Fantasy Baseball: 5 Pitchers to Stream for Week 3
Lance Lynn, St. Louis Cardinals
ESPN ownership: 20.5 percent
Yahoo! ownership: 41 percent
Waylaid for all of 2016 with Tommy John recovery, St. Louis Cardinals righty Lance Lynn has yet to reclaim his groove in 2017, boasting a sub-7.00 strikeouts per nine (K/9) rate that is a shadow of the near-9.00 marks we saw during his salad days as a stud-in-waiting for the Cards.
Meanwhile, the control issues that stunted his ascent to stardom are still nagging, with Lynn's early 2017 sample showing a 10.6 percent walk rate, which is bloated even by his standards, to go with a 46.8 percent first-pitch-strike rate that is second-worst among all MLB starters on the young season.
Lynn's sputtering start should ensure that he is fairly available for streamers in what could be a nice two-start slate for the beleaguered Cards' hurler. Lynn is set to toe the rubber at home against an ice-cold Pittsburgh Pirates squad on Monday before visiting the whiff-happy Milwaukee Brewers in Miller Park on Saturday.
The Pirates are a bottom-eight offense in terms of on-base plus slugging (OPS) against righties this year, and while their league-low 14.2 percent swinging-strike rate against righties might not play into Lynn's hand, Pittsburgh hitters have mustered bottom-three weighted run production on sliders since 2016, per Fangraphs. Lynn's slider has been his most effective pitch thus far, boasting a 12.5 percent swinging-strike rate across an admittedly meager 24-pitch sample.
The plus matchup here is Milwaukee, who leads the majors with a 25.6 percent team strikeout rate since the start of last season. We know that Milwaukee can slug, but their team-wide splits favor Lynn -- since 2016, Milwaukee has managed .766 team OPS against lefties, a top-six mark league-wide, but a .715 clip against righties, a bottom-five mark.
There is a chance that Lynn is a couple of grooved two-seams away from a hard shelling at the pitcher-unfriendly Miller Park, but the odds of him stifling the Brew Crew and posting some gaudy strikeout numbers seems pretty strong, too.
