Fantasy Baseball: Two-start pitcher rankings for Week 5 identify Vince Velasquez, Jake Faria as sleepers

The two-start options for Week 5 (April 23-29) are mostly uninspiring, says our Scott White, who identifies the few sleepers in the bunch.

By Scott White

Apr 22, 2018 at 5:12 pm ET • 2 min read

More Fantasy Baseball: Week 5 sleeper hitters | Hold these fast-starting pitchers | Waiver Wire

No shortage of two-start options this week, our first in which every team plays at least six or seven games.

Problem is few of them are good.

I see seven here who are easy-peasy, no-questions-asked, automatic, for-sure starters when in line for two starts. I see six more who I'd go as far as to call advisable in any format this week, two of which -- Kevin Gausman and Jake Faria -- have ERAs over 5.50.

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Those two are both owned in less than 80 percent of CBS Sports leagues, but my favorite sleeper for this week is Vince Velasquez, who's coming off three consecutive quality outings with at least a strikeout per inning. Long term, I don't have as much confidence in him as either Gausman or Faria, but he has the best matchups and the hottest hand.

Those first 13 might be as far as I'm willing to go in categories leagues. Zack Wheeler is kind of interesting with that Padres matchup, but he has a ton of failure on his resume. In points leagues, you can push it a little further, perhaps as far as Brandon McCarthy at 20.

A couple fun side notes: There's a chance Walker Buehler, the top prospect called up to start Monday's game for the Dodgers, makes a second start thanks to a doubleheader Saturday, which would possibly cost Kenta Maeda his second start. There's also a chance Jack Flaherty makes two starts if he's called up to fill in for the injured Adam Wainwright Tuesday. Both seem like big risks outside of NL-only formats, though.

Two-start pitchers for Week 5
Rank	Pitcher	Start 1	Start 2
1	Gerrit Cole, HOU	vs. LAA	vs. OAK
2	Carlos Carrasco, CLE	at BAL	vs. SEA
3	Jose Berrios, MIN	at NYY	vs. CIN
4	Rick Porcello, BOS	at TOR	vs. TB
5	Gio Gonzalez, WAS	at SF	vs. ARI
6	Robbie Ray, ARI	at PHI	at WAS
7	Masahiro Tanaka, NYY	vs. MIN	at LAA
8	Kenta Maeda, LAD	vs. MIA	at SF
9	J.A. Happ, TOR	vs. BOS	vs. TEX
10	Mike Foltynewicz, ATL	at CIN	at PHI
11	Vince Velasquez, PHI	vs. ARI	vs. ATL
12	Kevin Gausman, BAL	vs. CLE	vs. DET
13	Jake Faria, TB	at BAL	at BOS
14	Zack Wheeler, NYM	at STL	at SD
15	Tyler Chatwood, CHC	at CLE	vs. MIL
16	Tyler Skaggs, LAA	at HOU	vs. NYY
17	Ian Kennedy, KC	vs. MIL	vs. CHW
18	Mike Leake, SEA	at CHW	at CLE
19	Chad Bettis, COL	vs. SD	at MIA
20	Brandon McCarthy, ATL	at CIN	at PHI
21	Jake Odorizzi, MIN	at NYY	vs. CIN
22	Zach Davies, MIL	at KC	at CHC
23	Trevor Cahill, OAK	at TEX	at HOU
24	Chris Stratton, SF	vs. WAS	vs. LAD
25	Marco Gonzales, SEA	at CHW	at CLE
26	Tyler Mahle, CIN	vs. ATL	at MIN
27	Matt Moore, TEX	vs. OAK	at TOR
28	Chad Kuhl, PIT	vs. DET	vs. STL
29	Ty Blach, SF*	vs. WAS	vs. LAD
30	Jarlin Garcia, MIA*	at LAD	vs. COL
31	CC Sabathia, NYY	vs. MIN	at LAA
32	Alex Cobb, BAL	vs. TB	vs. DET
33	Miguel Gonzalez, CHW	vs. SEA	at KC
34	Josh Tomlin, CLE	vs. CHC	vs. SEA
35	Sal Romano, CIN	vs. ATL	at MIN
36	Jordan Zimmermann, DET	at PIT	at BAL
37	Bryan Mitchell, SD*	at COL	vs. NYM
38	Carson Fulmer, CHW	vs. SEA	at KC