Greetings, friends, and welcome to Week 12 of the Fantasy Baseball Quick Grades series. The Atlanta Braves are scheduled to play eight games, while the New York Mets are on the books for eight games in six days thanks to TWO doubleheaders. The Chicago White Sox, Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, and Los Angeles Angels all play just five games. Let’s take a look at this week’s Quick Grades to see how we should adjust our lineups.

I went over how the grades for this series are calculated in Week 1, and I’ll link to that breakdown every week rather than filling this space with a lengthy explanation every time. If you’re interested in knowing my process or just want to talk baseball, feel free to reach out on Twitter @mikeMaher. I reply to Tweets, and my DMs are open. Here’s a link to the Week 1 piece with the full Quick Grades breakdown:

Week 1 Quick Grades (2021 Fantasy Baseball)

Cedric Mullins just won’t go away. Through 68 games, he’s batting .322 with 38 runs scored, 11 home runs, 23 RBI, and 12 stolen bases. He homered twice on Friday and has one of the best wOBA marks in baseball over the last two weeks. It isn’t easy to top 90 in this Quick Grades series, and he cruised to a 94.09 grade. Starling Marte, Ronald Acuna Jr., Shohei Ohtani, and Tim Anderson are not strangers to the top of our Quick Grades leaderboard, and Steven Duggar remains near the top because of his recent hot streak. Oh, and Adalberto Mondesi is back and is immediately in the upper 80s.

Now, let’s get to the rest of Week 12 grades and notes.

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Note: This table is three pages (see the button on the top right) and is sortable and searchable, so feel free to look around!

Week 12 Hitter Grades

Team Streams

• Thanks to some high wOBA grades and favorable matchups, the Houston Astros have seven players with an overall grade above 80. One of them, Chas McCormick, is available in more than 95% of leagues and could see regular playing time with Kyle Tucker out.
• The Cardinals play six games in Week 12, and they are scheduled to face Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Chad Kuhl, Wil Crowe, JT Brubaker, and Tyler Anderson. Hachi machi! Sign me up for that.
• As mentioned above, the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets both play eight games this week. The Braves play eight games in seven days, while the Mets play eight games in six days thanks to two doubleheaders. The Braves and Mets both receive matchups grades of 16.87.

Fades of the Week

• The Seattle Mariners only play five games. Three of those five are against German Marquez (outside of Coors Field), Carlos Rodon, and Lance Lynn.
• The Washington Nationals and Arizona Diamondbacks have even lower matchup grades than the Mariners. The Nationals play six road games and get Zack Wheeler, Trevor Rogers, and Sandy Alcantara in three of them and Zach Eflin in another. The Diamondbacks also play six games and get Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, and Yu Darvish in three and Dinelson Lamet and Blake Snell in another two. Even with a below-average grade for Snell (though he has been better at home), that's enough to have them tied with the Nats for the worst matchup grade.

Notes

• If you sort these Quick Grades by the lowest grades, you'll see Rhys Hoskins, Eric Hosmer, and Yermin Mercedes near the bottom. Their wOBA grades over the last two weeks are as low as the Quick Grades formula allows.

OOOOOF. Working on the Week 12 #QuickGrades right now. Out of 261 qualifying players, Rhys Hoskins has the lowest wOBA (.145) over the last 14 days. Gross!#RingTheBell

— mike Maher. (@mikeMaher) June 18, 2021

• Jonathan India is still available in more than 50% of fantasy leagues and is heating up again.
• As of this writing, Nolan Arenado is 0-for-18 over his last five games, and his average is down to .266. He receives a 66.43 grade this week despite the Cardinals as a team receiving a 21.25 matchups grade.

Week 12 Pitcher Grades

Below, you'll see a grid of probable starters, their matchups, and their grades. The grade is on a scale of 0-100, and here's what those numbers mean.

