David Price, Boston Red Sox - Price tossed a quality start against the Rockies Tuesday allowing three runs over 7.0 innings while striking out six batters. The win was his seventh of the season and he's slowly bringing down his mid 5.00's ERA while owning a 2.85 FIP. Normally I'd say that Price is a fantastic buy low candidate, but with his record sitting at 7-1 how low could you realistically buy him for? All of his swing and miss rates continue to be among the best of his career besides batters chasing fewer pitches that any of the last three seasons. He's got the 9th best FIP in all of baseball which is better than even Chris Sale who was 9-0 with a 1.58 ERA entering Tuesday, showing that with a little better luck Price could easily be one of the best starting pitchers in all of fantasy baseball.
Chris Sale, Chicago White Sox - Sale got tagged for six runs in 3.1 innings to take his first loss of the season. In Sale's first nine starts of the season he gave up a total of 12 earned runs as this outing raised his ERA over 50 points to 2.28. In this outing though he still managed to fan seven batters which through a K/9 view was actually his best strikeout outing of the season by a fairly large margin. The only knock on him so far is that his sub-9 K/9 isn't quite what the other elite arms are posting as his K/9 wasn't even top 40 among starters entering Tuesday. Part of this absolutely lies in his 9.2% swinging strike rate which is absurdly low for a pitcher with Sale's pure stuff, but what's concerning to pair with that is he isn't inducing either soft contact or ground balls at a higher rate than he did last season when he had a near 15% swinging strike rate.
Evan Gattis, Houston Astros - I wrote a week or two ago about how Evan Gattis getting sent to AA was actually good news for fantasy owners because he was being sent down to work on his catching game behind the plate because of how miserable the catcher position has been this season. However, he's played catcher just once since being called up and is still only DH eligible, and if he plays catcher only once a week like he has since he got recalled it's going to take a month to become catcher eligible. He's hit three homers in those seven games and has a chance to be one of the best fantasy catchers with his power potential, but he has to meet the position requirements first. Hold off until he get to three starts or so at catcher before snagging him, otherwise you'll have to try and work him into your UTIL spot and you likely have a better option there.
Matt Wieters, Baltimore Orioles - The catching position for me has almost turned into my last starter spot in my rotations as I'm just streaming a catcher every two weeks or so, which has led me to turn to Matt Wieters here as of late. He's currently on an eight game hit streak in starts and he notched another two hits Tuesday with his first stolen base of the season. In that span he's hit three of his four homers and his triple slash is up to .288/.333/.462 on the season. Wieters' hard hit rate is up a couple ticks but and he's also hitting fly balls at a pace that's closer to his career line after dropping to 32% last year (38.7% career average). Injury is always a risk for him, but catcher is so bad you have to try and find the hot hand if you don't have a Buster Posey or Jonathan Lucroy.
Josh Donaldson, Toronto Blue Jays - vs Ivan Nova $3,800 Donaldson has been really bad in the month of May triple slashing .197/.299/.355 with just three homers after hitting eight homers in the opening month of the season. The person that can help get him back on track? Sir Ivan Nova. Donaldson owns a career .438/.471/.500 triple slash, but only has one extra base hit which was a double. Donaldson's value on Fanduel keeps dropping and dropping and his 43.6% hard hit rate, 43.5% fly ball rate, and 54.8% pull rate are due.
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