Today's Fantasy Rx

While the former Fantasy Baseball Review NL Challenge and current CREATiVESPORTS NL Challenge may change names yet again next year, all the fundamentals of the league remain the same as we enter our fourth season of competition. CSNLC remains one of the few inter-site keeper leagues in existence, not to mention the only one that features an auction and head-to-head scoring with points like fantasy football.

The points' breakdown for the league is as follows. For batters, .32 for every Total Base, .5 for SB, .25 for every Run Produced (RBI+R-HR), .15 for each walk, -.1 for every Strikeout, and -.12 for every at-bat. For pitchers, 1 point for every save, .63 for every IP, .5 for every Win and Shutout, .32 for every Hold, .1 for each K, -.24 for each baserunner, and -.32 for every Earned Run. Whichever team has more points in each head-to-head contest wins the week.

In the inaugural 2002 season, we finished with the second-best regular season record of the 8 teams in the league at 15-9, but we lost in the first round of the playoffs. The 2003 campaign saw us improve to 16-7, again winning our division, which earned us the #2 seed and a first-round bye in the playoffs. While we won the second-round match-up by a comfortable margin, league founder Dave Gawron won the league for the second straight year, trouncing us in the two-week final.

We regressed last summer, wasting another #2 seed as we lost our second-round match-up by less than five points, so this year even just winning one playoff series will let us consider the season successful.

Internet Challenge

SP(6)
Randy Johnson: Sat:BAL(B.Chen)
Johan Santana: Sun:CHW(M.Buehrle)
Jason Schmidt: Sun:COL(J.Kennedy)
Pedro Martinez: Sun:@ATL(J.Smoltz)
Roy Oswalt: Sun:CIN(E.Milton)
Roger Clemens: Fri:CIN(Ra.Ortiz)
Ben Sheets: Sat:@CHC(C.Zambrano)
Mark Mulder: Fri:PHI(C.Lidle)
Rich Harden: Sun:@TB(D.Brazelton)
Oliver Perez: Sat:@SD(Wo.Williams)
Josh Beckett: Sun:WAS(L.Hernandez)

No starts: Peavy and Burnett.

Dominant opening starts make Randy and Santana easy calls; we'll pass on Pedro until the Mets win a game. Schmidt owns a great home start, Beckett at least appears low-risk, and with San Diego's offense looking horrible, we'll opt for Perez. Lastly, Clemens looks far more intriguing right now than Mulder or Oswalt, so he'll complete our rotation.

Holliday joins Helton on the bench as Morneau enters our lineup, however the Byzantine CDM eligibility rules prevent us from activating Tadahito Iguchi until Sunday, so Marcus Giles remains stranded in our lineup. With Jose Reyes struggling and facing Johnny Estrada behind the plate, Barmes will remain deployed even with Colorado heading to San Francisco, providing us with sufficient cap room to keep Pujols deployed over Edmonds while absorbing the Giles cap hit.

Rotohelp.com(12th lg; 459th overall)
Week 1b: April 8-April 10

C	Victor Martinez		860
C	John Buck		390
1B	Mark Teixeira		1310
1B	Travis Hafner		810
2B	Brian Roberts		960
2B	Marcus Giles		950
3B	Melvin Mora		1270
3B	Troy Glaus		830
SS	Nomar Garciaparra	1130
SS	Clint Barmes		400
OF	Carl Crawford		1560
OF	Adam Dunn		1110
OF	Miguel Cabrera		1110
OF	Scott Podsednik		1090
OF	Kevin Mench		580
OF	Jeremy Reed		400
UT	Albert Pujols		1930
UT	Justin Morneau	680

SP	Randy Johnson		1980
SP	Johan Santana		1710
SP	Jason Schmidt		1510 
SP	Roger Clemens		1280
SP	Oliver Perez		880
SP	Josh Beckett		820
RP	Francisco Rodriguez	1250
RP	Octavio Dotel		1240
RP	B.J. Ryan		950
RP	Guillermo Mota		950

Total Salary for Week 1b 	29940

Today's Fantasy Rx: While we generally advise using reserve, Ultra, and minor league draft picks on players ready to contribute, you shouldn't ignore the potential for using top prospects as trade bait. Selecting Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Quentin here over starting pitchers limits our immediate options, but we expect the youngsters either to keep us competitive for the next couple years or enable us to acquire additional help this summer.