As we head into the final week of the season, it seems like a good time to look back — well, back a few days or weeks anyway.  Even with only 60 games, many players who started the year as deep leaguers were able to prove they belong in a much shallower stratosphere in 2021.  Take Luke Voit… I told you in my post way back on January 14th of this year that I’d already drafted as my first baseman in a league, liking his value at the time, which was around #200 in terms of NFBC ADP.  Let’s just say that I don’t think any of us will be getting Voit with anything close to a 200th pick next spring.  I’m also pretty sure Alec Mills’ no hitter will keep me from being able to scoop him up at the end of an NL-only draft next year the way I did this year.  So let’s move on and look at a handful of players who have very recently — and a little more quietly — been playing well, with an eye not only on last minute help in 2020, but also potential consideration in 2021.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Tue 8/12
ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | DET | NYY | OAK

This has been a peculiar season to say the least. Hot streaks, injuries, and canceled games have shifted mountains. Hopefully you’re grinding the final week for a finishing place. Best of luck to your fake teams my fake friends.

  • When mining for steals it’s best to target the Mets. They’ll face the Rays and Nationals this week. Manny Margot or Josh Harrison are a couple of names to look up.
  • Roman Quinn leads the Phillies in steals and plays most days. He’s not giving you much anywhere else but if it’s speed you need go get him.
  • Please, blog, may I have some more?

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World famed comedian Billy Hurley returns for his 15th show with Grey Albright and Donkey Teeth. Penis stories were sparse in this week’s not not news, but there was plenty of pee. A German man was in the news this week for his unorthodox alternative health practice of drinking 7 pints of his own urine each day which allegedly keeps him from ever getting sick. Then, Grey is intrigued by a Japanese haunted drive-thru where ghosts and zombies attack your car. But the highlight of the show is an Alaskan dentist who’s going to prison for 12 years for performing dental work on a hoover board. We round out this week’s not not news with a feel good story of the tortoise who went missing for 74 days, only to be found 1/8th of a mile away from home. So buckle up and grab a frosty pint of urine as you listen to this week’s episode of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Not News!

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Please, blog, may I have some more?

Good Afternoon Baseball Fans, and welcome to my final article of the season. I wanted to start off by thanking those that reached out last week in response to my opening up about my personal story. Really meant a lot. I hope my story was able to help at least one person. Tonight’s six game slate is a doooooozy. We have good pitchers going against good lineups and bad pitchers going against bad lineups. I’m going to try my hardest with my write up today to attack the bad pitchers while also sprinkling in some hitters that while not in a great matchup, they’re just really good and should always be considered. My favorite pitcher today, and I hope you were able to decipher that by the title, is Lance McCullers Jr ($8,700). He’s a bit underpriced and will most likely be chalky.

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?

“Ask not what your fantasy team’s pitchers can do for you, but what you can do for your fantasy team pitchers.” The number one thing you can do is have your fantasy team page open and curse and scream whenever a reliever comes into the game in a non-save shituation and gives up runs, or when you have a pitcher give up five-plus in under five innings, or when you bench a guy who throws a gem. That’s the least you can do for your country and your team. Yesterday, the Kennedy curse lifted, and Jack and Joe did you right: Joe Musgrove (6 IP, 0 ER, 4 baserunners, 11 Ks, ERA at 4.68) vs. Jack Flaherty (6 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 11 Ks, ERA at 4.84). In 2021, Jack Flaherty could be underrated. Imagine he’s not a top five starter next year, because of one bad start. Sign me up for some of that nonsense. Joe Musgrove is a trickier proposition such as, “I’ll do whatever for $50.” Wait, that’s a trick’s proposition. Since Musgrove’s IL stint, his fastball velocity wasn’t quite there, but yesterday saw him touch 95 MPH, and his slider was working for him. For 2021, I could see getting sucked in again by Musgrove, which inevitably will leave me mumbling, “Era, era, my ERA is a mess.” That’s JFK struggling to the finish line of a fantasy season, like all of us. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

So much of 2020 baseball has me dazed and confused. One injury pops up and “poof”, there goes the season. One 10 day hot stretch begets a 10 day cold stretch, and players pop up and go away like so many prairie dogs on the windswept empty plains of stadiums with no fans to be seen except in cardboard. Those who have hovered away include, in no particular order, Jonathan Schoop, Robinson Cano, Kyle Schwarber, Willy Adames, Alex Dickerson, Austin Meadows, Jorge Polanco, Shohei Ohtani, Jesse Winker, Yuli Gurriel, Mitch Moreland, Pedro Severino and Max Kepler. Some of that is poor performance. Some of it is as simple as paternity leave at an inopportune time. Much of this unlucky 13 is gone simply because others have outperformed them. Now the good news.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Folks, this is all she wrote. The fantasy baseball season is entering its final week. What a wild ride it’s been, eh? In a way, it doesn’t even feel like it actually happened. I mean, normally, by Week 9 we’re talking about who’s for real and who isn’t for real, which slumping superstar is primed to bounce back and carry your team the rest of the way, whatever. But now we’re already bidding farewell.

