Giving Lance Lynn a Shot on Thursday Night

I am more of a head-to-head guy than a roto player, and my main leagues over the years have mostly been daily leagues rather than weekly. That’s rather odd for the industry, but there are certainly a lot of leagues out there that are similar and sometimes get neglected in fantasy writing. One of the main reasons people run from these kinds of leagues are streams, but with weekly caps on player additions I feel these kinds of leagues are sort of “making a comeback.” With that said, there are still ways to stream pitchers and at this time of year, if you don’t have a strong pitching staff or one of your rotation members just got shut down – looking at you Jeff Samardzija and Stephen Strasburg – finding a replacement is extremely difficult.

One pitcher I would gamble on is Lance Lynn, who is scheduled to start this week in place of Jake Westbrook. Lynn has spent the past few weeks in the bullpen, so he is available in a lot of leagues and if any pitcher on the waiver wire has the upside of Lynn, I don’t know what kind of league you’re playing in. Sure there are guys with solid matchups, but Lynn has been pitching to major leaguers all year and for the most part was very effective against them. He sputtered after the All-Star break and his move to the bullpen as warranted, but if I am looking for one good start off of a waiver wire member I am most certainly willing to put my faith in Lynn against the Dodgers on Thursday.

Even in his struggles, he was still striking out batters at a decent clip. The 5.23 ERA over his last eight starts is ugly, but 39 strikeouts in 41.1 innings at least gives the ability to get a big strikeout night and could potentially push you ahead of your opponent in that category given the right circumstances. Most of the time when I look at the waiver wire this time of year I end a post with “this guy is probably not a team saver,” but I honestly believe Lynn could be that guy that saves your team. If you have an offense that should perform well against your opponent, streaming a guy like Lynn could provide you with enough juice on the pitching end to squeak by. That’s the situation I am in in my head-to-head league and I am confident Lynn succeeds against the Dodgers this Thursday. If you are looking for someone to stream, go with Lynn if he is available. If it doesn’t work, feel free to blame me. I think it will.