Play against the Fantasy Alarm Team!
After a week hiatus we are BACK to break down tonight’s MLB slate! Next week it’ll be a little different as football is back! This is the last week we’ll break down the baseball slate as we move on to football next Thursday!
Hitting Questions
Question one asks us who will have more hits between Brandon Phillips and Kris Bryant. Phillips is the favorite, but last years NL MVP is rolling of late, hitting .391 over the past seven days. That said, Phillips is working on a 14-game hitting streak with hits in 16 of his last 17 contests. Matchup wise, it definitely favors Bryant slightly as he draws Sean Newcomb compared to Kyle Hendricks for Phillips.
We stick with the hits question for numero dos, but expand the player pool to four. Freddie Freeman is the favorite, followed by Daniel Murpy, Matt Kemp and Denard Span in that order. Although Freeman’s the favorite, he’s struggled mightily of late going three for his last 20. Murphy’s struggled too, hitting .238 over his last seven games. Kemp, however, has been raking of late, posting three multi-hit games over his last six contests and is hitting .333 in august as a whole. Span is mired in an awful slump and is just 2-for-12 off of Cardinals starter Michael Wacha.
Moving on, we head to RBI where we find Ryan Zimmerman as the favorite with Anthony Rizzo, Ryan Braun and Joe Panik following his lead. Panik is hard to pick here with the other three big run producers on the board, especially seeing how he has just nine RBI this month. Zimmerman has slowed down this month, partially due to injury, partially due to the dog days of August. Rizzo, unlike the other three, has been ON FIRE. He has driven in a run in five straight games and has 11 over that span. He’s definitely the favorite here.
Same question, new players for question four. We have a questionable player in Yadier Molina so the question could end up being null and void, but he was able to play on Wednesday so here’s to hoping that he will play today too. What is funny about this question is that Aledmys Diaz is involved and he’s currently in the minors. Eric Thames is your biggest run producer and is a nice GPP option since he’s the third option in this question.
We head to question five where the question switches from run producing to run scoring. Ender Inciarte is Boom’s favorite while Kolten Wong is hot on his tail. Orlando Arcia and Adam Lind round out the question as long shots to win. I say long shots because of how hot Inciarte and Wong have been of late. Inciarte had eight hits yesterday and scored two runs in the Braves double-header. He’s now up to 83 on the year so if he continues to get on the base, the better chance he has to score, obviously. Wong’s hitting .347 in August and has scored 19 times this month, which is almost a run per game. Arcia has a tough matchup vs. Gio Gonzalez and is hitting .133 over the last seven days while Adam Lind could be a sleeper, scoring five runs over his last five games.
The last offensive question we get before we move onto to pitching is about total bases and the player pool we get to select from is Anthony Rendon, Tommy Pham, Domingo Santana and Albert Almora. Rendon is on fire lately with six multi-hit games in his last 10 contests and six doubles. Pham is coming off a double-dong performance on Wednesday so if you’re a believer in riding the wave, he’s your guy. Santana and Almora are both major underdogs and this would be a question I’d personally look at the top guys for.
Pitching Questions
Now we move onto pitching for the final two questions. We start off by figuring out how many strikeouts Madison Bumgarner will have. Bumgarner has struck out seven opponents in five of his last six starts, and Boom has his O/U at five. Bumgarner’s been pitching deep into games of late, throwing six-plus innings in six straight starts and seven in four of those six. The relevance of going deeper into games is the more chances he has at striking his opponents out. The over on five K’s is likely mighty tempting tonight. Last but not least we’re talking Gio Gonzalez punch-outs. Gonzalez gets a juicy matchup against Milwaukee whom he’s already faced once this year and fanned eight over seven innings. Milwaukee strikes out more than anyone in baseball, so Gonzalez has a chance at putting up a crooked number here.