Fred Zinkie has Castillo as one of his safest picks based in a 10-team draft<\/a>. This is for a 12-team league but what does that matter in this context? \u201cAccording to Relative Range data via Yahoo Fantasy Plus, Castillo is the 27th-safest starter in baseball,\u201d writes Zinkie.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
I was also able to grab a few reliable closers in Iglesias and Palencia. The Braves closer has at least 29 saves in three straight seasons. Palencia will get the first crack at closing on what should be a good Cubs squad. I\u2019ll reiterate that you should always be proactive on the waiver wire when it comes to relief pitching. There will almost certainly be relievers who emerge due to opportunities injuries or poor performance present, who can help you out.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at the rest of the SP staff. Abbott is a polarizing name this season. With Hunter Greene sidelined for up to four months after elbow surgery, Abbott is the de facto ace for Cincinnati. He\u2019s entering his prime years and is coming off his best MLB season with a 2.87 ERA and 5.6 WAR, finishing top-10 in NL Cy Young voting. As a groundball pitcher, he isn\u2019t going to miss many bats, so the K numbers aren\u2019t ideal. While his ERA should go up, you aren\u2019t going to find many Opening Day starters this late in your draft.<\/p>\n
Lastly, we took a flier on the Verlander farewell tour. The future Hall of Famer should give everything he\u2019s got at 43 years old in what should be his final MLB season. He pitched well last year for the Giants and could pick up some more wins on a better Detroit team. Verlander was my last pick, so you\u2019re basically getting him for free. Why not?<\/p>\n
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Takeaways with drafting No. 7: In points formats, I really like this approach of waiting on SP. Maybe it isn\u2019t going full ZeroSP or HeroSP, but some iteration where you\u2019re not spending too much of your high draft capital on the position. Obviously, there\u2019s positional scarcity but based on projections, pitching is less valuable. But if you\u2019re going to miss out on one of the top bats (Judge, Ohtani, Soto, Witt), then it makes sense to shift gears to SP in the first round. There won\u2019t be as much of a difference between that second tier of bats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 MLB season is almost here and that means you\u2019re likely prepping for your fantasy baseball draft.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2276],"tags":[58537,2001,662,5,136,3800,1207,3297,535,888,854,147,28,922,2102,872,2179,388,13095,331,2291,620,1251,4,1586,16505,1258,877,40,104,1456,297,89,1956,1073,105,5144,1734,314,382,396,129,103,79149,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-618774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-draft","8":"tag-2026-mlb-season","9":"tag-andrew-abbott","10":"tag-austin-riley","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-brewers","13":"tag-brice-turang","14":"tag-bryce-harper","15":"tag-cal-raleigh","16":"tag-cincinnati","17":"tag-daniel-palencia","18":"tag-daulton-varsho","19":"tag-detroit","20":"tag-fantasy-baseball","21":"tag-garrett-crochet","22":"tag-hunter-greene","23":"tag-jake-cronenworth","24":"tag-jo-adell","25":"tag-justin-verlander","26":"tag-kyle-teel","27":"tag-luis-castillo","28":"tag-major-league-baseball-draft","29":"tag-mariners","30":"tag-matt-wallner","31":"tag-mlb","32":"tag-mlb-draft","33":"tag-mock-draft","34":"tag-ohtani","35":"tag-paul-skenes","36":"tag-phillies","37":"tag-raisel-iglesias","38":"tag-randy-arozarena","39":"tag-rays","40":"tag-red-sox","41":"tag-ryan-pepiot","42":"tag-ryan-weathers","43":"tag-seiya-suzuki","44":"tag-shane-baz","45":"tag-soto","46":"tag-spencer-torkelson","47":"tag-tarik-skubal","48":"tag-white-sox","49":"tag-willi-castro","50":"tag-willy-adames","51":"tag-yahoo-fantasy","52":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}