Today's Fantasy Rx

While I've forgotten to mention this for the last two days, in our Good Chicago Sports article this week, we presented a comprehensive look at the Cubs' Spring Training. The preview included a brief commentary on every player in camp with the team, and we plan on writing a similar section on the White Sox next week. For the Sox this week, we compared their Top 10 prospects according to their front office to the Baseball America Top 20 prospects, another topic that we hope to cover for the Cubs next week. So if anyone's interested in a more detailed look at the two Chicago baseball teams, we encourage you to check out Chicago Sports every Wednesday.

Now Mike Lamb has no relation to the rest of this article other than as a player that you can own in the MLB.com fantasy games. Actually, since Lamb currently owns the Texas 3B job, the traditional saying only means that someone else, perhaps Brandon Lyon in some weird alternate universe, will supplant him by Opening Day.

With regards to MLB.com's fantasy options, please remember that these are brought to you by the same people who cancelled one World Series, pushed another one into November, and insisted on the reality of an impossible contraction scheme for months. They also have barely started collective bargaining when the contract expired last year, and if they'd trusted Paul Beeston, their original negotiator, a deal would have been completed to be announced with fanfare at last year's All-Star game.

Therefore no one should be surprised that the only registration available for any of MLB.com's four fantasy options is reads "Get a jump on the competition by registering today. We'll keep you posted as each and every new product is launched. My birthday is... My e-mail is... Submit." Apparently, even though practically all their dozens of competitors have already begun drafting, some like CDM offering player choices back in January, the good folks at MLB.com believe that March allows you to "get a jump on the competition".

The first option is a standard commissioner service, MLB Fantasy GM, for $39.95/league. While they don't appear to include the variety or depth of options as a more established site like TQStats or even commissioner.com, they're also sixty dollars cheaper, a significant discount for many leagues.

MLB.com Fantasy Baseball 2002, $19.95/team, supposedly will be available on-line soon, although I find this extremely late in the year to still not have your main game available to purchase.

The main feature of both these services, other than their relatively inexpensive price compared to many other games, is the ability to look at video clips of your players every day. They're also promising real-time updating of player statistics and league standings.

Now for those of us with DSL or some other relatively fast internet option, I admit that there's some fascination in seeing exactly what our players looked like every day. But for those of us still occasionally stuck with AOhelL on a slow modem, video clips only clog bandwidth that I'd rather allocate to reading player news.

Other features of MLBFB include "Daily minor league stats", "Daily transactions", and "4x4 and 5x5, AL/NL/Mixed leagues", although it's difficult to understand exactly what they're offering as they don't have a complete set of rules posted.

Their third offering, available for free, is MLB.com Fantasy Challenge. This game appears to be a typical salary cap-based offering in a similar style to the CDM games. While they say "Your team will score points in 16 different statistical categories, and even lose points for errors and blown saves", they of course don't bother actually listing how they're compiling the points at this time. Perhaps you'll even get extra credit for strikeouts due to the high strike.

You can supposedly use unlimited transactions to "try to outmanage the entire fantasy nation on the road to victory". As with practically every product offered by Major League Baseball, they refuse to release the relevant information until a time past when everyone wants or cares about it.

Finally, MLB.com offers Beat the Streak, a contest with reportedly very simple rules. As they claim that this is their most popular fantasy game from 2001, I'm even more surprised that their other offerings are still not available.

The goal of Beat the Streak is to choose one hitter every night to get a hit, with the ultimate goal to "put together the longest hitting streak while making a run at Joe DiMaggio's legendary 56-game mark." No one even beat the streaks of Wee Willie Keeler, Pete Rose, or even Benito Santiago last season as "only two fans came within 25 games of matching the Yankee Clipper's unbreakable record".

As this game is also free, I can see the allure for both casual and diehard fans, although since not a single one of these sites lists prizes, I really can't determine if any of these games are worth your time to participate.

While I admit that I could have waited to review these games until after they had posted the rules and prizes, I truly I doubt they could change my mind. Please try to stay with an established brand of fantasy. Whether that means joining a long-time league or just going to a recognizable brand name like ESPN even if the quality of the prizes has fallen, at least you know approximately what to expect.

Until MLB.com decides to offer fantasy options on the same time schedule as the rest of the fantasy world, there's likely no logical reason for any of our readers to patronize their offerings. These are the same folks helping to sponsor an obnoxiously stupid fantasy "conference" in Lost Wages when there are Spring Training games to see less than 300 miles away.

Hopefully I'll have some better news to report with the offerings from STATS, Inc. tomorrow. Unfortunately for these mass media sites, my conclusion so far is that if you want to participate in any type of traditional roto league, head to one of the matchmaker services listed under section 12 at Fantasybaseballcentral.com to find a league in your area. There are also thousands of private on-line league looking for owners if you just want to draft at your computer. We've joined some fantastic leagues using these services, so we're quite comfortable strongly recommending them to our readers.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Today is obviously not Leap Day, but in a more technologically-advanced world, we might have had a party-filled six hours early this "morning".

In lieu of that potentially wonderful experience, I'm going to recommend a time-honored Leap Day philosophy that I've suggested for the better part of a decade:

Take a leap. Do something you wouldn't normally attempt. Join a non-traditional fantasy league. You could even complain about this Rx, although I'm not encouraging anyone to take a "flying leap" in any way, shape, or form.

Coinciding with the approximate beginning of the season's baseball games, Leap Day, whether that should occur on February 29th or March 1st, is a great opportunity to try something different. You could even just follow up on that failed New Year's resolution for one day. It would just be really neat if everybody tried something new today.

Please don't all try the same new thing at the same time though, especially if that involves sending a forwarded Rx to your friends; I don't want to be responsible for crashing the internet.