Fantasy Baseball Stats: Daily All-Stars from May 25
Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
What a day to return home and restart the daily fantasy baseball stats recap. Any day that has a bench clearing brawl is a good one for me.
As entertaining as the Red Sox-Rays brawl was, it didn’t yield any great performances. But we did have a first in 2014, and that’s where we start.
Daily Fantasy Baseball MVP
Josh Beckett — Los Angeles Dodgers
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As we’ll soon see, there were plenty of good pitching performances today, but a no-hitter is tough to top.
Will Meadows recently gave us plenty of reasons to believe in the resurgence of Beckett, and Sunday’s performance only strengthened that. I also have to personally thank Beckett for making me look good in last week’s Dixon’s Picks.
Beckett’s been a hot pitcher all year and pitching on 2013 playoff team that’s starting to get pointed in the right direction, he’s a guy you want on the roster right now. He’s still fairly lightly owned in fantasy leagues, but that won’t last forever. Don’t let more strong outings stay on your waiver wire.
Daily Honorable Mentions
1. Adam Wainwright — St. Louis Cardinals
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Unfortunately, you won’t find this guy in many fantasy free agent pools. A very solid case can be made that this has been the best pitcher in baseball throughout 2014. That definitely continued on Sunday, with a dominant performance against a scuffling Reds offense.
There’s not much to add with Wainwright, but if I’m looking for a pitching upgrade, this is one of the first guys I’m targeting. A lot of other pitchers — even great ones — tend to be either spectacular with a mix of risky, or consistent with a slightly lower ceiling. Wainwright combines the best of all worlds.
2. Hunter Pence — San Francisco Giants
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One of the absolute hottest hitters in the game was all over the place on Sunday, earning the only hitter’s spot on today’s fantasy baseball stats recap, edging out teammate Michael Morse, and Atlanta’s Evan Gattis
If you bought low on Pence after a slow start, congratulations. He’s one of the most unorthodox players in the game and when he’s hard, opposing pitchers have an awfully hard time dealing with him.
3. Dallas Keuchel — Houston Astros
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Another guy that we profiled recently and made me look good with last week’s Dixon’s Picks. What can I say? I’m easy to please.
In all seriousness, if you’re looking for the hottest pitcher in baseball, look no further. He’s literally one out away from three complete game victories in a row and continues to be arguably baseball’s best surprise now nearly two full months into the year.
His availability rate is shrinking. If you’re lucky enough to have Keuchel available in your fantasy league, act fast. Very fast!