Fantasy Sports

Pfaadt surrendered just two hits and a pair of walks over seven frames, trading zeroes with opposing starter Andrew Abbott into the late innings of a throwback pitcher’s duel, with a fifth-inning solo shot by utilityman Santiago Espinal accounting for the only damage against him. The 25-year-old righty generated just eight swinging strikes, but threw an impressive 61 of 93 pitches for strikes. He’ll carry a strong 4.17 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and 51/10 K/BB ratio across 54 innings (nine starts) into a challenging road tilt on Tuesday against the division-rival Dodgers.

Crochet turned in his fourth consecutive strong performance during Wednesday’s afternoon matinee at Guaranteed Rate Field, limiting Washington’s lineup to just three hits and three walks over five shutout frames. The 24-year-old southpaw’s average fastball velocity remained in the mid-to-upper 90’s as he generated 11 swinging strikes and finished with a pedestrian 27 percent CSW. He wasn’t completely dominant in this one, but it was another encouraging outing after a couple rough starts at the tail-end of April. How he holds up with a traditional starter’s workload will be the central question as the season progresses, but obviously there’s a lot to like about his performance so far. He’ll bring a solid 4.18 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 70/12 K/BB ratio across 51 1/3 innings (10 starts) into a road matchup on Tuesday against the Blue Jays.

It was a towering blast, but it traveled only 345 feet, and a fan interfered with the ball over the fence, though it was correctly decided that it would have been a homer anyway. Statcast said it would have left nine of the 30 ballparks. It was Rutschman’s second career walkoff homer. He has four homers in his last three games after totaling five in his first 37. His OPS has jumped from .781 to .859 as a result of those three games.

De La Cruz supplied the lone runs for either side in a low-scoring Wednesday afternoon matinee at Comerica Park courtesy of a gargantuan 422-foot blast to left-center field off Tigers starter Casey Mize in the opening frame. It was his lone hit in four at-bats and his ninth round-tripper of the season. The 27-year-old corner outfielder has put together a nice breakthrough campaign so far for the struggling Marlins, batting .256 (46-for-180) with 25 runs scored, nine homers, 24 RBI and one steal through 45 contests.

Rogers rebounded nicely on Wednesday afternoon at pitcher-friendly Comerica Park, limiting Detroit’s upstart lineup to just three hits and a pair of walks over five frames, after being demolished for five runs over 3 1/3 innings his last time out against the Phillies. The 26-year-old southpaw hasn’t come close to re-discovering the form that made him a breakout sensation during the 2021 campaign, but this outing certainly represents a step in the right direction. His six strikeouts were his highest single-start total since April 17. He’ll bring a bloated 5.79 ERA, 1.76 WHIP and 37/19 K/BB ratio across 42 innings (nine starts) into a home outing on Tuesday against the red-hot Brewers.

Contreras is rapidly evolving into one of the premier four-category contributors in the entire fantasy landscape as his latest three-hit performance, his sixth of the season, raises his batting average to an astronomical .359 mark through 43 contests. The 26-year-old backstop crushed a three-run homer off Pirates southpaw Martín Pérez in the third inning and also added an RBI triple a couple frames later as Milwaukee hit five homers in a blowout victory. He’s up to 39 runs scored and 34 homers already to go along with six homers and three steals as well. There isn’t much left to say at this point besides legitimately asking if he’s going to surpass Orioles superstar Adley Rutschman as the consensus top catcher in fantasy at some point in the future.

Gasser got plenty of support from Milwaukee’s offense, which wound up tagging opposing starter Martín Pérez for nine runs over five frames to open the contest, enabling Gasser to cruise to a relatively easy win in his second big league outing. He finished with two strikeouts and only issued one walk. The 24-year-old southpaw wasn’t overpowering, as evidenced by just eight swinging strikes, but he managed to avoid hard contact in this one, limiting Pittsburgh’s lineup to just six batted balls with an exit velocity in excess of 95 mph. He’ll bring a sparkling 0.82 ERA, 0.82 WHIP and 6/1 K/BB ratio across 11 innings (two starts) into an extremely tasty road matchup on Tuesday against the Marlins.

Canzone was hitting .219/.286/.531 in 14 games before going down with a shoulder injury. He was ahead of Luke Raley on the depth chart at that point, but with Raley heating up, he might take more of a backseat for now, at least assuming that Mitch Garver is able to return to the DH spot in the coming days. If Garver lands on the IL, both Raley and Canzone could start in the outfield against righties, with Mitch Haniger DHing. That is the alignment today, as Canzone is playing left and batting seventh.

Lodolo still hasn’t had any arm problems as a major leaguer, but the rest of his body keeps betraying him. The 26-year-old was looking like a potential All-Star with his 3.34 ERA and 43/9 K/BB ratio in six starts since returning from his last round of problems with his left leg. Nick Martinez could return to the rotation in his place.

This is a surprise, but the Mets needed a starter for today (Joey Lucchesi, who is coming up from Triple-A) and the team just doesn’t have many optionable pitchers; it was just Buttó, Christian Scott and Reed Garrett. Buttó, who was 1-3 with a 3.08 ERA in seven starts, might rejoin the rotation in 10 days, though the Mets will also have Tylor Megill and David Peterson as rotation candidates then.