His ADP of 19 on Yahoo!'s game isn't crazy, but I'd probably take him ahead of Mark Teixeira, Evan Longoria, B.J. Upton and Ian Kinsler, all of whom are ranked ahead of him. I'd also take him ahead of any pitcher, and both Johan Santana and Tim Lincecum are ahead of him right now.

From a fantasy perspective, Soriano's skill set is money in the bank. Plate discipline is important to real life baseball, but is often misused for fantasy purposes. Sure, if a player strikes out a lot, it's hard for him to hit for a good batting average, but Soriano's hit .277, .299 and .280 the last three years despite some of the worst plate discipline in the league. (It's actually been much improved over his career rate both in 2006 and last year, though it's still poor). So to knock him on plate discipline completely misses the point. His skills are such that he can hit for power without hurting your average despite swinging at everything. In fact, you don't have to worry about him losing selectivity because it doesn't matter much in his case.

The big worry about Soriano is the nagging leg injuries of the last two seasons, but he's completely healthy now unlike last year when he entered the season with a preexisting hamstring problem. Even so, he hit 29 HR and stole 19 bags in 109 games. At this point, he's still slated to hit leadoff, and he's in a lineup with Derrek Lee, Milton Bradley, Aramis Ramirez and Geovany Soto. There was no real evidence of a decline last year, and at 33, I don't see him falling off a cliff.

If he plays 150 games, he'll finish the season as a top-10 player. I think Kinsler and both pitchers have as much injury risk, and more performance risk. Longoria and Upton have far more performance risk. Teixeira's pretty safe, but he's not going to run at all.