Ottoneu Starting Pitching Drip: May 19–21

Welcome back to the SP Drip. My goal for this bi-weekly column is to comb through the upcoming schedule each week to find a few under-owned pitchers (less than 50% ownership across Ottoneu) who could be used to help you hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues or to make sure you’re hitting your innings pitched cap in points leagues. Tuesday’s article will cover the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and Friday’s article will cover the upcoming week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). That way, you’ll have time to start your auctions in time to actually drip these pitchers into your lineup.

Upcoming Schedule:

Teams with favorable schedules over the weekend include the Braves, Diamondbacks, Giants, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Rays, Rangers, and Red Sox.

Teams with tougher schedules include the Angels, Blue Jays, Cubs, Mariners, Orioles, Padres, Phillies, Reds, Rockies, Twins, and Yankees.

Highlighted matchups:

There’s a couple of recommendations in that Nationals-Tigers series. I’ll talk about Irvin below, but Patrick Corbin deserves some more attention after holding the Mets to just two runs in six innings yesterday. The strikeouts weren’t there — just one in the outing — but he’s now strung together four good starts in a row.

James Paxton came off the IL over the weekend and looked pretty good in his first start in more than two years. He struck out nine, walked one, and allowed just four hits in five innings. His velocity looked good and his stuff looked as good as it did back when he was a frontline starter for the Mariners. He’s lined up to start against the Padres which feels like a pretty risky matchup, but San Diego’s offense is mired in a season-long slump and you have to hope that Paxton is up to the challenge of shutting down their star studded lineup.

Carlos Carrasco is scheduled to come off the IL on Saturday and gets a nice easy matchup against his former team to ease him back to the big leagues. He wasn’t pitching very well before hitting the shelf with his elbow injury and I’d usually recommend waiting a bit after a pitcher is activated off the IL to let him settle back into their routine. The matchup is just too good to pass up and he’ll be extra motivated since this is the first time he’ll be facing the Guardians since coming over to the Mets a few years ago.

Hot Starters:

Since being called up at the beginning of the month, Jake Irvin has made a couple of good starts against the Cubs and Giants but was blown up for six runs in his last start against the Mets. The good news is that he struck out six and walked just one in that outing. He wasn’t a highly regarded prospect in the Nationals organization with the profile of a back-end starter. He’s got a nice matchup against the Tigers on Friday and that’s a good opportunity to see if he can bounce back from his last start and continue building on the success he saw in San Francisco.

Zack Greinke is still hanging around pitching for the Royals in his old age. His crafty approach to pitching worked well for him in his return to Kansas City last year and he’s back at it again this season. Over his last three starts, he’s allowed six runs in 15.2 innings with a 10:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He’s lined up to face the White Sox this weekend and then the Tigers next week.

Recap: May 12–14

Another rough round of recommendations as Ryne Nelson, Matthew Boyd, and Adrian Houser just didn’t have it last weekend. J.P. France looked pretty good against the White Sox, lasting into the seventh inning with just a single run allowed on three hits and one walk.