Fantasy Baseball Week 10 Preview

Welcome to the newest edition of the Weekly MLB Preview!

GAME BREAKDOWN GRID FOR WEEK 10 (6/6 to 6/12)

Analysis: Fantasy owners should be aware of the following splits prior to setting their Week 8 lineups:

• The St. Louis Cardinals are on the road for the entirety of Week 10, but that shouldn’t downgrade their lineup too much. As a whole, the club is currently tied for fifth in .AVG on the road (.271), while they currently lead all of baseball in road RBI (147) and are tied for fifth in road HR (37). With Matt Adams and Matt Holliday experiencing a resurgence of late, start them with confidence.
• No team faces more LHP in Week 10 than the Miami Marlins (they face four). Currently the team ranks tied for third in terms of AVG vs. LHP at .276. Several of their starters really succeed against southpaws, perhaps none more than Marcel Ozuna, who is batting .429 with five home runs and a .467 OBP. In both season-long leagues and DFS, he should be started.
• In case owners weren’t already high on the New York Mets pitching staff, the team faces the Milwaukee Brewers four times next week. The Brewers currently have the second-most strikeouts in baseball (510), while the Mets staff ranks third in ERA (3.20) and seventh in strikeouts (456). Expect Matt Harvey’s turnaround to continue.
• Here’s a fun statistic for you – currently there are only two pitching staffs that have a collective ERA under 3.00 (the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals). While Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg have received their fair share of praise for having a fantastic start to 2016, Joe Ross and Tanner Roark both have a sub 2.70 ERA over 21 games started. Don’t sleep on the back end of this rotation.

INTERLEAGUE OUTLOOK

Analysis: This week fantasy owners will see a split between games that feature the AL or NL at home for interleague matchups. The Athletics draw the short straw of the bunch, as they lose Billy Butler for five games when they take on the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds. The Tampa Bay Rays are also on the road, but owners should only see Corey Dickerson miss a handful of at-bats. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Michael Taylor of the Washington Nationals will inherit additional at-bats as the squad faces the Chicago White Sox, while Ichiro Suzuki and Chris Johnson will inherit the DH role for the Miami Marlins when they face the Minnesota Twins.

STARTING PITCHER RANKINGS

Analysis: I’ll be honest, when I was ranking two-start pitchers this week, there were several cringe-worthy moments while reviewing all of the numbers. The top-tier of starters is fairly straight-forward, between Jon Lester, Jacob deGrom and Madison Bumgarner and Steven Matz. All enjoy starts against at least one subpar offense (while Lester enjoys two with the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves). Outside of those four pitchers, things get very dicey, very fast.

• Carlos Carrasco makes a triumphant return to our list after being placed on the DL in late April with a hamstring strain. Prior to his leave of absence, Carrasco had been one of the top pitchers in baseball, posting a 2.45 ERA and 0.95 WHIP across 22 innings. He faces off against the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners in Week 10, and while neither is a particularly fantastic matchup on paper (especially against the Mariners, who lead all of MLB in HR with 78), his talent simply is this good.
• Remember when I said that this was a poor week for two-start pitchers? That explains in part why Adam Conley is ranked ninth overall on my board this week. Don’t get me wrong, Conley has been much better than many experts expected, striking out a batter per inning while posting a sub 3.75 ERA. Conley’s string of strikeouts will continue, as he takes on the Arizona Diamondbacks and Minnesota Twins – both teams rank inside the top eight in whiffs. Don’t expect Conley to last past the sixth inning (he’s only done that twice so far this season), but between the two starts, 15 plus strikeouts is well within reach.
• Would you have guessed that Colby Lewis registered more quality starts this season than Max Scherzer or Jake Arrieta? He’s been much better than many expected, but the question is, can he keep up this level of success. His 3.09 ERA and 1.11 WHIP are well below his career averages (4.71 and 1.35), so history suggests that this trend is destined to stop, sooner rather than later. That being said, why not exploit it while it lasts?
• Alright Dallas Keuchel, the time is now to start turning things around. Generally speaking, I give top-tier starters the benefit of the doubt until mid-June before I say enough is enough. Keuchel’s 5.58 ERA and 1.47 WHIP have been one of the biggest surprises of 2016, much to the detriment of his owners. He faces the Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays in Week 10, which provides me with a little hope. The good news for his owners? In three of his past four starts he’s allowed three earned runs or less, while going over six innings each time. Fingers crossed.

Analysis: Since the two-start pitching pool was so thin this week, you can likely guess what happened with the single-start matchups. Arrieta, Strasburg, Kershaw, Sale, Lackey and Syndergaard top this list, much to no one’s surprise.

• I recently joined fellow Fantasy Alarm colleague Joe Pisapia and spoke about my thoughts on Red Sox hurler Steven Wright. Bottom line? I still don’t trust knuckleball pitchers, given how streaky they are. That aside, Wright has been fantastic to start 2016, and takes on the Minnesota Twins, who are currently without their best hitter in Miguel Sano. This string of strong starts will continue.
• One of the matchups which I’m really looking forward to next week comes on Friday night, pitting Clayton Kershaw and Jeff Samardzija against each other. While I don’t have to go into details about how great Kershaw has been, Samardzija has been a strong compliment to Madison Bumgarner through the early going. The Dodgers rank outside the top 10 in runs scored, and outside the top 20 in AVG and OBP. This could be decided by the bullpens.
• I discussed Nathan Eovaldi as one of my deep sleepers entering the season, and I hope that our subscribers picked him up! His splitter has continued to improve, and he has maintained a K/9 of close to 9, while his ground ball rate has increased to 54.3 percent. His xFIP suggests that his ERA should be hovering around 3.30 or so, better than his current 3.71 mark. If he remains unowned in a 12-team mixed format, he needs to be added.