Fantasy Baseball Week 21 Preview

Welcome to the newest edition of the Weekly MLB Preview!

GAME BREAKDOWN GRID FOR WEEK 21 (8/22 - 8/28)

Analysis: Looking for statistics which will influence your upcoming lineup? Check out these tidbits:

• Few teams have been as anemic as the Detroit Tigers since the beginning of August, who are hitting a paltry .256 collectively during the month. While stars like J.D. Martinez, Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez have been holding their own, Justin Upton has batted just .130 since the month began, striking out 16 times over his last 54 at-bats. He’s been an incredible disappointment this season, and it would be very hard to start him until he gets out of this funk.
• In honor of Bartolo Colon having his first career walk this past week, I’ve decided to include a statistic about free passes. Care to guess which team has allowed the most since August? Try the Miami Marlins, with an astounding 75! Allowing so many runners to reach first safely has bloated the team’s WHIP to an astounding 1.66 this month. Someone may want to reach out to Adam Conley (14 walks) and Andrew Cashner (10) and see if they need to get their eyes examined.
• Although the Baltimore Orioles club is well-recognized for their prodigious collective power, they are 12^th in MLB since the All-Star break in home runs hit. The Boston Red Sox (much to no one’s surprise) lead the league with 52 dingers since the split, with the St. Louis Cardinals (49) and Milwaukee Brewers (43) close behind. Don’t sleep on the power of the Brew Crew!

INTERLEAGUE OUTLOOK

Analysis: Week 21 features a healthy slate of interleague matchups, with the majority of games having the NL at home, which means the loss of the DH. Nearly all AL DH’s who are sitting are fantasy relevant, especially Carlos Beltran and Evan Gattis (assuming your league gave him catcher eligibility). Ryan Howard has been on a tear of late and will find additional at-bats against the Chicago White Sox – he makes for an intriguing streaming option in DFS formats.

STARTING PITCHER RANKINGS

Analysis: This week the two-start options are rather thin, and truth be told the only viable no-brainer candidate is Jon Lester. Ordinarily I would lump Stephen Strasburg in with the “no brainers” and skim over him, but he has appeared rather ordinary of late, allowing 19 earned runs over his last 11 innings of work. While the start at Coors Field is forgivable since any pitcher can be crushed in the thin air of the Rockies, surrendering six earned runs to the Atlanta Braves in barely five innings is rather eye-opening.

Tampa Ray rookie Blake Snell has continued to impress me with each passing start. Although I hate being too selective regarding statistics, with the exception of his August 10 start against the Toronto Blue Jays, Snell has allowed two earned runs or less in each start since the beginning of July. His walk totals continue to inflate his WHIP above the 1.50 mark (which obviously needs to be addressed), but he is striking out more than a batter per inning while posting a low ERA for an AL East pitcher (3.06). Snell faces two plus lineups in the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros next week, but I feel confident still listing him as a top 10 two-start option.

If there was ever a time for Archie Bradley to step up and make a statement regarding 2016, this would be the week to do it. His 4.91 ERA and 1.52 WHIP are putrid to look at, but his underlying statistics show that he has been better than one might realize. He’s allowing home runs at a ridiculous rate (15.6 percent HR/FB), largely in part due to his reliance upon his fastball. In 2016 he swapped out a changeup for a knuckle-curve, but still throws off-speed pitches less than 25 percent of the time. While his velocity has remained steady, allowing too many walks has given opponents chances to take the lead early and often. His xFIP suggests that his ERA should be closer to the 4.35 mark, still high to be sure, but better than his current standing. Bradley faces the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds next week, two lineups which should provide him with ample amounts of strikeouts and a chance to rebound.

Analysis: The top of my single-start rankings feature many familiar faces which don’t need to be repeated here, but I did want to highlight both Michael Fulmer and Vince Velasquez. Why those two pitchers, you ask? You may not see them listed much more in this column, as their respective teams opt to skip their starts and shut them down for the rest of the season due to their workloads.

In the case of the former New York Mets farmhand Michael Fulmer, he has already surpassed his innings total from 2015, and the team has publicly come out and stated that his workload is becoming an issue which they will need to monitor down the stretch. You can’t fault the Tigers for wanting to throw him out there as much as possible, considering he has been their best pitcher for the majority of the season. His 2.25 ERA and 1.02 WHIP are incredibly impressive, and few could have predicted that he would be in the running for AL Rookie of the Year.

For Vince Velasquez, his statistics don’t appear nearly as impressive on paper as a month ago. Two consecutive rough outings have bloated his ERA up to 4.14 and his WHIP to 1.36. That being said, prior to the beginning of August he was one of the top pitchers in the NL, routinely dominating his competition while averaging over a strikeout per inning. Velasquez is already over last year’s inning total by nearly 30 frames, which suggests that he will only take the mound another three or four times before the team ends his season. Both he and Fulmer should be grabbed up and used while owners have the option.