Welcome to the beginning of the end, baseball fans. Playoffs in fantasy baseball are underway, and this list of two start pitchers might make or break your season. Before we get to the list, we need to take a moment to talk about the Cleveland Indians, soon to be Defenders. This name change is perfect for them because their lineup is actually, quite “offensive”, too hitters everywhere. The Indians were No-Hit yesterday for the 3rd time this season by Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader, striking out 16 times in the game. The “offensive” Defenders broke the MLB record for most times No-Hit in a season. This is a record that will most likely never be broken. Also, just so all you readers are aware, there will be no individual writeups this week. Now that, that is out of the way, lets get to the injury news.

To the news! Gerrit Cole is expected to return to the Yankees Rotation this week, they are hoping for Tuesday but we’ll see. Also, Jameson Taillon hit the 10 day IL with a tendon injury in his right ankle. Sadly, one of my favorite rookies this year Shane McClanahan was placed on the IL with lower back tightness, he pitched through it though. It looks like the Rays are just getting him rested for the playoffs. Adding to the spiraling Covid concerns of the Red Sox, Chris Sale is on the Covid IL. Also, the Astros are hopeful Zack Greinke will return to the mound for them at some point this week. And Lastly, the Cardinals are optimistic Jack Flaherty will be returning in some fashion before the season ends. So if you are in the hunt for a championship and have Flaherty, monitor his return closely. Good Luck!!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Learn more about our 2025 Fantasy Baseball Subscriptions!

The best daily/weekly player rankings/projections (hitters, starters, and relievers) for each of the next 7-10 days + next calendar week starting Friday. Kick-ass DFS lineup optimizer and projections for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo!.

I don’t have enough spam, give me the Razzball email newsletter!

Weekly Razzball news delivered straight to your inbox.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Sat 8/2
ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | OAK

It may be the opening Sunday of the NFL but it’s no time to be slacking on our MLB FanDuel chances to cash in.  Red Sox v. White Sox should be giving us action today, a nice breeze out to left and two SP coming off the DL equals production, especially from the White Sox side. SP Max Fried $9300 has the best matchup at home today vs the Marlins and in his last 5 games Fried has 33 innings with 30 K, 5 walks, and a 1.91 ERA

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

The tinkering is finished for tonight.

At this point in my highway hypnosis of staring at a spreadsheet for two weeks, I’m just hoping to park the car safely.

I’d love to discuss the work with you all, so drop a thought in the comments if that appeals to you.

The only real guide I’d offer to reading these rankings is the top group is fluid. The big two of Julio Rodriguez and Bobby Witt Jr. have built their own little neighborhood. Both should have played in the majors this year. Julio is flat out embarrassing AA pitchers. I maintain my stance that Jerry Dipoto chose foolishly when he decided to push Jarred Kelenic and slam the breaks on Rodriguez, a choice he apparently made sometime back in February and never once revisited throughout the season.

After the top two, there’s not much distance between CJ Abrams at #3 and Adley Rutschman at #8, a group that’s built in part by the injuries to Abrams and Carroll and the tanking of Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit. Can make a pretty strong case that all the healthy players in the elite eight earned a shot at major league pitching this year, but that’s baseball these days. Let’s get romantic about the rest of the list!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Look, I can’t just not see a player with the last name Kirk and just go full Trek. Plus, this is a nerd safe space, right? Y’all playing fantasy baseball, so I figure equal opportunity nerdom comes into effect. It’s not just natural law, but based on science as well. Totally. And while this will not turn into the usual derivative Trek conversations (Picard vs. Kirk! Star Trek vs. Star Wars! Basement living amenities vs. Garage living amenities!), I will definitely be talking about one Alejandro Kirk (Latino Kirk from the Mirror Universe?) and what this young player can do for you in the closing weeks of the season. Will it be good? Will it be bad? I mean, the player or the post? Both could be diametrically opposed answers… actually, now that I think about it, let’s just move on…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

It is the final countdown and that means players are jumping up and down the 2021 rest of season hitter rankings.  There are two main drivers to this known affectionately as the ‘Mondesi Momentum’ and ‘Trout Trouble’.  Time to break down the categories:

The ‘Mondesi Momentum’ represents those players making a late season surge. For a variety of reasons, they may have missed time earlier in the year.  It might have been an injury, minor league service time manipulation or a long paternity leave.  Whatever the case, if you have held onto or picked up these players, they will be the reason you close out the season strong.

