Series to Watch: Indians vs. Tigers

This series was expected to carry a bit more real-life intrigue, but the Indians (a.k.a. this guy's pick to win it all) currently reside in the cellar of the AL Central while the Tigers (division winners for four straight years) are merely in third. That said, the division is closely knit, and even the last-place Indians are approaching .500 (28-31) with an equal number of runs scored and allowed. From a fantasy perspective, this series has it all, including monster bats, high-strikeout starting pitchers, the return of a legend (Justin Verlander), and an insane pitching matchup to kick off a series that is loaded with intrigue on the mound and at the plate.

v.

Game 1: Friday, June 12 at 6:08pm CDT: Danny Salazar vs. David Price
In a series stacked with aces, Game 1 offers the most powerful matchup. Salazar started the 2015 campaign much as he did '14, packing his bags for Akron, but he suddenly looks like a legitimate No. 2 starter (the type of pitcher that can go toe-to-toe with David Price). At times, Salazar has looked the part of an ace, and though his inconsistencies are still an occasional issue that can stand in the way of his best-laid plans, the issue is mostly an afterthought for a pitcher who currently leads all big-league starting hurlers with 11.8 Ks per nine innings this season.

Price has been a bit prone to the disaster start himself this season, particularly when facing the Yankees, who have knocked him around for 16 runs across 4.3 innings in his last two starts. He has been lights out since the last pinstriped pasting, posting two double-digit strikeout games in his last four turns and he hasn't given up a homer since May 16. The current ERA of 2.70 would qualify as the second-best mark of his career if it stands for the full season, and his occasional lapses boil down to too many hits sneaking through the infield, as Price's tendencies to stay around the strike zone can be beneficial to a high-contact team that is looking off the plate.

Game 2: Saturday, June 13 at 3:08pm CDT: Carlos Carrasco vs. Justin Verlander
Carrasco went from under-the-radar sleeper to overhyped commodity in the course of an off-season, and his inconsistencies of 2015 have caught too many people by surprise considering that he has never started more than 21 games in a season, and outside of his 2014 breakout, the right-hander has a history of being easy-to-hit despite top-notch stuff. He has allowed at least four runs in five of his 12 starts this season (really 11 turns if you exclude the April 14 game in which he faced two hitters), and though the upside exists for a big day, the formidable opponent is enough to have me looking elsewhere in DFS while giving me a shaky roster trigger in season-long leagues.

We have been waiting more than two months to see if Verlander can resurrect at least a semblance of the pitcher who won both the Cy Young and MVP awards back 2011. The right-hander followed up that effort with a second-place finish for the Cy hardware in '12, but he hasn't been the same since, with 424 innings of a 3.99 ERA and a shortage of headache meds in the manager's office. The picture of health in previous years, Verlander is assured of falling short of 200 innings this season for the first time since 2006, and the triceps issue that delayed his start to the 2015 campaign further clouds his ability to rediscover past glory.

Game 3: Sunday, June 14, 12:08pm CDT: Corey Kluber vs. Alfredo Simon
Kluber has had a couple of mediocre starts in a row, but even when off-kilter he has managed 15 innings of 3.60 ERA baseball and a 13:4 K:BB ratio. He punched out at least 10 hitters in three his last four starts in May, and though the Tigers present an imposing threat to his stat line, Kluber has the upside to dictate the performance of opposing hitters when his command is on point. He already has 109 strikeouts this season in just 91.3 innings, and the three walks from his last start represent the only time this season that he has given away more than a pair of free passes. The Tigers will need to swing early in the count to avoid Kluber's deadly Slydra.

Simon takes a contrasting approach to Kluber, preferring the pitch-to-contact strategy thanks to mediocre stuff, leaving him vulnerable to the vagaries of balls in play. His 2.76 ERA is nearly a full run lower than his FIP, but beating the metrics is par for the course for Simon, whose ERA has beaten his FIP in all but one of the past four seasons. The outlier happened to be in the one season of heavy sample size, and his K rate of 6.4 batters per nine innings is unlikely to sustain such excellent run prevention.

