Fantasy Baseball Weekly Planner: August 12-18

The playoff push has officially begun and the standings have really been shaken up in the Wild Card hunt over the last week or so. With this point in the schedule we start to see a bit of a break in divisional games for some teams as MLB tends to save divisional games for September to make it more exciting and important down the stretch.

Team Schedules

Interleague Schedule

Who’s Hot

Ronald Acuña Jr. , OF ATL – It’s easy to get overshadowed this week with what Aristides Aquino and Yordan Alvarez did but that doesn’t mean Acuna didn’t have a heck of a week himself. He slashed .406/.457/1.000 with six home runs, 11 runs, 11 RBI, and three steals in seven games. That’s even with a 34.3-percent K-rate in 35 plate appearances. His teammate Ozzie Albies also had a solid week with a .500/.514/.941 slash line and three homers, 10 runs, seven RBI, and a steal. If those two stay hot along with Freddie Freeman , the Braves should be on their way to locking down the NL East.

Gio Urshela, 3B NYY – The reason the Yankees continue to set sail in the AL East is because of contributions like Urshela had last week. He slashed .421/.500/1.421 with six homers, 12 RBI, and eight runs scored in five games. Now, while the power display was great, his BABIP was just .200 so that’s a once a season type week from Urshela so look for a different Yankee to step up next week. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Mike Tauchman and what he did with his .444/.533/1.12 slash and five bombs, 12 RBI, seven runs, and two steals.

Nicholas Castellanos , OF CHC – The trade has been paying off for Castellanos and the Cubs as he slashed .367/.406/.900 with four home runs, eight runs, and six RBI in seven homers last week. The Cubs are now a couple games up for the NL Central lead and they will need Castellanos to keep hitting like this to power them to a bit more comfortable of a lead for the division. The easier hitter’s parks in the NL Central should also help his stat line down the stretch as well.

BrIan Anderson , 3B MIA – The Marlins offense has been picked on by everyone this year including the staff at FA as we keep recommending pitchers against them in DFS. However, Anderson had himself a solid week last week with a .429/.529/.964 slash line and four homers, eight runs, and seven RBI in eight games. He broke out a bit last season but this season he’s now topped 20 homers which isn’t bad considering how avoidable the rest of that offense is on a regular basis.

Who’s Not

Franmil Reyes , OF CLE – The adjustment to the AL Central hasn’t gone according to plan for Reyes just yet as he slashed a horrendous .048/.087/.095 in 23 plate appearances in seven games while adding just two RBI to his counting stats. His 47.8-percent K-rate certainly isn’t attractive either and the fact that his BABIP was .091 means he wasn’t getting robbed, he just wasn’t making good contact in the first place. The Indians had hoped that between him and Yasiel Puig that their outfield would be fixed but so far the returns haven’t helped their situation.

Adam Duvall , OF ATL – Duvall was on the who’s hot list last week and now it’s all come crashing back to Earth as he slashed .097/.152/.097 with two RBI and a run for the counting stats. While the Braves offense still kept humming, it wasn’t Duvall doing the pushing for it and he’s starting to show the reason he spent most of the season at Triple-A to begin with. If he keeps this up much longer, don’t be surprised if he goes back to Gwinnett in favor of another outfielder they want to give a shot to.

Cody Bellinger , OF LAD – The MVP candidate has yet to look this bad all year, but hey it happened to Yelich so why can’t it happen to Bellinger? He hit just .100/.182/.250 in six games and 22 plate appearances with a home run, three RBI, and a run added to the counting stats. He is clearly in just a minor slump at this point and the Dodgers can afford to have him slump as long as he comes out of it by the end of September. A bad week happens to everyone, and this was Bellinger’s week, at least for the time being.

Weekly Match-Up Breakdowns

The team on the left is showing stats for away games and the team on the right is showing stats for home games.

Weekend Match-Ups (Friday-Sunday)

Early Week Match-Ups (Monday/Tuesday – Wednesday/Thursday)