Stream Hard Tuesday — Not Wednesday

If you’re coming down to the final three days of your last head-to-head baseball matchup of the year, or your roto league is a nail-biter, and your league has innings limits, then you might be thinking about taking advantage of a loophole that allows you to pile on innings in the day your limit is reached. This is definitely an option in Yahoo, as Jeff Zimmerman pointed out.

If you’re looking at a mass stream day, then Tuesday is your man. Wednesday is such a flake.

This recommendation is slightly about personnel. Tuesday has some decent streaming options. Shallow leaguers have Tommy Hanson and Ivan Nova (for a win at least), mixed leaguers can look at Bud Norris (For strikeouts), Hisashi Iwakuma at home, and Barry Zito in Los Angeles, and deep leaguers can load up on young guys like Patrick Corbin (v COL), Jacob Turner (v NYM, but maybe also R.A. Dickey), Casey Kelly (@ MIL) or Tyler Thornburg (v SD). That’s a decent haul.

But if you look at Wednesday, there are some standouts as well. Shallow leaguers might be able to pick up Mark Buehrle (v NYM), Ian Kennedy (v COL), maybe Edwin Jackson at home against the Phillies, and maybe even Homer Bailey (@ STL), but who knows after the no-no. Mixed Leaguers could consider all of those players plus Ryan Vogelsong in Los Angeles and Gavin Floyd (@ CLE). Deep leaguers have Chris Tillman (v BAL) and Travis Wood (v HOU). Also a decent day full of opportunity.

But there are a few caveats.

For one, there might also be another player in your league wanting to try this strategy. It would suck to dream on those last-day streamers and wake up to find the night owl on the West Coast has slunk in and ganked your pitchers.

And the second — and more league-independent — caveat is that the last-day schedule is notoriously fickle. If Baltimore is already thinking about their wild card game, there’s no way they’ll throw Tillman on Wednesday. Ditto Edwin Jackson. The Marlins may even sit Buehrle. And even if those teams don’t sit them, you never know if they give them a full start. They wouldn’t get the chance to battle through a bad spot in order to get the win, would they? That last win won’t mean a heck of a lot to the team, and unless it represents some sort of personal milestone for the pitcher, it’s more likely that they sit and a Triple-A long-shot gets the start. If that’s the case a) you might not know until late and b) you probably won’t want the pitcher, considering most of the high-profile prospects are shut down at this point due to innings considerations.

If you’re looking at overloading on a day, that day is tomorrow. So have at it!