Fantasy Baseball Week 5 Preview: Highlighting key matchups and their fantasy impact

This week we take another trip around the horn, with our series previews. Each week of the MLB season we’ll go in depth with a number of important series’ from the week ahead. Whether it is fantasy baseball story lines (i.e. the debut of Gregory Polanco?), in division impact, or other items of interest I’ll pick some of the most intriguing match ups on the docket for the coming week.

Tabbed for this week: Oakland at Texas, and Milwaukee at St. Louis

Fantasy Baseball Week 5 Preview: Oakland Athletics vs. Texas Rangers

This week’s matchup at Globe Life Park in Arlington pits the American League’s only two 15 win teams against each other to determine the (early season) leader of the AL West. Just last week Texas completed a three game series sweep against the Athletics in Oakland and with a 9-4 home record they’ll look to take control of the division this week. The Athletics meanwhile, have the league’s best run differential and a matching 9-4 road mark.

Projected Starters: Sonny Gray vs. Yu Darvish (Monday), Scott Kazmir vs. Martin Perez (Tuesday), Jesse Chavez vs. Robbie Ross Jr. (Wednesday).

Both Gray and Darvish have picked up exactly where they left off in 2014, and as a fantasy community we aren’t all that surprised by the fact. Gray has been getting it done despite a high whip (1.34) and a .246 batting average against. He’s kept the other ratio down by stranding 79.3% of his base runners, which is well above the league average. Over the long term, he’ll need to rely less on keeping runners on base and more on dominating them at the plate but it is working for him now – with three wins, relative to just one for Yu Darvish despite a 1.61 ERA and 29 strikeouts in 28 innings. Bear in mind though, that the Rangers are hitting .261 with runners in scoring position to date – 6th best in Major League Baseball.

Seen here as part of a dominant outing against Oakland just five days ago, Martin Perez gets another crack at the A’s aiming to keep his shutout streak going (Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

For the viewing public, we’re treated to a matchup of these two against one another but at least in the early going it isn’t even the marquee duel. That comes with journeyman lefthander Scott Kazmir on the hill against the Rangers’ own LHP Martin Perez. In five starts this season, Kazmir has twice kept his opponents off the scoreboard and has yet to allow more than three runs in an outing, posting five straight quality starts. Perez meanwhile has stepped in to fill the void behind Darvish in the Texas rotation with three straight starts without an earned run – outings of 8, 9 and 9 innings. The most recent outing? April 23rd against these Athletics – the dominance is nice, but pitching against them in back to back turns could be troublesome for Perez, and for all the starters in this series facing that same situation. He’s getting it done simply by keeping opponents off the bases with a 0.92 WHIP (Kazmir’s is better) but he isn’t missing a lot of bats, with 5.4 K/9 and just a 7.5% Swinging Strike % (the league average is 9.3). Will either of them stay atop the league in ERA through the course of the season? I doubt it. But, with both throwing strong early, fantasy owners shouldn’t expect much from the collective offenses in the first two games of the series.

On that note, both Jesse Chavez and Robbie Ross are throwing well early, too – though we should note that Ross has seen 13 runs plate against him this season, with five recorded as unearned and Ross is giving up nearly one home run per nine.

Players to Watch:

Is this the week that Prince Fielder finally gets it together? He owned Athletics’ pitching last season in seven games (30 PA), hitting .500 against them with three home runs. I wrote about Fielder’s struggles over the weekend, and the expectation that he’ll turn it around sooner or later.
Alex Rios and Leonys Martin are each hitting above .300 with OPS marks at .795 or better.and they are tied for the team lead with 11 RBI and have stolen six and five bases respectively. Essentially, they’re doing all that was expected of them while the rest of the offense has been functioning in fits and starts. Expect them to stay productive, and run a bit this week – John Jaso is throwing out just 22.2% of base runners on the season.
This will be Adrian Beltre‘s first full week back in the lineup, and for the most part he didn’t miss a beat in his return, with a hit in each of the three contests since he has been back. Beltre is yet to hit a homer on the season. He hit well against Oakland last season (.303) in 19 games but had just two homers in those contests so owners may be left waiting another week.
On the other side, Oakland’s third baseman is raking. Josh Donaldson ranks as the 4th overall fantasy asset over the last seven days with four home runs and 10 RBI, going 11/28 (heading into Sunday’s action). His seven April home runs are more than he hit in any month during his breakout 2013 campaign and are a positive sign that last year’s top flight campaign is a sign of good things to come.
Yoenis Cespedes has missed three straight games with a hamstring strain, but remains day to day and we should see him return to the field during this series. He’s started the season in pretty typical fashion: strong run production and a poor average (.238).