The ‘Trout Trouble’ is an all too common story this time of the year. Due to lingering injuries and rehabilitations several players just are not going to make it back to the lineup.  Specifically for teams out of contention, there is little reason to rush a player such as Mike Trout back to only risk further injury and uncertainty heading into the offseason.  This trouble means it is time to cut bait.

Keeping these official categories in mind, the top 100 hitters for the rest of the 2021 fantasy baseball season are as follows:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Everybody and their grandma is pumped for NFL DFS — it’s easier, there’s less variance, and you can actually count on your aces returning non-negative value. Thanks Robbie Ray! In baseball, we send our ace pitchers out against one of the worst teams in the league — that’s Robbie Ray and the Baltimore Orioles, eff-why-eye — and we get the yawnstipating line of 4 2/3 IP, 3 ER…and 8K. OK, I’m sort of fine with that. But as the most expensive pitcher on the DFS slate, I was less than thrilled to see him labor against some AAA-players and get into a verbal fight with the Orioles’ manager. Blah. But today’s a new day, and we’ve got a new ace who hopefully won’t fall apart at the seams.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Red Sox first baseman slash DH slash pink hat heart throb Bobby Dalbec continued his power barrage Friday night going 2-for-4 with a solo home run, his 21st, and a triple with two runs scored. Bobby D now has three dingers (we call them Bobby Dal-jacks) in the past three days and he’s done nothing but mash since Boston gave him full reign of the first base job post-All Star break. He was a BUY this week, and I while told you to grab him back in June, I’ll admit that was a bit premature. Bobby is a little bit, hmm, how do I say this nicely, “raw”, as his 138 strikeouts in 368 at bats clearly illustrates. But yo, the power is real, and it is spectacular. Something has clicked for him post-All Star break, maybe it was the hitting coach, maybe it was the COVID, maybe it was the Kyle Schwarber trade threatening his playing time. Whatever it was, he slashed .339/.431/.774 in August with seven Dal-jacks and 21 RBIs. He also struck out just 18 times, his lowest monthly total all year. His September has looked a lot like his August so far, .321/.387/.786 with a 1.205 OPS. He’s also taking more pitches, and this is resulting in him getting the pitches he wants to hit into the stands. He’s got 11 walks since the start of August, and he had just 13 walks through the first four months of the season. I’m saying the kid is figuring it out, on the job, at a crucial time for this Red Sox team in a wild card race and he is delivering. Sure the Ks are still there–ten strikeouts in the past 10 games, but like I said the power is legit-piece, and his .247 isolated power is one of the tops in the league. I don’t know what your fantasy team needs at this point in the season, and tbh you might be better off checking out Razzball’s Fantasy Football Rankings, but if you need power–Bobby D has got you covered. He’s hitting .317 over the past two weeks with 5 homers and 11 RBIs (9 homers in his past 23 games) and should continue to get plenty of chances while the Red Sox chase the postseason. Grab him if you like home runs–this kid’s gonna be a star! Ha-cha-cha!

Here’s what else I saw in fantasy baseball Friday night:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Howdy, Razzfolks!

We’ve reached the end, just about. Playoffs start Monday in Yahoo standard leagues. Kudos to you if you’re still alive and breathing, and I hope us ne’er-do-wells here at Razzball helped you along the way. Or at least I hope we entertained you, if nothing else!

