Today's Fantasy Rx

Selecting our starting pitching first as always, our main tool of analysis is the percentage of dominant starts for a pitcher. We generally want to see a relatively solid offense, and we don't want pitchers with many disastrous starts this year.

The stats after each pitcher's name represent his percentage of dominant(QA of 4 or 5), dull(QA of 3), or disastrous(QA of 2, 1, or 0) starts.

Healthy pitchers with a DOM percentage of .6 or above include Roger Clemens(71/11/16), Brandon Webb(71/29/00), Roy Halladay(71/19/10), Tim Hudson(70/15/15), Odalis Perez(69/15/15), Jason Schmidt(67/17/17), Roy Oswalt(64/21/14), Esteban Loaiza(63/21/16), Mark Prior(63/11/26), Dontrelle Willis(62/31/08), Gil Meche(62/15/23), Matt Kinney(62/15/23), Matt Morris(60/27/13), and Javier Vazquez(60/13/27).

Unhealthy pitchers with similar percentages include Kevin Brown(78/22/00) and Randy Johnson(75/00/25), however we're not willing to roster either pitcher at this time.

Of the first group, Clemens, Webb, Halladay, Hudson, Schmidt, Oswalt, and Loaiza seem like obvious choices due to their combination of skill and team support. Pedro Martinez(56/19/25) and Mike Mussina(56/33/11) also seem like very strong choices. While Prior and Willis are tempting, Curt Schilling simply possesses too much upside to leave off our squad.

For relievers, Gagne is a necessity, and as we're pleased with Foulke, Worrell, and MacDougal in Fantasy and Budget Baseball, we're going to keep our bullpen the same here, too. We strongly considered taking Smoltz, but we just couldn't justify allocating that much salary to a closer on a weekly basis at this time.

Unfortunately few of our offensive choices on our full-season teams appear optimal picks. Only Varitek at catcher, Delgado and Thomas at 1B, Nomar and Cabrera at SS, and Pujols, Manny, Preston Wilson, Larry Walker, Vernon Wells, and Matsui in the outfield appear good enough to retain on this team.

At catcher, we're adding Javy Lopez and Lieberthal to Varitek since they offer a lot more immediate upside than Hall. For first base, we'll avoid earlier errors by rostering Aubrey Huff and Erubiel Durazo. We like Bret Boone better than Soriano at second base, although either is a good choice; D'Angelo Jimenez, who looks great in Cincinnati, and Marcus Giles replace Hudson and Ellis for this squad.

On the left side of the infield, Furcal seems the only reasonably cost-efficient choice to keep as a back-up for Nomar or Cabrera. However third base offers a multitude of options, and Blalock, Ensberg, and Teixeira all suggest significant upside for minimum price; we also will take Mike Lowell since he's as cost-efficient as players at any other position.

We found our most difficult choices in the outfield as we simply don't trust many otherwise solid picks like Juan Pierre and Geoff Jenkins, which is why we retained Pujols, Ramirez, Wilson, Walker, Wells, and Matsui on this team. Adding Griffey was an easy decision given his recent play, and Milton Bradley's as productive a player for his price as Blalock. While we only kept Pujols and Larry Walker after significant deliberation, rostering Gary Sheffield instead of Lance Berkman was one of our first moves, and we believe he should continue producing excellent numbers.

We considered a few other players at most positions, but either we were concerned about their skill consistency or we had questions about the overall state of their team's offense.

Mid-Season Fantasy Baseball

SP(6)
Curt Schilling: Thu:@SD(J.Peavy?)
Mike Mussina: Sun:CLE(J.Westbrook)
Pedro Martinez: Sun:TOR(J.Wasdin)
Tim Hudson: Thu:@MIN(R.Reed)
Roy Oswalt: Fri:@CIN(R.Dempster)
Roger Clemens: Fri:CLE(J.Davis)
Roy Halladay: Thu:@BOS(D.Lowe)
Jason Schmidt: Fri:COL(D.Oliver)
Esteban Loaiza: Sun:DET(W.Ledezma)
Brandon Webb: Sat:@SD(A.Eaton?)

Based on the quality of the opposition offenses, Schilling, Mussina, Clemens, Loaiza, and Webb are easy calls. We'd like to run as strong an offense as possible, so we'll deploy Schmidt to complete our staff.

While we've decided to leave around 500 in cap room on the table for the first week, we like our flexible bench and believe we can exploit several promising match-ups in future weeks. For now, we'll bench Lieberthal, Durazo, M.Giles, Lowell, Furcal, Pujols, Preston Wilson, and Larry Walker.

Umpire in Brooklyn
Week 16b: July 17-July 20

C	Javier Lopez		1480
C	Jason Varitek		1400
1B	Frank Thomas		2030
1B	Aubrey Huff		1420
2B	Bret Boone		2640
2B	D'Angelo Jimenez	1400
3B	Hank Blalock		1100
3B	Morgan Ensberg		1000
SS	Nomar Garciaparra	2300 
SS	Orlando Cabrera		1820
OF	Manny Ramirez		2690
OF	Gary Sheffield		2600
OF	Ken Griffey		1900
OF	Vernon Wells		1780
OF	Hideki Matsui		1500
OF	Milton Bradley		1170
DH	Carlos Delgado		2850
DH	Mark Teixeira		1000

SP	Curt Schilling		3600
SP	Mike Mussina		2920
SP	Roger Clemens		2720
SP	Jason Schmidt		1990
SP	Esteban Loaiza		1900
SP	Brandon Webb		1500
RP	Eric Gagne		2560
RP	Keith Foulke		2330
RP	Mike MacDougal		1500
RP	Tim Worrell		1370

Total Salary for Week 16: 	54470

Today's Fantasy Rx: While we're pleased with most of the above players, a few look like must-owns for every team: Huff, Bret Boone(or Soriano), Blalock, Nomar, Vernon Wells, Preston Wilson, Eric Gagne, Pedro Martinez, and Roy Halladay. Halladay, Gagne, and Nomar in particular should anchor every team during the second half.