I think for my next piece I’m going to put together a 2020 Waiver Wire All-Star team. Take a standard Yahoo lineup format and fill it with waiver gems. So be on the lookout for that!

For this week, it’s gonna stay in line with how last week looked. More names to look at (with some repeats from previous weeks) and my quick thoughts on each.

It’s been a pleasure writing these up for you every week! Hope they’ve been helpful to some of you. My apologies if not. I blame 2020, in that case.

Let’s do it to it.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Nobody likes people who toot their own horn but I’m going to go ahead and do that right here. I’m in the middle of all of my fantasy baseball playoffs and responded with my best streamers of the season. Pablo Lopez, Mike Minor, Jose Urquidy, Griffin Canning and Tarik Skubal all had fantastic weeks, carrying me to numerous championships. I hope they did the same for you and we’ll look to keep that momentum rolling here. I also want to thank all of you for reading throughout this chaotic season and hopefully, I provided you with some good picks and humor! With that said, this is the final week of the regular season, so, chaos is inevitable. Let’s go ahead and get into it! 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

One week from today we’ll be looking at the final MLB DFS slate of the season.  How crazy is that?  I honestly never thought we’d get to this point, but here we be.  We’re getting crazy here in the final week, and why not?  It’s been a ridiculous season and this is a strange slate with some of the afternoon games, but not the late afternoon games and not all of the early games.  It’s confusing and unfortunately we have no Pirates or Rangers to pick on today.  Therefore, we’ll go with the next best thing, the Arizona Diamondbacks.  The D-Backs rank third to last in team OPS and they are on the road today facing Jose Urquidy ($6,500) and his very affordable price tag.  Urquidy is fresh off dominating the Rangers with seven strikeouts in seven innings.  That outing was good for 49 FanDuel points, and at this price, that is a huge value.  I would expect more of the same today as Urquidy cruise to the victory.  Fire him up and stack that offense.

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?

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the fantasy baseball season sliding away from us like an 0-2 pitch from sexpot Sixto Sanchez. Your roto leagues are probably a bit settled by now–the final few teams jostling for the top spot. In your dynasty leagues, the rip-off guys are probably making their annual post-deadline runs for the roses. Such is the nature of fall baseball. The fatigue factor feels a little different this year, worse for some I’m sure but perhaps less impactful in general across the entirety of fantasy baseball. 

Though who knows: the overarching 2020 fatigue factor might supersede the excitement of the short-season burst. In a typical season, these final few faab runs can make a huge difference, and it’s typically just a couple teams paying close enough attention to add a Jazz Chisholm or some similarly high riser on the last day of the season. I only mention Jazz because he was added on the final day in one of my 15-teamers just a few weeks before his big Fall League glow up. Seems like we won’t have that particular league this year, but we’ll still see some winter ball, I suspect, and some prospects will still change their outlook through a combination of hope, hype, and happenstance. Happy hunting out there, dear readers. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

No doubt 2020 has been full of tumult and chaos, and I’m just talking about Kayne. Obviously sports has seen its fair share of craziness too, with baseball leading the way with a shortened season, producing outcomes thus far that could be considered, well… I mean the Padres have a chance to get to the playoffs by averaging 18 grand slams a game… End of the world as we know it. Regardless, on a player-focused level, there has been plenty of randomness that will never settle based on the lack of innings and at-bats available. There simply isn’t enough time to settle, regress, explode, and while I’m all for exploding, hopefully via combustion because why not, we can at least gauge where a player is at and what might happen next season (if there is one!). Last week, we covered Josh Bell and found reasons why a resurgence was due, and by channeling my dark wizardry powers (typing I guess), that post was confirmed prescient. Can the same be done for Carlos Correa and his apparent power outage? Or will it take Astros fans bringing their favorite trash can lids to the game in solidarity that will spur him out of this funk? Spoiler alert: I’m a fan of the funk.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I had Dane Dunning listed as a two-start pitcher last week, but I guess that didn’t happen for whatever reason. However, he was the headlining player of that article, and he’s back again for this week! Way back then I wrote: “I’ll give him this — the career 0.5 HR/9 over 449 professional innings will serve him well this week. Also working in his favor is he’s facing the 7th and 9th worst teams in K/rate to right-handed pitchers.” Well, he did allow a HR to the Twins last week, but still only held them to that 1 ER over 7 innings while tying his season-high with 7 K’s. JUST LIKE I TOLD YOU. So what about these Indians? They’re only hitting .230 against righties with a .373 slugging percentage. The ingredients are there for another delicious recipe for success from Dunning. I’m a little less optimistic about his start against the Cubs, although they have been middle of the road against righties with their third-highest K/rate against them. Take the risk if you can afford it. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?