Michael Brantley: Heading into the season, the easy analysis was to say that Brantley would split the difference between his 2013 OPS of .728 and the .890 OPS of last season, and the outfielder has obliged the fantasy community with a .300/.379/.458 slash line that is a greater reflection of development than regression. He is a throwback player whose frequency of walks and strikeouts were close to even over the past three years, and Brantley has taken the Joe DiMaggio impersonation to a whole new level this season, with 28 walks against just 15 strikeouts in 219 plate appearances, for a 6.9-percent strikeout frequency that is the lowest in the AL by a decent margin.

Jason Kipnis: The Bret Saberhagen impersonation continues. It's an odd numbered year, so of course Kipnis is raking, with an MLB-leading 275 plate appearances of .333/.410/.511 hitting. He has compiled 28 extra-base hits, including 19 doubles that lead the American League, and Kipnis is contributing an 8-for-12 on stolen base attempts. He started Cleveland's first 58 games of the season before finally getting the day off Thursday, so the narrative will insist that he is well rested heading into this series.

Carlos Santana: A true switch-hitter, Santana displays both power and patience when batting on either side of the plate. He enjoyed a power spike last season with 27 bombs, tying a career-high that was set in 2011, and though his pop hasn't hit those same highs this season Santana's six-pack of homers puts him right on pace with the long-ball counts of his other two full campaigns. Word around the campfire is that he has a clause in his contract that if he leads the majors in walks for two consecutive seasons then he gets to team up with Steven Tyler and Run-DMC for a rock-rap-Latin fusion of Walk This Way; Santana's 45 walks currently lead the AL, but he trails Bryce Harper and Paul Goldschmidt by three and four walks, respectively, for the MLB lead.

Brandon Moss: The left-handed slugger was protected from same-side pitchers while in Oakland, as the A's maximized his value by using him almost exclusively against right-handers. Things were not expected to change with his move to Cleveland, given the Indians' similar reputation for platoon exploitation, but Moss has been used on a daily basis this season. The strategy has worked to the tune of a .299/.400/.478 batting line against southpaws in 80 plate appearances. Moss hasn't hit a homer in a week, so he's about due for one in this series.

Miguel Cabrera:All he does is hit, and hit with reckless abandon. Miggy has played 11 full seasons in his career, and in every one he has either knocked 50-plus doubles or swatted 30-plus homers (though he has never accomplished both in the same year). With 11 doubles and 12 homers through 58 games this year, he is on track to crack the 30 homers but he is behind on 50 doubles. After five consecutive seasons with an OBP of at least .393 (which included three seasons of at least .420), Cabrera suddenly plunged to a .371 mark in 2014 but he is back on track this season with a .431 OBP that leads the American League. The 32-year old is basically match-up proof.

J.D. Martinez: He was just rolling along at the start of the season, hitting homers and driving in runs to prove 2014 was not a fluke. Martinez hit five bombs in his first 11 games, but has knocked just another five over the wall in the 49 games since. The biggest difference between this season and last appears to be his performance against left-handers: last season his slash was .307/.362.640 against southpaws, but his magic lefty-hitting slippers have gone missing this year, hitting an empty .217/.333/.283 and frustrating fantasy managers everywhere.

Ian Kinsler: Kinsler's game has gone through multiple phases during his career: there was the oft-injured phase of his mid-twenties when he averaged 123 games per season from 2006-10, which partially overlapped with the homer-phase when he hit 30-plus homers twice in a three-year stretch yet never hit more than 20 in any other campaign. He was an extremely efficient baserunner until his age-30 season (86.1 percent success rate on 158 attempts), but the age has not done well for his speed numbers (71.6 percent success on 88 attempts). Now entering the rapid decline phase of his career, Kinsler seems to have left his power bat at home when packing for the baseball season, one year after he lost the ability to draw walks.

Yoenis Cespedes: He is quietly having his finest season since his rookie year, with career-highs in two of the three slash categories to go along with a doubles explosion; his 18 two-baggers put him in a tie for second place in the American League this season. Cespedes is on fire right now, going 9-for-18 with two homers and three walks in his last five games, and though he has historically hit better versus lefties, his short-sample OPS for 2015 is nearly 200 points higher versus right-handers, including 17 of his 18 doubles.