Hi all, and welcome to the final fantasy baseball week of the season. As it is the final week I’ll leave you with a couple quick tips and an update on the top and bottom teams this past week in terms of OPS to identify advantageous matchups that will hopefully help secure your championship victory.
My simple but important tip for this final week is to keep an eye on when your pitchers’ next starts are. As most leagues will end this Sunday, if an MLB team is running a typical 5-man rotation and your pitcher starts after Tuesday then they probably won’t see another start before the end of the fantasy season. To which you might say “Yeah duh, that’s obvious.” However, there are also situations like in Texas for example where they appear to have switched over to a 6-man rotation for the remainder of the MLB season. In which case, you have even less leeway. Another situation would be if a team has an off day this week. Toronto for example has Thursday off, so you might have Bowden Francis starting tomorrow and think “Great, he should have a start on Sunday then as well.” Wrong! So, although it may seem obvious, I highly encourage you to take a look at the team rotation schedules for any pitchers you have starting either today (Monday) or tomorrow. You can obviously hold if they have an additional start this weekend or you can prepare yourself in advance to make a move for either a streamer or an RP immediately following their final start in order to further maximize your point earning potential this week.
Additionally, we have a slow day in the league today with only four games on the slate: Cubs vs. Phillies, Red Sox vs. Blue Jays, Mariners vs. Astros, and Giants vs. D-Backs. We’re all about maximizing our points potential this week and now is no time to get sentimental about guys on our roster who aren’t doing anything for us today. Drop whoever you feel comfortable dropping to stream bats for today – specifically RPs not starting today and/or any hitters who aren’t starting that you don’t absolutely feel you need to hold onto.
Out of the games today I’m ideally targeting players on either side of the SF vs. AZ matchup. Hayden Birdsong will likely be on the bump for the Giants and sports a 4.74 ERA although his past two games against the Brewers and Orioles have been slightly better showings. However, I still like the D-Backs as one of the league’s top offenses for a month plus now to bring in at least a few runs in this one. Likewise, on the other side of the matchup, Eduardo Rodriguez hasn’t quite looked the part since coming off the IL late this season for Arizona. He currently has a 5.09 ERA and has given up a minimum of two runs and at least five or more hits in his last five starts. I’d specifically check your waiver wire for Michael Conforto or Mike Yastrzemski for this one.
I want to now quickly give an update on the top and bottom hitting teams in the league to follow up on our discussion last week and help influence our streaming targets for this coming week:
Top 5 Teams – OPS (9.15 – 9.22.24)
| Dodgers | .923 |
| Braves | .916 |
| Mets | .862 |
| Padres | .842 |
| D-Backs | .815 |
The Dodgers are mashing home runs. Fueled primarily by you-know-who, they’re still up at the top of our rankings and absolute nightmare fuel to stream into so avoid them at all costs. We actually have the Braves joining the top-5 over the past week with the return of Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris playing extremely well down the stretch. This is also ideally a matchup to be avoided for me at the moment. The Mets are probably the biggest surprise here as we hadn’t even seen them in the top 10 let alone the top 5 for the two weeks prior to this one and they’re also still without Francisco Lindor for at least for one more day. This is more situational of a matchup for me. Given the data, I may steer clear of them for streaming against but I don’t think I’m that convinced that this hot streak is sustainable. As such I’m ok with still running pitchers I believe in out there against them (see: Spencer Schwellenbach tomorrow who has seemed matchup-proof as of late). The Padres and D-Backs round out the top-5, no surprise there.
**One thing of note is that the Yankees are in 10th place in terms of OPS over the past week. So pretty much the concern I voiced last week that they may at any moment start to get it going again kind of came true. Unfortunately, Bryan Woo got knocked around a bit in his start vs them in Seattle but Bryce Miller and Logan Gilbert both still managed decent stat lines. I would caution against streaming into them this week though at the very least. It seems like Judge has the home runs flowing again and even Gleyber Torres has been more productive at the plate over the past handful of games.
Bottom 5 Teams – OPS (9.15 – 9.22.24)
| Royals | .521 |
| Twins | .537 |
| Nationals | .562 |
| White Sox | .569 |
| Athletics | .589 |
The Royals have now extended their bottom-5 streak to three weeks running, target them for all matchups possible. The Twins, Nats, and A’s are three teams that I’m not overly surprised to see down here but at the same time seem like they always have sneaky good performances when you least expect it. I’ll personally be playing Cody Bradford and Bryan Woo into the A’s this week tomorrow and on Saturday (Kumar Rocker vs. the A’s is also a potentially enticing stream if you’re in need of starts). Additionally, Michael Wacha vs. the Nats and Tyler Anderson vs. the White Sox, both games on Thursday, could be very advantageous plays. That being said I would caution against going too deep into the streaming pool against these three teams in particular. They’re down at the bottom right now but I believe it’s more a case of offensive inconsistency over a small sample size than an indicator of them having truly bad offenses.
But ah, the White Sox, our old friends are back again after a very brief spurt of productivity. I truly feel bad for them but you love to see it for the streaming potential. They’re not only the lowest OPS team over the past seven days, but also the past 30 days, and on the year as well. Have no fear our favorite high-upside streaming target is here. Stream/start against them at will.
Good luck this week everyone and as always I’m available in the comments below all this week to answer any specific streaming, matchup, sit/start, or other questions you might have!
