Today's Fantasy Rx.

We need to established a standard criteria to use in evaluating this year's fantasy baseball magazines. I know I always respond better to number rating rather than just extended written commentary, so I'm going to set forth my standards when judging these periodicals.

I'll begin the actual evaluation tomorrow with The Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Owners Manual, and I'll try finish these as fast as possible so you know which one(s) to purchase.

Rotohelp Criteria for Evaluating Spring Fantasy Baseball Magazines

We're going to use a straight hundred point scale for simplicity, with 100 for absolutely perfect magazines (like the ones we'll eventually publish), and 0 for Maxim's Guide to Baseball, or at least they'll likely receive a zero whenever they publish.

10 points for Presentation. I want a nice glossy magazine with quality analysis that I can apply to my individual league. I'll settle for a nice glossy magazine that doesn't leave ink on my hands. More spring magazines every year switch to an easier-to-read format, and we're far more likely to buy these than standard newsprint compilations. Of course, they can't have either too many ads or glossy pictures detracting from their analysis. Any magazine that spends full pages on nothing but pictures of athletes either lacks analysis or owes a debt to that photographer.

10 points for Table of Contents and included content. I want to be able to quickly access specific information in these books, and at least printed tabs on the edges of each page give me an idea of where to flip. Content in this context defines what a magazine contains.

Specific sections that I need to see when only purchasing a single publication include: Dollar ranking tables with at least 750 players (25-man rosters * 30 teams), at least a few dozen ranked minor league players, an extended list of "top players", player profiles on at least those same 750 players, and those little blurbs on players likely to improve, slip, wind up in Dr. Jobe's office, etc.

10 points for describing the league for their main rankings. Many publications in the past just give you a dollar ranking with no labeled context. A $25 Scott Rolen doesn't help me at all if I don't know if its for 4x4, 5x5, or a single OPS ranking of all Phillies, and then I need to know the number of teams in the league, etc. Avoid any publication that lacks this information.

50 points for specific player analysis. We'll evaluate all the commentary on five position players and five pitchers to determine the quality of the analysis. I admit that this ranking in specific is entirely subjective, but based on our roto knowledge, we have a good idea as to the prospects of most players. We find it perfectly fair to evaluate the usefulness of these magazines based on specific players as many people will only buy one book each spring and then even use that exclusively for that draft. You need to know which book to buy (even if everyone reading this will likely wisely compile their information from a significant number of sources.

5 points for editing. With the number of people currently unemployed, we find it impossible to believe that these publishers couldn't pay a couple of dollars to have a few people read each magazine from cover to cover to find all the little typos and potential grammatical errors that sully otherwise fine publications. I probably should give this a full 10 points, but the player analysis is much more important.

10 points for the accompanying website. I realize that none of these books are overly timely, which is why all these magazines must provide follow-up commentary on the web. All of these publications have spent the last month or two in the publishing process, negating their timeliness; at least some on-line analysis should be required to receive your money.

5 points for creativity and innovation. Are they introducing a new method of analyzing players? Do they even have a new defensive metric that they want to tout? New and potentially interesting ideas are necessary for the growth of the industry, and while we don't believe they add that much because of the lack of historical success, we're always looking for new ways of approaching this game.

Hopefully these criteria will give you a better understanding of these publications and my reviews. I'm going to diverge with some other commentary, mostly about the Olympic, before continuing with the evaluations tomorrow.

I know most of you reading this are quite eager for Pitchers and Catchers to report later this week, but along with at least some of you, we're paying as much attention to MLB as possible while keeping one eye fixed on Salt Lake City. Of course, the eye on Florida and Arizona drifts up to Washington for the Senate hearings today, but I'm looking forward to commenting on the fantasy implications of developing roster moves and decision as Spring Training unfolds. Until the weekend arrives, I'll turn my attention briefly to the other major sports' story of the moment.

An Olympic medal is more impressive to me than almost any championship because of the relative rarity: you only can win one every four years. Okay, so you could win one every two years by competing in Summer and Winter sports, but most people would be extremely lucky and grateful to even compete in one Games.

Our favorite Winter Olympics' sport, manliness be damned, is, of course, figure skating. The pairs competition turned into an absolute travesty as the French judge joined the Eastern bloc (Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and China) to gift wrap the gold medal to the Russian team of Boris and Natasha.

We judge figure skating by our interest in each program. If both the music and skater are slow and boring, we don't believe they'll deserve to medal except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier certainly deserved the gold medal due their considerably more artistic presentation in both the short and free skates. Their only real "mistake" was a fall after their short program had already ended, and all that accomplished was to add to expressed joy of their performance.

Even the Chinese bronze medalists deserved a higher ranking than the Russians due to almost landing a quad throw, which would have been the first successful quad throw during a performance if she hadn't missed her toe pick on the landing. However, they still skated with more energy and joie de vivre than any Russian pair this year.

Figure skating, as an internationally competitive event, simply must overhaul their sport to allow dramatic and invigorating programs instead of the existing preference for solely artistically smooth performances.

We posted our fourth consecutive weekly Good Chicago Sports today, and as promised, we included an update on every local Olympian. With Spring Training starting in just a few days, we suspect we'll be able to hold to that weekly schedule for at least most of the regular season, especially since we'll want to complain about Baylor's decisions more than only once a week.

American Airlines announced over the weekend that they were stopping AT&T Wireless seatback phone service on March 31st for 653 planes. While they're keeping the phones available on international flights, I guess this makes sense domestically. After all, I can't think of any reason that someone would ever need to call out from the plane, say to a colleague, family member, or maybe just to greet a 911 operator.

Happy Really Small Burnt Plant Pieces Wednesday.

Today's Fantasy Rx: We can't tell if the Senate hearings will air today or not at the moment, but if the do, watch and/or listen to the Senate hearings today regarding the elimination of MLB's anti-trust exemption.