This Monday missive first appeared on a Tuesday, due to an Opening Day-related mulligan being called yesterday. Apologies -Ed.

Dear Rich Harden,

Ever since your precocious 2004 performance, we have been drafting you in fantasy baseball. And while the price we have paid has ranged from early round bid to 23rd round flier, our motivation has always been the same. In 2004, you pitched 189.7 innings at a 3.99 ERA clip, and better yet, you notched 167 strikeouts. You even threw in 11 wins for our trouble. The 81 walks were a bit of a concern, but with the Big Three (no, not that one or even that one) in Zito, Mulder and Hudson in front of you, it looked like you had exactly the kind of low pressure situation that would allow you to blossom into an ace.

Going into 2005, expectations could not have been higher. We nervously edged you up our draft crib sheets and chomped at the bit as the selection came to us with your name still on the board. Some of us spurted out exuberantly things like, “$25!” or “$30!” in the heat of our auctions. But somehow, some way, we signed you to our modest roster and ran you out there like the ace we knew you would be. And 2005 was, in some ways, a success. Your 2.53 ERA was remarkable, and you improved your strikeout to walk ratio to almost 3. You allowed just 93 hits, albeit in 128 innings, striking out nearly a batter a frame. But this was the first real taste we got of your injury woes. By mid-May, you were on the DL with an oblique injury, sidelined for over a month. When you came back, you were still your old self, and we forgave you the bump in the road–everybody gets a little banged up. Sure, we could have used you down the stretch to shore up our ERA or pad our leads in strikeouts, but we understood when you had to go back on the DL in August and September with shoulder problems. We knew what other owners didn’t–that all along, you were a fantasy stud in the making, a bona fide ace that threw fantasy league championships around like rice at a wedding. We would come calling next year, when we were sure you’d be ready to make it up to us.

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