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Welcome to the RotoBaller MLB Recap. In this feature, we will highlight a few key fantasy baseball takeaways from the games played during last night's slates. These viewpoints can be both positive and negative and will hopefully help to provide insight into different roster moves you should consider making based on trends and statistical nuggets from around the Show.
Fantasy baseball has a lot of moving pieces with all the different scoring settings that are possible to play under, so I will always do my best to spotlight where players gain or lose value in certain game types. For the sake of simplicity and consistency, every time I mention Fantasy Points in these articles I will be using DraftKings' scoring system, which goes as follows: 3*1B + 5*2B + 8*3B + 10*HR + 2*RBI + 2*R + 2*BB + 2*HBP + 5*SB for hitters, and 2.25*IP + 2*SO + 4*W + 2.5*CG + 2.5*CGSO + 5*NH - 2*ER - 0.6*H - 0.6*BB - 0.6*HB.
Without further ado, let's get right into the latest slate of games from the 2021 season and try to figure out how to take advantage of what we saw transpire.
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Wednesday, April 21
The baseball gods love the A's as they pull off a miraculous 11th straight W as the Cubs trounce the Mets 16-4 thanks to a team-wide effort in which no one truly excelled at the plate
It all looked like Oakland was about to lose for the first time in forever, but it turned out Wednesday wasn't going to be that day. The Athletics got into the bottom of the ninth trailing Minnesota 9-10 but were able to tie it up at double-digits each. Extra-innings time followed. And the A's were again down 10-12 when their time to bat came back. No problem, though, as the Moneyball Gods were aware of the developments and helped Oakland snatch another W thanks to a couple of errors by Twins Travis Blankenhorn and Luis Arraez.
In a completely opposite story, the Cubs absolutely erased the Mets from yesterday's slate as Chicago went away with a resounding 16-4 victory in a game that was pretty much over by the start of the fifth inning with the Cubbies already up by five. Chicago had a good one on Matt Duffy (3-for-4, all singles, 1W, 3RBI), but the truth is that no one really put on a monster performance with Baez getting the highest fantasy score (24 DKFP) on just a single blast on four at-bats.
- Josh Donaldson missed a little bit of time to kick the year off, playing on Apr. 1 but missing all other games until Apr. 14. He's already back for good: 4-for-6 against the A's yesterday with his first homer of the season, no strikeouts at all, and 4 H total that helped him get into the top-3 performers of the night. Not bad for JD, who's currently posting up a 236 wRC+ (on 14 PA, hold your horses).
- Both Trevor Rogers and Max Scherzer started yesterday for Miami and Washington respectively, and the two of them got into a tight race for the no. 1 fantasy spot thanks to mighty performances. Rogers ultimately got that accolade, though, thanks to a 7 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 8 K performance in which 82 pitches were all he tossed before calling it a day. Max wasn't far from that outing with a 6 IP, 4 H, 1 W, 9 K himself, though he handed a free base via HBP.
- In the highest-scoring game of the day, neither Frankie Montas (OAK) nor Kenta Maeda (MIN) was able to put up positive DKFP starting for their clubs. Montas allowed the most hits of the day with 9 H (3 HR) and 6 ER while Maeda surrendered 8 H and 3 HR for 7 ER himself. No wonder both were out of the field by the end of the fourth inning.
- Jeimer Candelario tanked the day big time on Wednesday. As many times as he went to the plate (6 AP, 6 AB), Candelario could do literally nothing as he finished 0-for-6 with 4 (!!!) Ks on the day... even grounding into a double-play to round up his dud. Crazy bad outing for Candelario, who otherwise has been good on the year with a 9/1/7/0/.295 line through 16 G.
- After a rough start to the year that has him at a high 9.00 ERA through three games and 10 IP, Jose Quintana finally got his excrement together and tossed 5 stuffed IP (95 pitches) against Texas in a loss that only saw him surrender 1 ER, the fewest he's finished with in a single game this year. Quintana K'd 8 batsmen but he was bad at walking folks with 4 BB on the day. The H counter stopped at 2 before he left the field for good, a moment in which he solidified as a top-8 fantasy performer on Wednesday.
- Joey Gallo, he of the three-true-outcomes, walked a slate-leading (tied with Anthony Rizzo) 3 times against the Angels yesterday but he only contributed to the bad side of the TTO stuff: no hits in the other two PAs striking out both times while at it. Ugh.
- Yes, Nelson Cruz couldn't make it 11th straight games with a hit as he couldn't connect against Oakland on Tuesday, but he went back to it to start a new streak yesterday going 2-for-5... hitting two bombs past the fences of Oakland's field. Plenty great outing by the vet, who finished the day as the no. 2 batter in DK with 32 FP and 6 HRs on the season already.
- Avisail Garcia, dude. Five times did he walk up to the plate, five times did he struck out. Yikes. Up-and-down start to the year for Garcia, who is slashing a low .241/.318/.431 while posting an average of 101 wRC+ through 66 PA. It's been three games in a row in this San Diego series in which Garcia hasn't even reached 5 FP, so knowing they are over must be music to his ears.
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