Fantasy Baseball: 5 Pitchers to Stream For Week 7

CC Sabathia, New York Yankees

Starts: May 16 at Kansas City Royals, May 21 at Tampa Bay Rays

ESPN ownership: 15 percent

There's no sugar-coating how awful CC Sabathia has been over the past month, with the New York Yankees veteran sporting a 7.39 ERA over that span that amounts to the third-worst mark across the majors and allowing nearly two homers per nine innings with a minuscule strand rate a tick above 60 percent.

That recent pummeling erased what had been a strong start to 2017 for Sabathia, who sported a tidy 1.47 ERA over his first three starts. But just as the 4.38 xFIP over that span augured negative regression, Sabathia's 4.65 xFIP over the past month provides some small solace that while certainly his days as a dominant frontliner are behind him, he certainly shouldn't be quite this bad.

And if CC is going to get himself right, this would be the week to do it, with the big lefty set for a couple of road dates against the sputtering Royals and the strikeout-prone Rays.

Despite his unsightly results, Sabathia still has a crafty changeup and slider combo working this season, with the former coaxing a 25-plus percent swinging-strike rate and the latter limiting hitters to a .311 OPS across a 180-pitch sample. That slider will certainly be in play here as both teams grade near the bottom of the pack in terms of weighted run production against the slider on the season. In general, these two teams are about as plum as it gets as matchup-fodder for lefties: the Rays are tops in the league in terms of strikeout rate against southpaws, while the Royals have managed an anemic .566 OPS against them, good for second-worst in baseball.

Given his hair-raising surface statistics, fantasy owners will be understandably reticent to deploy Sabathia, but if you black out the name and focus solely on the matchups, the beleaguered Yankees' hurler seems like a darn good bet to help desperate fantasy owners scratch out some production.