That fantasy baseball championship is so close, you can taste it.
Each and every day, you check your team’s live scoring and track that movement through your standings.
You probably find yourself dissecting the standings, analyzing each statistical category to see where movement is possible.
Enhance your team’s prowess in the right category and that trophy is yours come the end of September.
Typically, the strikeouts category is one where movement is most often found.
Focusing on wins or quality starts can be difficult with so many pitchers throwing fewer than six innings per start, and those who are trying to lower their ratios tend to do it with closers and relief pitchers.
But if you can add the right starters to the mix, not only can you help yourself in those other categories, but the boost you can get in strikeouts could prove to be the difference-maker you need.
Take a long look at the Astros pitching staff.
Rookie right-hander Spencer Arrighetti seems to have figured things out late in the season.
He has been an unstoppable force with three straight quality starts and four in his past five.
But that is not what we’re chasing.
How about the 43 strikeouts over his past 31 innings?
Arrighetti is coming off back-to-back double-digit strikeout games and gets the Red Sox next week, a team that has the seventh-highest strikeout rate over the past two weeks.
You also should look at his new teammate, Yusei Kikuchi, who has been a strikeout beast since coming over from Toronto at the trade deadline.
In his three starts with Houston, Kikuchi has allowed just five runs over 16 ²/₃ innings and has 24 strikeouts in that span.
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He also will take on Boston next week then has a second start against Baltimore, a team with the 10th-highest strikeout rate over the past two weeks.
The baseball purists immediately will turn to the Spider-Tack scandal in Houston, cite the team’s history of cheating and dismiss what these players are doing right now.
But in the fantasy realm? Who cares?
Winning your fantasy baseball championship isn’t about purism, it’s about accumulating the stats you need to win your league.
If MLB wants to investigate this massive increase in strikeouts, let them. No one is taking away your fantasy championship.
Just ask anyone who won a fantasy baseball title with Barry Bonds on their roster.
Howard Bender is the head of content at FantasyAlarm.com Follow him on X @rotobuzzguy and catch him on the award-winning “Fantasy Alarm Radio Show” on the SiriusXM fantasy sports channel weekdays from 6-8 p.m. Go to FantasyAlarm.com for all your fantasy baseball news and advice.