Start: June 6th at Texas Rangers
ESPN percentage owned: 67.3%
If you're waiting for Daniel Mengden to twirl his instantly iconic 'stache and warp back to the silent-movie era, get in line. The Oakland Athletics' righty is on a run that makes almost no sense to modern stat-watchers, proving light on strikeouts (16.2% strikeout rate), heavy on hard contact (36.5%) and liners (24.2%), yet stingy enough with walks (comically-low 2.7% rate) that his 2.91 ERA and 3.20 fielding independent pitching (FIP) aren't all that distinct.
Whether or not you buy into Mengden long term, now's a good time to give your shallow-league waiver wire one last check, since the Oakland hurler is in a nice spot to keep his improbable run going for one more week. Mengden squares off against a Texas squad that has really struggled against righties of late, scraping by in the month of May on a .155 team isolated slugging on the back of a well-below-average 31.0% group hard-contact rate.