimbrel did not have a high enough ADP to be selected.

Without a doubt, the selected players' biggest key to success in 2011 has been lack of injury.  Injuries have affected player performance more this season than in most, and the players listed above have stayed largely healthy, allowing them to perform up to (and probably beyond) their draft day value.