Circling the Bases is our Fantasy Baseball expert column, full of insider information, advice and in-depth analysis. Every Wednesday year-round, Tristan H. Cockcroft provides an array of regular-season coverage, offseason player analysis and preseason draft strategy.

We're just five days away from the final lineup deadline for the 2004 Fantasy Baseball season -- at least as far as leagues with weekly lineups, by far the most popular format, are concerned. For those owners still in a tight race for a league title, good luck in the season's final days.

You might expect this week's column to delve deep into the final week's matchups, or help steer you clear of those suddenly questionable studs in favor of that one diamond in the rough that will carry you to victory. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's not going to happen. There are things you need to take into account for next week -- which you can find in Friday's "Baseball Planner" -- but using this column space to dissect every aspect of Week 26 would probably serve more to inspire panic in the smart owners who got this far than help them win a championship.

For instance, if you're trying desperately to convince yourself that you need a sleeper to start ahead of Albert Pujols, whom you're convinced will sit now that the Cardinals have all but clinched the NL's best record, you're taking the matchups far too seriously.

Overused cliché or not, the best advice a Fantasy owner can receive regarding the final week: "Go with the guys who got you there." Unless you have a player whose injury status needs serious attention up until the deadline, like Scott Rolen or Alfonso Soriano, you shouldn't be questioning the studs who to this point have given you 25 weeks of great stats.

That said, let the remainder of this column -- the 2004 season's top Fantasy developments -- relax your mind and ease your nerves regarding those critical lineup choices. All right, perhaps some of these issues might actually inspire more debate than actually calm anyone, but at least we'll have some fun and, for at least a moment, take a much-needed timeout from team management.

MARK PRIOR'S HEALTH has been so scrutinized this season, it's as if a small portion of the Fantasy community has added the "M.D." to their names. Prior's critics claimed all last offseason that his arm would suffer as a result of his heavy 2003 workload, a whopping 258 2/3 innings combined between spring training, the regular season and postseason. He led all Cubs pitchers in that department, despite being just 22 years old on opening day 2003.

Prior did in fact succumb to an injury this spring, but it was his Achilles', not his arm, that gave him trouble. He missed the first two months of the season amidst constant rumors that he had elbow trouble -- the Newark Star-Ledger, in fact, reported in early April that he might need Tommy John surgery -- and never looked like his old self after returning on June 4.

While Prior's disappointing statistics might concern Fantasy owners looking toward 2005, there is merit to talk that his injury woes have actually preserved the health of his arm for next year. His decline in the ratio categories from 2003-04 -- 2.43-4.59 in ERA, 1.104-1.471 in WHIP, 7.79-9.26 in hits per nine innings and 2.13-3.97 in walks per nine -- are all indicators that he simply hasn't yet regained the zip on his pitches, but that will come back eventually. His strikeouts-per-nine ratio is nearly identical during that span (10.43-10.41), and it's not like the 114 2/3 innings he has thrown between the minors and majors is an abusive total.

Given a winter to rest, Prior could come back with a vengeance in 2005. All us Fantasy owners ask of Dusty Baker is one thing: Please play it safe and end Prior's streak of seven straight starts throwing 100-plus pitches, five of which topped 110. The last thing we want is Prior entering the winter with several 129-pitch outings (as he did Monday) to close out the regular season and postseason.

THE PAST SEVERAL SEASONS, it didn't seem like any of the new ballparks were taking radical effects on statistics. Comerica Park and SBC Park leaned somewhat toward pitchers, while Miller Park and the Great American Ballpark seemed slightly hitter-friendly, but the differences were for the most part negligible. This year, however, it's shocking to see the impact the new Petco Park in San Diego and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia have had on the numbers, particularly in home runs.

Through games of Sept. 21, Petco Park ranks as the most difficult ballpark in which to hit a home run. The Padres and their opponents have combined for a major-league low 126 homers, and only Mark Loretta (11), Phil Nevin (11), Brian Giles (10) and Ramon Hernandez (8) have gone yard more than three times there. By comparison, seven players have at least four home runs and all players have combined for 152 at SBC Park, previously considered by everyone not named Barry Bonds the toughest park in which to go deep.

And it's not like Petco's spacious alleys are helping increase extra-base hit totals. Only 1,970 total bases have been registered there by the Padres and their opponents, the lowest amount of any full-time park. Take the home runs out, and the total drops to 1,466 total bases, which ranks third lowest behind Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field (1,384) and Montreal's two "home" parks (1,410). Is it any wonder why Jake Peavy is about to become the Padres' first ERA champion since Randy Jones in 1975, while Nevin has become one of Petco's biggest critics?

Nevin probably wouldn't be complaining if he were wearing Phillies pinstripes. Balls have been flying out of new Citizens Bank Park at an alarming rate, and the cozy outfield dimensions have become so controversial, Phillies players actually performed a midseason on-field measurement to try to prove that the left-center field wall was 19 feet closer to home plate than advertised. Citizens Bank has provided fans with 214 longball souvenirs this season, a total exceeded by only Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field and more than storied home-run haven Coors Field (211).

