The first of those players to come to mind for most people would be position players.  Guys like Justin Upton, Chris Young (still cannot believe he is useful again), Stephen Drew, and Miguel Montero are all useful fantasy hitters. 

Also, the addition of J.J. Putz means 2011 will not be a constant closer guessing game in Arizona as it was in 2010 (at least until Putz gets hurt). 

However, Arizona’s rotation may be somewhat overlooked.  While their staff may not be among the league’s elite, there are certainly fantasy relevant guys in the rotation.

No matter what the depth chart on the D’Backs home page says, Joe Saunders is not the number one starter on this team. 

Although Saunders won 17 games in 2008 and 16 games in 2009, he really was not that good and only accumulated four Wins Above Replacement (WAR) over those two seasons. 

Not exactly sure what that means?  Let me put it this way: Gavin Floyd had a 4.3 WAR last year with only 10 wins and a plus-4.00 ERA.  Saunders clearly benefitted from playing on two AL West-winning Angels teams. 

Saunders’s ERA has been over 4.40 in all but one fluke season, and his career K/9 is 5.14.  As you can see, Saunders is no staff ace but more like a third or fourth starter on a team with a very thin rotation.  He might be useful in deep NL-only leagues, but for where you will have to draft him to get him, you should probably avoid him altogether.

In my opinion, the true “ace” of the staff is Daniel Hudson.  Before the soon-to-be 24-year-old was called up last year, he won 11 of 17 starts at AAA and struck out over ten batters per nine innings.  He followed that up by winning eight of 14 starts at the major league level with a 2.45 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, and 7.93 K/9. 

His numbers going forward are not likely to be as awesome because his BABIP was a low .241 and his strand rate would have been the highest in the majors had he pitched enough innings to qualify.  However, because he was so good, a little regression does not mean Hudson will not be an extremely valuable fantasy pitcher this year. 

Innings are not likely to be a concern with Hudson going forward because his workload only increased 22.2 IP from ’09 to ’10, so he should be able to top 200 IP in ’11 and pitch deep enough into games to rack up some wins. 

Moreover, his ERA will spike but is sure to stay under 4.00, and he could strike out close to a batter per inning.  That means Hudson should be viewed as a borderline top-30 pitcher, and a guy that I plan on taking in a lot of drafts this year because I assume that having him at no. 28 in my rankings means I am higher on him than most.

The other promising, young pitcher in Arizona, Ian Kennedy, is similar to Hudson.  He is a good strikeout pitcher who benefitted from a low BABIP in his first major league season.  The differences are that Kennedy’s low BABIP only helped him to a 3.80 ERA in 2010 and that Kennedy pitched 194 innings after only throwing 23.2 in 2009 (due to injury) and 116.2 in 2008 (also due to injury).  

Even if you set the workload increase aside, Kennedy is a bit of an injury risk, but 194 innings is a scary number for a guy who has never thrown more than 160 innings at any level in the minors. 

If healthy, Kennedy has the talent to be a top-40 pitcher, but you would be wise to avoid the risk and draft him only as a sixth starter (if at all) in ten-team mixed leagues.

It sure was fun bashing Joe Saunders and telling you about two exciting, young pitchers, but the rest of Arizona’s rotation is about as unexciting as possible. 

Three guys, Zach Duke, Barry Enright, and Armando Galarraga, will be competing for the final two spots in the rotation.  It should go without saying, but none of these three are useable in mixed formats. 

If you are an NL-only league owner, you should hope Enright and Galarraga get the starts because Duke is completely useless.  Duke strikes out no one (4.71 career K/9) and is an absolute WHIP killer (1.48 for his career, 1.65 in 2010). 

Enright and Galarraga should be able to keep their WHIP under 1.40, post an ERA at or around 4.50, and their K/9 could be around 6.00.  They certainly will not single-handedly win any NL-only leagues for you with those numbers, but they could be decent contributors at the back end of your fantasy rotation.

Written by Brett Talley exclusively for thefantasyfix.com.  Brett is a law student in Dallas who would like to give one more big “eff you” to Jim Joyce in the unlikely event that he is reading this article.  You can follow him on Twitter @therealTAL.