10 Fantasy Baseball Players to Buy and Sell for Week 12

Sell Justin Verlander

Justin Verlander is, in short, awesome. He's fantastic. If you own Justin Verlander, you've loved owning him every second this year, and I'm sure it's hard to imagine a scenario in which you are going to give him up.

Verlander's fWAR of 3.5 is tied for 3rd-highest among all qualified starters. His 1.61 ERA trails only Jacob deGrom, his 2.48 FIP is 5th in baseball, and he's striking out 31.7% of hitters this season, also 5th-best in MLB. Make no mistake, Justin Verlander is good. But is he this good?

Verlander is 35 and at the moment is on pace to have the best season of his career. His previous career-best ERA was 2.40 in 2011, and over the last 3 seasons, it was 3.38, 3.04 and 3.36. He has an unsustainably low BABIP of .212 (it was .272 last year, and the league average is .291) and is allowing just 0.72 homers per nine innings, which would also tie a career low.

I certainly wouldn't be looking to move Verlander somewhere else, but if you can swap him for an elite bat, it might make sense. Verlander's numbers could very well tick a bit in the wrong direction in the second half of the season.