The weekend is officially here and we’ve got a tremendous day of baseball ahead of us here on Saturday. The day starts off with the first game of a Giants/Nationals double-header right around 2pm ET, with the rest of the action starting off around 4pm ET. While there are a few  strong pitchers lined up for today, it’s going to be extremely difficult to match the pitching performances of Friday night. So before we fully dive into today’s action, let’s take a look at what went down yesterday.

 Another Scare for deGrom?

Mets ace Jacob deGrom was well on his way to another dominant performance as he tossed six scoreless frames with 10 strikeouts against the Padres, but had his night cut short after just 80 pitches due to what is being labeled as right flexor tendinitis. He’s downplaying it, saying he’s had similar elbow issues before and added in the post-game press conference that he doesn’t expect to miss his next start. The team said they were just being cautious with the removal, but how many times are we as fantasy owners going to be able to endure this. Can your heart take it? Keep close tabs on the situation as this is the third injury scare for deGrom and the season is barely two months old.

Smokin’ Aces

While most eyes were on deGrom last night, we saw some outstanding pitching performances all over the place. Cleveland’s Aaron Civale took advantage of some weak competition in Seattle and turned in eight innings of one-hit, shutout ball with 11 strikeouts. Solid rebound for the right-hander who just needs to show a little more consistency from start to start. Veteran righty Anthony DeSclafani tossed his second complete-game shutout of the season as he limited the Nationals to just two hits and a walk with eight punch-outs, Clayton Kershaw made quick work of the Rangers with nine strikeouts over six scoreless innings and Rays lefty Ryan Yarbrough tossed six scoreless himself to make quick work of the Orioles. All four left their fantasy owners smiling, but given the headaches MLB has caused, you have to wonder if there’s any credence to Pete Alonso’s claim that MLB manipulates the baseball each year, depending on the upcoming free agent class. It doesn’t look like Nolan Arenado, J.D. Martinez or Nick Castellanos are having trouble, but maybe Charlie Blackmon or Freddie Freeman want to chime in.

Ohtani OK

Angels two-way superstar gave his fantasy owners a scare when he fouled a ball off the inside of his right knee. He threw just five innings, gave up two runs on five hits and struck out eight but said the foul ball had no effect on his performance. He did mention during the post0game press conference that the knee was pretty stiff, but he should be just fine moving forward.

You can check out all of yesterday pitching stats right here

Backstop Bonanza

The catcher position has often been a throwaway for most fantasy owners. You’ll always have one or two in your league who will jump early for J.T. Realmuto, but more often than not, waiting on your backstop, particularly in one-catcher leagues, is more the norm. Well, the position is looking like it’s about to receive a makeover as we’re seeing some outstanding hitting performances lately. Royals catcher Salvador Perez leads the way as the 31-year old posted his third two-homer game in his last 10 starts. The OBP leaves little to be desired, but he’s batting .285 with 16 home runs on the year right now. That’s better than the production we’re seeing out of Juan Soto, for crying out loud. Other backstops who went deep yesterday include Willson Contreras, Will Smith, Kurt Suzuki, Tyler Stephenson and the ultimate comeback kid Buster Posey. Guess it’s time to stop ignoring the position.

The Speed Shortage Continues

There’s been plenty of talk regarding teams increasing the number of stolen base attempts, but yesterday left fantasy owners scratching their heads, wondering what they have to do to move up in this category. There were only 10 successful steals yesterday, but how many fantasy owners actually got credit? Ronald Acuna, Alex Bregman and Brandon Lowe were likely in starting lineups all over, but no one is using Jonathan Davis, Akil Baddoo or Jorge Mateo on the regular, are they? We’re starting to see more specialists appear late in games, but that’s just not going to work in fantasy. You can’t even  put Jarrod Dyson into your lineups. The guy doesn’t play for four-straight games and steals a bag while pinch-running? That’s not going to cut it. If you’re struggling in the category, you may have to think about paying a premium to help out.

You can check out all of yesterday hitting stats right here

Don’t forget to check out the MLB Live Injury Blog to stay ahead of the news

Today’s Slate

It doesn’t look like we have much in the way of weather concerns for today’s 16-game extravaganza. Some showers in Cincinnati, Chicago and Detroit, but nothing that looks like it will cause any delays or postponements. You can check out the weather park by park at the Fantasy Alarm Weather Center.

Top pitchers to watch today include Corbin Burnes against the Pirates, Trevor Bauer against the Rangers and Dylan Cease against Detroit, but the pitching duels to keep tabs on are in New York again as Marcus Stroman squares off against Joe Musgrove and in Minnesota as José Berríos faces Astros upstart Luis García. The 24-year old Garcia is coming off three-straight quality starts with just three earned runs allowed over 19 innings and a 21:4 K:BB.

Betting Favorites

You can check out my work over on Wager Alarm and get today’s MLB Best Bets and Prop Bets, but if you’re just looking for some quick action in lopsided games (something we’re going to see a lot of this weekend), here are the top three:

The Milwaukee Brewers are -295 favorites with Corbin Burnes on the mound against the Pirates. The 26-yearold right-hander is coming off his best start of the year, striking out 13 Diamondbacks over seven scoreless innings, and now has seven quality starts in 10 outings this year. The Pirates aren’t a big strikeout team, but their offense leaves little to be desired in the run column.

With Trevor Bauer on the bump the Dodgers are -286 favorites over the Texas Rangers tonight. The Rangers continue to struggle offensively and have the third-highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching this year (26.8%). With six-straight quality starts, there shouldn’t be much concern as to who wins this game, but with all the spin-rate and Spider Tack talk, all eyes will be on Bauer’s performance, for sure.

The Tampa Bay Rays are -230 favorites over the Orioles today as Vegas expects Rich Hill, who is currently riding a 10-inning scoreless streak, to dominate the Baltimore bats. He faced them back on May 20 and allowed just one run over six innings.