Starts: May 9th vs San Francisco Giants
ESPN ownership: 18 percent
Injury-plagued New York Mets starter Zack Wheeler may have his inning limit and control problems capping his season-long fantasy upside, but as a plug-and-play, he remains intriguing, especially given his potential for volume strikeouts.
Granted, his opponent this week, the scuffling Giants, haven't exactly been prone to punchouts so far this season, but in every other respect, they have been rather dreadful at the dish. That's particularly true against righties as San Fran grades close to league worst in terms of weighted runs created plus (wRC+) versus righties, ISO versus righties, hard contact versus righties -- you name it, and the Giants stink at it.
Of course, control issues always loom for Wheeler (his current 3.42 walks per nine actually represents a career-best mark), but the Giants seem unlikely to make him pay for his wildness, at least not in the earned-runs category. They have been especially futile at generating fly balls against righties, making their minuscule homer-per-fly rate seem less like a bad-luck bug and more like a soft-swinging feature.
Wheeler will be a high-variance streaming play until further notice (and perhaps for the rest of his career), but this is as nice a spot as any to roll him out there to try to catch lightning in a bottle.