Week 12 Weekend Streamer Hitter Matrix
You must be able to see it, Mr. Manager. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Manager? Why? Why do you persist?
Because you choose to. Because sifting through recently discarded hitters is your jam. Because the occasionally interesting platoon bat may just be set up for an interesting occasion.
So, why do we persist? Because we all do. Why play fantasy baseball if not to savor the constant oneupsmanship. Oh yeah, pal o’ mine, you’re going to burn your FAAB on the hot young prospect? So what, I’ve got the entire Rockies lineup in Bing Bong Ballpark in Vegas this weekend.
Beat that.
In this article, I’ll use the Fangraphs Lab Baseball Sim tool to highlight some potential hitters to stream in this weekend’s juiciest matchups. And I’ll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes and the extent of how you can use the Sim tool yourself.
For those of you in leagues with daily moves and lineups, this could be an especially fun tool, especially when agonizing over start-or-sit lineup decisions.
The tool allows you to select an upcoming game, fills in the projected lineups and starting pitchers for you, and allows you to choose which projection system or stats you want to use to run the simulation with. You can even customize with the weather (which is not automated for you) and with park factors (which are automated if you toggle yes on the “Enabled” check mark).
From here, pick your matchups. For this exercise, I’ll be reviewing some of the hitter matchups that present the most potential for hits and homers this weekend, relative to league average.
Let’s start out in Baltimore, with the three game set between the visiting Padres and hosting Orioles this weekend.
Below is the lineup grid output from the Baseball Sim tool for Friday’s matchup. With league averages listed up top, each player’s home run probability, given the simulation’s projection, with players shaded in red with a rosier projection, relative to league average. Besides home runs, you can project for for outs, non-outs, singles, doubles, and so on.
Across the weekend, here are the hitters projected for the most prodigious power output, filtering for those hitters who are most likely to be available in your leagues.
| Name | Team | Friday Non-out/HR | Saturday Non-out/HR | Sunday Non-out/HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coby Mayo | BAL | 30.6%/3.9% | 31.3%/4.2% | 31.7%/3.9% |
| Colton Cowser | BAL | 35.5%/4.4% | 36.0%/4.9% | 35.5%/4.1% |
If you try this out yourself, you may notice Gavin Sheets looks to be a solid play as the projected cleanup hitter against two right-handed starters on Friday and Saturday, but is projected to be out of the lineup on Sunday against southpaw Trevor Rogers. For that reason, I stick to Coby Mayo and Colton Cowser, who both are projected to be in to face the trio of righties the Padres are projected to start this weekend.
Sticking to the interleague east coast matchups, Luke Raley and Dominic Canzone make for interesting platoon matchups with a trio of righties on tap as the Nationals send out Zack Littell, Cade Cavalli, and Miles Mikolas this weekend against the Mariners.
Since 2024, Nationals Park has graded out as an above average park for left-handed bats according to Savant, with a 103 park factor for overall offense and home runs. And as noted on Wednesday by Vlad Sedler, the pitching staff for the Nats has been in the bottom-half of the majors in ERA since May 1.
And just in case Luis García Jr. is available in your shallower leagues, we’ll throw him in as well, as the first baseman will get plenty of run against three righties from the Mariners this weekend and is comfortably plugged into the second spot in the lineup of late.
| Name | Team | Friday Non-out/HR | Saturday Non-out/HR | Sunday Non-out/HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Raley | SEA | 32.6%/5.5% | 32.9%/3.5% | 31.9%/5.1% |
| Dominic Canzone | SEA | 34.3%/5.7% | 33.1%/3.7% | 34.1%/5.3% |
| Luis García Jr. | WSN | 33.1%/4.1% | 33.0%/4.0% | 34.0%/4.0% |
Last but not least, and potentially the most fun offensive matchup of the weekend, is that between the Rockies and the Athletics, who host their friends from Colorado in the “Bing Bong Ballpark” that is Las Vegas Ballpark this weekend.
Famously, the A’s locked horns with the Brewers on Monday in a 15-14 marathon. We’ll see if the Rockies have the firepower to add to the lore that is starting to attach itself to this park.
Since May 1, these are two of the worst pitching staffs in all of baseball by ERA, as again Vlad Sedler noted in his Wednesday piece, with the A’s checking in with a 5.09 ERA in that stretch (good for 28th in the majors) and the Rockies with a 6.82 ERA (thankfully, this is the worst in the majors).
With a pair of lefties in Gage Jump and Jeffrey Springs on tap for the A’s on Friday and Saturday, platoon splits will not favor some left-handed Rockies. For the A’s, they are set up to face only Kyle Freeland, that familiar favorite opponent for fantasy managers.
While the simulation tool already gives this matchup the benefit of the Sutter Health Park park factors, I wanted to try and use the existing Las Vegas Ballpark park factor data from Baseball America (which is from 2023) into the simulation using the Park Factor sliders provided. Upping the HR park factor to 1.4, which is closer to the Baseball America listing, makes this look especially interesting. Just look at all this red for the Friday matchup!
And if you want to go back and simulate the Monday 15-14 game at Vegas Ballpark, here’s a link to get you started, with the updated park factor (yes, it will look like this was a highly possible outcome).
| Name | Team | Friday Non-out/HR | Saturday Non-out/HR | Sunday Non-out/HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zack Gelof | ATH | 38.1%/6.4% | 37.4%/6.5% | 35.5%/6.0% |
| Henry Bolte | ATH | 39.0%/4.3% | 39.0%/4.6% | 37.2%/4.0% |
| Max Muncy | ATH | 36.3%/5.1% | 37.1%/5.4% | 35.1%/4.7% |
| Ezequiel Tovar | COL | 33.9%/4.1% | 33.8%/5.1% | 31.7%/3.1% |
| Jake McCarthy | COL | 33.3%/0.9% | 32.2%/1.1% | 36.7%/2.0% |
| Kyle Karros | COL | 38.8%/2.6% | 37.6%/3.4% | 34.9%/2.0% |
| Cole Carrigg | COL | 35.2%/2.7% | 34.5%/3.4% | 35.8%/2.0% |
The projections do not like Rockies hitters for home runs, but expect them to be far above league average in terms of “non-out” outcomes in all three games.
In particular, with two lefties on the mound in this series for the A’s, TJ Rumfield and Troy Johnston are likely hurt in the power department. But youngsters Cole Carrigg (switch hitter) and Kyle Karros (righty), both could use this as a bit of a coming out party. While they don’t project well, there are things to like in both profiles, especially in deep leagues.
Heading into Wednesday, Karros had started nine straight games for the Rockies, slashing .385/.500/.538 with six runs and as many strikeouts as walks in that span. He has been more of an average hitter (.308 in the minors last year) than a power bat (6 HR in the minors last year).
Carrigg is the more accomplished prospect and is a definite power-speed threat, stealing 30 bases with six homers in 57 games at AAA this season as a 24-year-old. Carrigg debuted on Monday with a triple and a walk in four plate appearances. With the reportedly difficult playing surface at Vegas Ballpark, Carrigg seems to be a good candidate to run a hot BABIP this weekend.
Cool!
Had no idea this was there. Definitely need to dig into this more.
Debating between a Karros stream or buying into the Royce Lewis story and nabbing him,