Week 7 of the Fantasy Baseball season is here and with it, as always, it brings a crop of two-start pitching options. I like to think of a given week’s slate of two-start pitchers in the sort of way one might view a “Soup of the Day” special. Part of the enticement is knowing that it could be anything – a near limitless set of possibilities. Maybe this week is a French Onion, a Lobster Bisque, perchance a stew of some sort? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Week 7 shapes up like that dented can of Campbell’s in the back of your pantry with the questionable expiration date. Streaming next week won’t be for the faint of heart, but that’s why I’m here. So grab a spoon and plug your nose – we’re diving in.
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Don’t Think Twice
Patrick Corbin (5/14 vs. MIL, 5/20 @NYM)
Rick Porcello (5/14 vs. OAK, 5/19 vs. BAL)
Carlos Carrasco (5/14 @DET, 5/20 @HOU)
Lance McCullers (5/14 @LAA, 5/20 vs. CLE)
Alex Wood (5/15 @MIA, 5/20 @WAS)
Widely-Owned Options
Jose Quintana (5/15 @ATL, 5/20 @CIN)
The good: Quintana has allowed just a single earned run across his last 17 innings. The bad: Next week he gets the pleasure of facing the Braves, who possess baseball’s best wRC+ against LHPs (121), and the Reds at Great American, ESPN Park Factors far and away best home run environment so far in 2018. It’s clearly not ideal, but you’re not going to sit him.
Sean Manaea (5/14 @BOS, 5/19 @TOR)
Manaea’s come back to Earth a bit in his past two starts, surrendering as many hits (14) as he had across his prior four outings. Still, his BABIP remains an American League-low .186 – meaning there’s more regression coming, especially considering Manaea has proven to be an average strikeout pitcher at best. However, the Red Sox and Jays currently sit with the AL’s lowest and second-lowest wOBA against left-handed pitching, so, its possible normalization will wait till Week 8 to kick in.
Julio Teheran (5/14 @CHC, 5/19 vs. MIA)
Interesting break here for Teheran. The Braves had a game at Wrigley rained out on April 15th and they agreed upon May 14th as a makeup date. Normal. What’s odd is after this game, Atlanta will head back to Cobb County for a homestand that begins with those very same Cubs. Anyway, Teheran, historically, has hated pitching at the LHB-friendly SunTrust Park. He’s got a 5.57 ERA in 114.2 career innings there. Now, because of a scheduling quirk, he’ll only have to face Miami in a stadium that’s caused him, and owners, nightmares.
Joey Lucchesi (5/14 vs. COL, 5/20 @PIT)
The matchups aren’t perfect, as both the Pirates and Rockies rank inside the Top-10 in team wOBA against left-handed pitching, but, at the same time, Lucchesi is one of only 14 qualified pitchers with an ERA under 3.00 and a K/9 above 9.00. Though, a .167 BABIP with RISP is definitely helping him maintain an 82.2% strand rate. It’s worrisome, but not enough to bench him in Week 7.
Trevor Williams (5/15 vs. CWS, 5/20 vs. SD)
There’s almost a full run-and-a-half separation between Williams’ 3.13 ERA and his 4.62 FIP. Much of this is BABIP related, yet some is also due to the overwhelming amount of contact the right-hander allows. Normally, I’d have to be in a pretty tight spot to recommend one Williams start, let alone two. However, San Diego entered Thursday leading MLB in strikeout rate (27.0%) as Chicago was leading it in chase rate (33.5%). Strikeouts are a distinct possibility for the normally mundane Williams.
Mike Foltynewicz (5/15 vs. CHC, 5/20 vs. MIA)
He’s not exactly efficient, having only recorded six innings in two of his eight starts this season, but Foltynewicz has also allowed two or fewer runs in all but one of those outings. Plus, it’s not like he’s inefficient without purpose – the right-hander is averaging a robust 10.07 strikeouts per nine. I’ll take that tradeoff.
Miles Mikolas (5/15 @MIN, 5/20 vs. PHI)
The strikeouts have yet to appear, despite Mikolas residing among the league-leaders in chase rate, but there’s still more than enough to like about the new Cardinal. Mikolas has proven to be a groundball machine, registering a 53.5% rate through seven starts. He’s also provided volume. The 29-year-old has worked into the seventh inning in five straight starts, surrendering only five earned runs over that span. Anyone yet to buy-in should do so.
In the Danger Zone
Jake Odorizzi (5/14 vs. SEA, 5/20 vs. MIL)
I think Odorizzi has appeared in this section every week he’s drawn two-starts, so why alter tradition? It’s not as if anything about Odorizzi is necessitating a change of heart. The 28-year-old, through eight starts, has the league’s seventh-highest FIP at 5.55. Now, to be fair to all involved, FIP isn’t always the fairest metric when dealing with batted ball outliers – a designation that Odorizzi would most assuredly qualify for with his 53.9% fly ball rate, but I’m inclined to believe it’s a fair representation in this circumstance. Of the 81 pitchers to throw 180-plus innings since the beginning of 2017, Odorizzi ranks dead-last in FIP (5.45) and dead-last in home run suppression per nine (1.89). As always, to the over 50% of people who roster him on Yahoo!, use Odorizzi at your own risk.