Fantasy Baseball Week 5 Preview: Milwaukee Brewers vs. St. Louis Cardinals

The Brewers travel to St. Louis to face off with the Cardinals for the second time this season, after the Cards took two of three the last time around. Off to a hot start, Milwaukee finds itself on top of the NL Central with the perennial contenders trailing them 4.5 games early. If the upstart Brew Crew is going to stay in the race throughout the season, they’ll need to match up well with the class of the division through the season. A series win goes a long way to helping Milwaukee, the division leader in both runs scored and runs allowed, confirm their legitimacy.

Projected Starters: Yovani Gallardo vs. Michael Wacha (Monday), Kyle Lohse vs. Lance Lynn (Tuesday), Matt Garza vs. Shelby Miller (Wednesday)

Of Milwaukee’s three starters in this series, two have a sub 3.00 ERA (Gallardo and Lohse) and have been key figures in the team’s hot start. Lohse is 4-1 on the season and Gallardo seems to really have it together after his 2013 season was marred by injury and off field issues. It should be noted though, that he is allowing a fair number of base runners .219 opponent’s batting average and an unsustainable 89% strand rate. His 3.70 expected fielder independent pitching ERA suggests that Gallardo has benefited greatly from defense and luck in the early going. That’s not to take anything away from him, but it should be noted that if he starts to come back down to earth the Brewers will be in touch against Michael Wacha who has his own impressive 2.10 ERA and continues to make hay with his off speed pitches, as both his changeup and curve (thrown a combined 32.4% of the time) grade out as above average this season.

The second duel of the week takes place between Lohse and Lance Lynn. Lohse comes in with the above mentioned 4-1 record and an opponent’s batting average under .200. He hasn’t been untouchable though, giving up more than a baserunner per inning in all but two of his starts – one of them a sterling 8.2 inning outing against the Pirates. He hasn’t given up a home run since his first start of the season though, something to keep in mind when considering Cardinals hitters. The same can’t be said for his alliterative opponent, who has given up four long balls through five starts after yielding just 14 in 33 last year.

Shelby Miller has thrown well at home, and against Milwaukee in his young career. He’ll look to keep both rolling this week (Photo: Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images).

The series closes with free agent acquisition Matt Garza facing off against Shelby Miller. Garza put together a nice outing his last time through the rotation, going seven strong and yielding two earned runs against Chicago on just four hits and two walks, striking out seven. That comes after a string of three starts in which he allowed 14 combined runs (the middle of which came against St. Louis and saw the Cards score four times on two homers) so the hope for his team, and his fantasy owners, is that he can keep it going in the right direction. The same can be said for Shelby Miller who hasn’t allowed a run in his last two outings (5.1 and 5.2 innings, respectively) after a slow start to the season. Things look good for that trend continuing, as he has been dominant at home throughout his career and holds a 1.95 ERA with 36 Ks in 37 innings in six starts (4-0) against Milwaukee.

Players to Watch:

Matt Adams, hitting .337 (second on the team, behind Yadier Molina) draws three right handed pitchers in this series. While he hasn’t really lived up to his power potential, sporting just one home run on the season, he has been tearing the cover off the ball against righties so far. While his struggles against southpaws (.167 on the young season) may eventually limit his utility, a .370/.387/.521 slash line against RHP will play just fine. Perhaps the run production comes this week, with three hittable right handers on the hill. While his experience against each of the three scheduled starters for Milwaukee is limited, he is hitting at least .333 against each of them including a 5/6 success rate against Garza. While we’re talking career success, Molina sees the ball well against Lohse with a 9/16 mark and three extra base hits.
After rookie 2B took the weekend off (on the bench) he has been sent to AAA. This weekend, Wong was spelled in the lineup by Daniel Descalso and Mark Ellis at second who figure to each get some time, with Ellis likely taking the lion’s share moving forward.
With an off-day coming Thursday, Carlos Gomez is likely to play out the series against St. Louis before having his suspension appeal heard and remains a big part of everything Milwaukee does. He has just one RBI in the past week, but has scored four times while stealing three bases.
So, you should plan to see Gomez but not SS Jean Segura, at least not in the early part of the three game set, as he requires plastic surgery after teammate Ryan Braun clocked him with a warmup swing from the top of the dugout steps (if you’ve seen the clip, he definitely didn’t see Segura coming but was also definitely standing in a foolish place while handling his bat that way). Segura has struggled to a .237 average to start the season, a result of a BABIP that has dropped to .267 compared to .329 last year (producing a near mirroring 55 point drop in his batting average from 2013). The ‘true Segura’ probably lies somewhere in the middle and I’d expect to see that start to take form when he returns to the lineup, but for now Jeff Bianchi picks up the at bats in his place.
At 6/13 with two home runs, Aramis Ramirez has given Shelby Miller some trouble in his young career.