Zac Gallen, SP, ARI
Gallen went seven strong innings on Friday, giving up just one run on five hits against the Giants. The youngster impressed in his first big league action last season and has backed it up in his first 43.0 innings of 2020. His current 2.09 ERA ranks top-10 in the majors among qualified starters. He doesn't collect a ton of strikeouts (9.84 K/9) but his stuff has proven to plenty be difficult to hit this season. His 31.8% Hard% coming into Friday's outing ranked fourth in the majors (qualified starters), while his 12.9% SwStr% ranked 13th. His 3.83/3.69 FIP/xFIP does indicate that there will be some regression in that sparkling ERA but that shouldn't bother fantasy owners much.
Sixto Sanchez, SP, MIA
Sanchez hurled seven shutout innings against the Rays on Friday. He received a no decision for his efforts but he struck out 10 and walked just one in the contest. It was just the youngster's second Major League start, so there isn't much data to go off of, but he has been mighty impressive thus far. Through 12.0 big league innings he has an ERA/xFIP of 2.25/2.21 and has 14 Ks versus just one BB. What we do know is that he throws hard; he averaged 98.5 MPH on his fastball in his first start, which is faster than any starter in the majors this season besides Jacob DeGrom. This 22-year-old certainly comes with plenty of risk, but if you need to add a starter at this point in the season, they are all going to be risky. He is currently owned in 37.5% of ESPN leagues.
Jedd Gyorko, 3B/1B, MIL
Gyorko hit his 4th and 5th homers of the season on Friday night. The 31-year-old batted third for the Brewers with left-hander Derek Holland on the bump for the Pirates. He hit a homer off of Holland in the 1st and then added another off of right-handed reliever Nick Mears in the 7th; which was his first off a right-hander this season. Gyorko is not at all an asset for your season-long fantasy roster but he is intriguing in daily fantasy when the Brewers face a left-handed starter. He came into Friday's game with a .413 wOBA against lefties and now has four homers in 31 plate appearances against LHP this season. The Brewers offense has been a struggle all season so Gyorko should bat in the meat of the order, like he did Friday, whenever they face a southpaw starter.
Eugenio Suarez, 3B, CIN
Suarez went 3 for 3 and hit his 7th home run of the season on Friday night. Suarez has now homered in four of the last six contests and has raised his batting average to .190 on the year. 2020 has been awful for the 29-year-old Third Baseman as the three-hit game was just his second multi-hit game of the entire campaign. His struggles has forced some fantasy managers to jump ship but those who have stuck with him will be happy to see that he is on a six game hitting streak in which he is batting .364 with four homers and eight RBI.
Michael Wacha, SP, NYM
Wacha gave up four earned runs and lasted just three innings against the Yankees on Friday afternoon. He did rack up seven strikeouts in the short outing which puts his K-rate at an impressive 13.24 K/9 for the season; but the high K numbers haven't translated into success for the 29-year-old so far. He now owns a hefty 7.41 ERA but his FIP/xFIP (4.51/3.74) are considerably lower so if he could manage to keep the ball in the park a bit more he may yet have some fantasy value. He is currently yielding more than two home runs per nine (2.12), and nearly half of the balls put in play against him go for hits (.444 BABIP), improvement on these numbers would most likely make him worthy of a pickup.
This is just a small sample our daily analysis, join our member area for over 80 daily player updates sent to your inbox every morning and track your team online. Click here for details: http://www.insiderbaseball.