Chicago White Sox fans have a lot of good news coming their way, and doubly so if you’ve got one or more of these guys on your fantasy teams. Let’s see what else this week brought us on the injury front:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

[brid autoplay=”true” video=”860700″ player=”10951″ title=”RZBL%20FB%202021%20FFF%20Rookies” duration=”148″ description=”undefined” uploaddate=”2021-09-09″ thumbnailurl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/9233/thumb/860700_t_1631222823.png” contentUrl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/9233/sd/860700.mp4″]

(NOTE: THIS POST WAS RELEASED EARLY THIS WEEK ON OUR PATREON. IT’S $10/MONTH OR $13/MONTH WITH AN EXTRA WEEKLY PODCAST.)

Last year, I wrote in my Leody Taveras sleeper post, “You don’t need me to Mr. Shaibel you through the ins and outs of strategy on how to move your pieces around to win your league, but let me just say the quiet part real loud:  SPEED AND POWER MMM YUM. Got it, all you Normies and five Carlas? Leody Taveras is only 22 years old, so his power could be developing into more goodness. He has a 14.3 Launch Angle, which should lead to roughly a 37+% fly ball rate (it was 32.9% last year, but small samples). A 37% fly ball rate should lead to roughly 178 fly balls. Taveras is not built like a brickhouse. He’s built more like a Shed Long. But he has a 50 grade in raw power and who knows? Maybe he runs into 10% HR/FB. That would give him, you guessed it, 18 homers! I’ll be honest, that feels optimistic. Steamer projects him for 13 homers in 133 games, and that feels optimistic too, but pessimistic on his games played. When all things are equal, 13 homers feels like a solid projection, but in more games.” And that’s me quoting me! That just got my pants tent moving north to the Adirondacks for Loedy Taveras in 2022 too. If Siri is reading this to you, we’re not talking about 20222, you didn’t fall asleep for 18,200 years. If you did, your head would be reading this in a jar of formaldehyde. Just had a thought, imagine your head was being preserved in formaldehyde and it was on a shelf behind a bigger head and all you could see was the back of someone else’s head for all of eternity. Writing a note in my Last Will and Testament to not let that happen to me. Any hoo! This is for this year, and Leody has speed and power. He needs to find more contact, but if he can, he could be trouble this year or in 20222. Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

As we hit the home stretch of the fantasy baseball season, every single stolen base counts. As we reach this point in the season we often have to hold our noses and play anyone with a whiff of stolen base potential. So grab your clothespin and let’s dive into some players who may be available in your leagues to lead you to fantasy glory.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

What is up party people? Fantasy football may have kicked off but there are still fantasy baseball championships to be won, so focus up. Well, I suppose that if you’re here you’re already focused. And for that, I appreciate you. It’s been a thrilling game so far but that’s nothing compared to the thrill of taking home a championship trophy in fantasy baseball. One of the best and worst things about fantasy baseball is the length of the season. It’s a grind, plain and simple. Games happen everyday so there is so much more to analyse and (over)react to.

So if you’re still with me, I applaud you. You’ve put in the work and made it this far. The finish line is in sight and you can almost taste it. Time to bring it home and these guys are here to help.

Salvador Perez has been an absolute force at the plate lately. Well, actually he’s been great all season. Blasting 42 hoe runs will do that for ya in points leagues. Did I mention that he’s a catcher? As if that wasn’t enough the rest of his numbers have been pretty good as well. Let hi take you home and I would love nothing more than for the MLB home run leaders to be a pitcher and a catcher.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Christian Yelich ($3,500) and the Brewers are a can’t miss stack on tonight’s slate as they take on Eli Morgan, who has a 5.48 ERA and a 2.00 HR/9. Yelich is in a great spot for runs and RBI batting third for Milwaukee, and he can be played along with cheap high-upside bats in Eduardo Escobar ($3,400) and Rowdy Tellez ($2,300). Many of these guys are also worth mixing into your cash lineup – particularly Kolten Wong ($3,500), who is batting .283 atop the lineup. In whatever contests you are playing, you will want to consider building around these bats.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?