It's possible these two teams could consider moving the outfield fences between seasons, but it's quite clear now that when making our 2005 projections, we should adjust for rather hitter-friendly conditions in Citizens Bank, and pitcher-friendly effects at Petco. That means bumping down the values of Padres sluggers Giles and Nevin and Phillies starters Vicente Padilla and Brett Myers slightly, while giving a boost to Padres starters Peavy and Adam Eaton and Phillies sluggers Bobby Abreu and Jim Thome.

TRADITIONALISTS MIGHT DISAGREE, but I'm in the same boat as League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) commissioner and founder John Hunt, who suggested last week that AL- and NL-only leagues do away with the rule that says you lose a player when he's traded out of the league. Let Carlos Beltran, who could soon become baseball's fourth member of the 40/40 club (40 home runs, 40 stolen bases) despite having played half his season in either league, serve as your precedent to do away with this antiquated rule.

In just the past decade alone, baseball has instituted many new gimmicks that many "traditionalists" might have hated: Six divisions, the wild card, the Division Series, interleague play and linking home-field advantage in the World Series to the All-Star Game winner. Isn't it time to update our game to reflect the ever-changing sport? Heck, baseball even did away with league presidents not too long ago, instead governing the AL and NL by a unified ruling body. Fantasy Baseball was designed to reflect the management skills in the real game, so it's only natural that we should in turn be more open to mixing between the leagues.

One final point: Fantasy Baseball was clearly intended to reflect determining appropriate player value at any given time, but when a player enters the year "on the trade market," it obviously has an underlying effect on his Draft Day price tag. It was every bit as evident that Beltran had 40/40 potential in the spring as it was he might be traded, and it just doesn't set right when your league's rules could make the latter the more pertinent factor.

For instance, when filling out my preseason predictions, I picked Beltran as my AL MVP. (OK, start laughing, but his cumulative numbers wouldn't be far off had he spent the year on one contending team.) I was one of the unfortunate few who believed in the Royals. Had I been right on that forecast, Beltran had gone 50/50 -- as was his pace early in the year -- and the Royals dominated the Central, would it have been right had I gotten him as late as the second or third round in an AL-only league? Bottom line: Beltran is and should have been a clear-cut first rounder, no antiquated rules around to cast any doubt.

TOMMY JOHN SURGERY still lurks to frustrate Fantasy owners, but at least this year it was the pitchers who returned from the operation who were the bigger stories than the ones who were lost to it. Florida's A.J. Burnett and the N.Y. Yankees' Jon Lieber can't be called Fantasy aces by any means based on their current statistics, but at least they each showed signs during the season's second half that they're getting closer to their old form.

On a side note, Burnett's owners are probably awash with panic right now about his elbow soreness, and those concerns are indeed valid. But before you write him off for 2005, keep in mind that the winter's rest could easily cure what ails him, and his numbers the past few weeks show a great deal of promise. Burnett was 5-1 with a 2.34 ERA and 0.969 WHIP in his past six starts, and his 2.90 walks-per-nine innings and 8.31 strikeouts-per-nine ratios during that span are vastly improved upon the 4.46 and 7.58 career rates he had before the surgery. If he is healthy next spring, he could explode for Cy Young-like totals next season.

The following 10 players, who all had Tommy John surgery this calendar year, are the most interesting to track in Fantasy leagues: Miguel Asencio (March 29), Jorge De Paula (April 22), Fernando Rodney (April 29), Dustin McGowan (May 13), Dan Wright (June 1), Jason Stanford (July 29), Luis Gonzalez (Aug. 2) -- the Arizona slugger, not the Colorado utilityman -- Rafael Soriano (Aug. 17), Clint Everts (first week of September) and Sean Burnett (Sept. 21).

Gonzalez is the only player with a reasonable chance of making a big Fantasy impact in 2005, as the other nine players, all pitchers, will probably need as much as 12-18 months to regain their full levels of effectiveness. Keep an eye on their rehab programs as next season approaches, however, since they could grace the sleepers list for 2006.

On the list of last year's players who had Tommy John surgery, the following four will be intriguing sleepers in the spring, barring any setbacks: Rick Ankiel, who has looked reborn in three relief appearances so far; Ryan Dempster, who has been solid in relief for the Cubs; Jesse Foppert, a top prospect at the time of his injury; and Runelvys Hernandez, who started the 2003 season 4-0 before getting hurt.

You can e-mail your Fantasy Baseball thoughts and questions to Tristan H. Cockcroft at bleacher@commissioner.com. Be sure to put Attn: Tristan in the subject field, and include your full name and hometown. Please be aware, due to the large volume of submissions received, we cannot guarantee answers to all questions.