MLB

Fantasy Baseball: 5 Pitchers to Stream in Week 18

Tom Whalen  —  @tomcwhalen Jul 30th, 2018
Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse the slideshow

​Wei-Yin Chen, Miami Marlins

Starts: July 30th at Atlanta Braves, August 4th at Philadelphia Phillies
ESPN ownership: 1.5%

With a penchant for surrendering homers that all but negates his pitcher-friendly home ballpark, Miami Marlins lefty Wei-Yin Chen is a fringe play, even in NL-only leagues.

Or so you would think. Chen has actually tossed four quality starts in his last five appearances, with the one blip being a seven-run drubbing at the Washington Nationals that only the most committed deep-league masochist would have left in their active lineup. Even with the Washington wart on his ledger, Chen carries a 3.06 FIP and 21.9% strikeout rate over his last 28.1 frames, suggesting the net of his fantasy relevance might be widening.

This week's two-start turn against the Braves and Phillies might be a good place for desperate streamers to test those waters. Philadelphia has been a total dud against lefties over the last month, scraping by on a .110 team ISO against southpaws with a 24.7% group strikeout rate. Also weak against lefties of late is the overachieving Braves offense, which sports a .121 group ISO with a poor 15.9% strikeouts minus walks against lefties in July.

Of course, Chen is as far as you can get from a sure thing here: he carries a 10.47 ERA in 33.2 innings away from Marlins Park this season. To be fair, though, we're looking at 23 earned runs across three blow-up starts at Colorado, at the Cubs, and at the aforementioned Nationals--in other words, far more explosive environments than he's presented with this week.

Chen isn't much more than a reasonably informed coin flip, but streamers in a real bind will almost certainly find him out there for the taking.

Prev