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Fantasy Baseball Six-Pack: Is there any hope for the Guardians' offense?

If you were looking for a distraction from your various fantasy problems, we've got you. Here's a six-pack of stats to help navigate the MLB landscape ...

167: Flame-throwing Atlanta prospect AJ Smith-Shawver is likely to get a look in the rotation this weekend, either Friday or Saturday, and his elevation is an actionable fantasy event. The 20-year-old has struck out 167 batters over 112 1/2 professional innings, including 45 Ks in 33 minor-league frames this season. Smith-Shawver has already visited four levels this year, excelling at every stop. His major-league debut Sunday was plenty impressive:

If you have a fantasy squad with pitching needs, don't leave him unattached. He should get the Nats in his first big-league start, so the matchup shouldn't scare anyone off.

98.9: Jhoan Duran's four-seam fastball averages a league-high 101.9 mph, which is plainly silly. But let's appreciate the fact that his splitter/splinker averages 98.9 mph, occasionally reaching triple digits. There isn't another split in baseball that gets in the neighborhood of that velocity. Only five other pitchers average 90 mph or better. This thing is as evil a pitch as has ever existed:

It shouldn't surprise you to learn that batters are hitting .071 against Duran's split/splink this season with zero extra-base hits. Just utterly unfair.

35: As a team, the Cleveland Guardians have hit a league-low 35 home runs, which is 11 fewer than the roster above them in the ranks. It's only 14 more dingers than Pete Alonso has hit on his own. The Guardians are slugging .349 and are on pace to hit just 96 home runs for the year, which would be the lowest full-season total (excluding 2020) since the Royals hit just 95 in 2014. Eventually, we're going to get a José Ramírez power surge, but this lineup doesn't offer many other sure things.

6.85: There's no shortage of ways to describe just how galactically bad the Oakland A's have been so far this season, obviously. Entering the week, the team's pitching staff had allowed a league-worst 6.85 runs per game, an almost unthinkable number — more than 1.4 runs per game worse than Colorado, the team ranking next-to-last.

Let's please remember the A's play half their games in one of the sport's most pitcher-friendly parks.

Oakland is also scoring the fewest runs per game in MLB (3.38) this season, which is unfortunate. Just an unserious franchise, all things considered. If you've been streaming against the A's this year, congrats. The next five pitchers scheduled to face this team are Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras, Adrian Houser, Julio Teherán and Freddy Peralta.

2.5: Luis Arráez currently has a swinging-strike rate of just 2.5%, easily the best in the big leagues. He has struck out only 11 times through 56 games, which of course is ridiculous. Over his past 22 games, he has just two Ks. Arráez is a mile ahead of everyone else in batting average (.399) and on-base percentage (.450). Just in case you missed it, he had a 5-for-5 performance with three doubles and five RBI over the weekend.

It's no simple thing for a player with minimal power and no base-stealing ability to emerge as a fantasy difference-maker, but delightfully enough, Arráez is pulling it off. MLB itself has officially declared that we're on .400 watch until further notice.

.378: Tim Anderson's season has been mostly horrendous to this point — we're still waiting on his first home run of 2023 — but he has managed to hit .378 over his past nine games (14-for-37), which is promising. Anderson has hit north of .300 each of the past four seasons, and he won a batting crown in 2019, so things had to improve at some point. There's nothing concerning about his EV or hard-hit rates, and his expected batting average is among the highest in the league. The power outage probably won't end, however, unless his outrageously low flyball rate (15.1%) begins to normalize.