MLB Player News

The 28-year-old southpaw will take the hill for the Brewers on Saturday against the Cubs. Lauer landed on the temporary inactive list back in June while he was “working through some additional work on his health” and also battled shoulder issues throughout the season. He wound up pitching well down the stretch at Triple-A Nashville, including piling up 10 strikeouts over seven innings of four-run baseball his final time out last week. He could make for an interesting streaming option in deeper leagues if needing strikeouts on Saturday.

He’ll fill in for Will Smith while Smith is dealing with neck inflammation. The 31-year-old veteran has zero fantasy upside and likely will only fill in for Dalton Rushing when he needs a breather during Smith’s absence.

This is what Dave Roberts said would happen last night, and so it comes to pass. It’s backdated to June 8, so Smith is only guaranteed to miss the next seven days. Dalton Rushing figures to get most of the playing time in Smith’s absence and is a recommended pick up in the short term if you need catching help.

He had missed the last three games with a back injury. Emerson is hitting .242/.319/.548 with four homers in his first 19 games and can be plugged back in lineups in leagues with daily transactions.

Lopez scored on a sacrifice fly in the first inning after reaching second on a disengagement violation and stealing third base. He tacked on another steal late in the contest. While he’s not going to hit .350 all year, his expected batting average of .298 screams that this isn’t exactly a megafluke. Lopez has been incredible for fantasy baseball managers this year and that should continue as the summer rolls on.

His on-base percentage is back below .300 -- he’s taken one walk all month -- and outside of a three-hit game on Tuesday, Marte has been extra-base hit or bust this month. The .295/.345/.524 May doesn’t seem like it fixed everything just yet. Marte did have the only one of three Diamondbacks hits that went for extra bases today, so at least there’s that.

Fairbanks touched 97 and struck out Nolan Arenado and LuJames Groover to hold a 2-0 lead. It was a needed quiet outing for the veteran, who hadn’t had an outing without traffic since June 1 and cut his ERA to 6.63 -- his first ERA under seven since April 5’s appearance as an opener before he hit the paternity list.

He was thoroughly outdueled by Tyler Phillips, and the underlying numbers here remain uninteresting in fantasy baseball. Kelly got whiffs on just 3-of-33 swings, and while he’s only really been dusted by the Nationals in his last seven starts and is giving the Diamondbacks length, he has just 24 strikeouts over those seven starts. He’ll draw the Angels next week.

It was impressive, as Phillips managed a 35 percent whiff rate on 23 swings while pounding the zone with 18 called strikes. Michael Petersen came on to strand a leadoff single in the sixth inning to keep Phillips’ 1.86 ERA intact. Since being stretched out as a starter/bulk pitcher, Phillips has allowed zero runs, three runs, three runs, and now zero runs again while allowing just one home run. He’ll face a tough test next week against the Phillies but he’s shown enough to be a potential NL-only league streamer.

The three-hit attack raises Dingler’s season average to .254. Dingler remains top-nine in expected wOBA on the season at .403, and his expected batting average of .294 is still being roundly underperformed. He’s been a quiet success story at catcher this year -- good enough to DH on some of his days off, like today -- and remains an easy starter in fantasy leagues.

After his hot start in April, Keith hit a woeful .217/.286/.261 in May, managing just one extra-base hit over the entire month. We’ve got a faint sign of life here, but Keith probably doesn’t belong on mixed league rosters unless we see a more prolonged spike than this.