These grades assume you are in 10 leagues of varying size and format, with a good mix of shallow, deeper, scoring, and roster/lineup sizes. The score for all of these players corresponds to how many leagues I would start a pitcher in if I had him in every league. So, a pitcher with a score of 100 means I would start him in all 10 leagues. A pitcher with a score of 50 means I would start him in five leagues. Zero, zero leagues. Got it? Great.

Note: The starters below are grouped alphabetically by team and schedule, and the table is two pages to keep the length manageable (you can click to see the second page on the top right).

Notes

• As of this writing, two different Orioles starting pitchers are scheduled for two-start weeks. That's fine. Unfortunately, they line up to face the Houston Astros at home and the Toronto Blue Jays in Buffalo. Nope, nope, nope. Staying away. I have zeros across the board for all Baltimore starters this week.
• Eduardo Rodriguez continues to be a mystery, and it's hard to trust him until he actually starts, you know, pitching better. His two-start status gives him some appeal, but I'm not exactly sprinting to toss him into the lineup against the Rays and Yankees. But despite his 6.21 ERA, his FIP, xFIP, SIERA, and xERA are all in the mid-3.00s.
• Gulp, I'm talking myself into starting Jake Odorizzi in a number of leagues this week. I don't love it, but he has looked better of late and faces the Orioles and Tigers in a two-start week. I'm not playing him in most standard formats, but in deeper leagues or ones where I really need some innings, I'm gambling.
• Shohei Ohtani has looked really good pitching recently, but it isn't enough for me to take his bat out of the lineup in weekly leagues. In daily leagues, I'm starting him everywhere and losing his hitting stats for the day. But I can't justify taking his bat out of my lineup for one start that week.
• Tony Gonsolin hasn't exactly looked great since returning from the injured list, but he did throw more than 80 pitches in his last start and is facing a reeling Diamondbacks team at home. If you haven't been paying attention, the Diamondbacks have been really bad on the road this season. Like...historically bad on the road.
• Even against those same Diamondbacks mentioned above, I'm not going to be fooled by Brett Anderson's seven shutout innings against the Red in his last outing. Not starting him even in leagues where I'm desperate. You can't make me.
• Adrian Houser has looked better of late and has allowed just four earned runs over his last four starts combined. But...he's rolling into Coors Field this week. That combined with his limited strikeout upside, makes me concerned enough to fade him for one more week. If he pitches well in Coors, we can be friends next week.
• Michael Pineda is scheduled to return from the injured list this week. But with his recent struggles and forearm tightness mean that I'm out for this week. Plus, Pineda was cheating and using sticky substances before it was fashionable (not really, but he was suspended for using pine tar several years ago and then got suspended for 60 games for using a banned diuretic). Those are enough red flags for one week. Hard pass until we see how he looks against Cleveland.
• You wanna get nuts?! Let's throw Blake Snell out there against the Dodgers in four leagues. This is partly because I can't afford to give up on Snell, and partly because of home/road splits. You can keep him on the bench in shallower leagues, but I'm starting him in everything standard and deeper.
• It still amazes me that Adam Wainwright still pitches and is somewhat consistently not terrible. As of this writing (before his start against the Braves on Saturday), he has thrown three consecutive quality starts, with four quality starts in his last five trips to the mound. As long as Saturday's start isn't a disaster, I'm rolling him out there against the Pirates in most of my leagues.
• If you read a lot of fantasy baseball content, you have probably read about Ross Stripling recently. Our own Dan Harris mentioned him in last week's Two-Start Pitcher Lookahead piece. Over his last five starts, he has lowered his ERA from 7.20 to 4.64 and is scheduled to face the Marlins in Miami and the Orioles this week. Ride the hot hand.

That's it for this week. Again, if you have any questions, feedback, or requests, hit me up on Twitter!

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Mike Maher is an editor and featured writer at FantasyPros and BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive, follow him on Twitter @MikeMaher, and visit his Philadelphia Eagles blog, The Birds Blitz.