Reynaldo Lopez (5/15 @PIT, 5/20 vs. TEX)
Here’s the question I would ask anyone with faith that Lopez’s fantastic start (by surface numbers) will continue: Has it really even benefitted you at all, anyway? Lopez, who currently maintains the eighth-best ERA in the American League at 2.44, has barely been a Top-300 player through six weeks because he’s basically a one-category player. With a walk rate of 10.4%, when an insane .202 BABIP normalizes, he most certainly won’t be a help to your WHIP. He’s struck out two or fewer opponents in three of his seven outings and, on a bad White Sox team, even with allowing only 12 earned runs, he’s won zero games. That’s not suddenly going to change. No pitcher in baseball comes close to having as large a negative differentiation between their ERA and FIP, meaning no one has been nearly as lucky as Lopez in 2018. I don’t want to be around when the luck runs out.
Francisco Liriano (5/15 vs. CLE, 5/20 @SEA)
Liriano has long been a contentious name in fantasy circles, yet, at the very least, the optimist’s point of view was easy to see: Liriano, armed with one of baseball’s lowest contact rates and highest groundball rates, had legitimate upside. I’m not sure there’s such a case to be made with the 2018 incarnation. The veteran southpaw has a career-worst 18.1% strikeout rate through seven starts but is still offering free passes left and right. That’s generally a bad combination. So is aging and the loss of fastball velocity. Now, as with any pitcher who is carrying a full run difference in their ERA and FIP, Liriano has obviously gotten lucky in many ways this season, but one piece of fortune that FIP and SIERA don’t take into account is scheduling. Liriano has faced the worst-of-the-worst so far this year. He’s drawn the Royals three times, the Orioles twice, the injury-riddled Rangers, and an Indians squad that got off to one of the coldest offensive starts in recent memory. Aside from the latter, all these teams rank in the lower third in the league in wRC+. As the matchups start to turn, I’d advise leaving Liriano on the bench.
Streamers Under 50%
Jake Faria (5/15 @KC, 5/20 @LAA)
Eduardo Rodriguez (5/15 vs. OAK, 5/20 vs. BAL)
Junior Guerra (5/14 @ARI, 5/19 @MIN)
Nick Pivetta (5/15 @BAL, 5/20 @STL)
We often talk about clustering in the sense of pitchers experiencing bad batted ball luck or poor sequencing in a single inning, however, a cluster of bad matchups can also be vital to a pitcher’s reputation. Faria has a pretty uninspiring 4.15 ERA in 2018. Yet, if you take away his first two outings of the season, back-to-back games with Boston – one of two teams currently with over 200 runs scored and baseball’s best wOBA (.341) entering Thursday’s action – all of a sudden, it’s not so bad. In Faria’s 29 innings since surrendering eight earned runs to the Red Sox on April 7th, he’s pitched to a 2.17 ERA with a 3.41 FIP and 25.9% strikeout rate. All of those figures are things you rarely come across on the waiver wire – even in 10-man formats. Plus, specific to his start against the Royals, a team that leans heavily on the power contributions of LHBs Mike Moustakas and Lucas Duda, Faria has always been amazing at neutralizing lefties. For his career, left-handers have managed just a .171 average off the sophomore, his split-change doing most of the damage. In a strong crop of streaming options in shallow leagues, Faria stands out in Week 7.
Streamers Under 25%
Tyler Anderson (5/14 @SD, 5/20 @SF)
Ty Blach (5/15 vs. CIN, 5/20 vs. COL)
Tyler Mahle (5/15 @SF, 5/20 vs. CHC)
Andrew Heaney (5/14 vs. HOU, 5/19 vs. TB)
Here’s where things get ugly. Ty Blach is like a two-start white flag. You’re just giving up by recommending him. Will he probably string together a pair of nice starts at AT&T Park? Sure. Will he strike out more than five guys over those two outings? That’s up for debate. Anderson, on the other hand, is the only widely-available streaming option that I truly enjoy and endorse next week. Obviously, there’s the simple principle of using a Colorado pitcher in a week he doesn’t have to pitch at Coors Field, but it’s more than that. Anderson, when healthy, has sneaky strikeout upside. This season it’s actually not so sneaky as the lefty has retired 40 in 38.1 innings on strikes. The key pitch is Anderson’s change-up. He’s used it 22.3% of the time in 2018 and it’s garnered a hefty 21.4% swing-and-miss rate. In fact, Anderson’s overall swinging strike rate of 13.6% currently has him tied with Masahiro Tanaka for the 13th-best mark in baseball. With the Padres distaste for contact, Anderson could be looking at double-digit strikeouts in Week 7 before he even takes the hill against the Giants.
Not Unless You’re Desperate
Chris Stratton
Mike Minor
Jhoulys Chacin
Mike Leake
Daniel Mengden
Jaime Garcia
Mike Fiers
Sal Romano
Eric Skoglund
Wei-Yin Chen
Wade LeBlanc
Please Stop Playing Fantasy Baseball
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Garion Thorne is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Garion, check out his archive and follow him @GarionThorne.
