Michael McGreevy has turned a quiet stretch into one of the sharper pitching notes in fantasy baseball. The St. Louis Cardinals right-hander delivered his third straight quality start and won his second straight outing without allowing a run, making him a useful name for fantasy managers working a Thursday FAAB cycle with a $100 budget.
In his most recent start against the Padres, McGreevy needed just six innings to allow three baserunners and set a career high with nine strikeouts. That kind of line is why he was rostered in 39% of Yahoo leagues and why RotoWire placed a $3 FAAB bid on him in its waiver-wire coverage, which doubles as a preview for Sunday’s FAAB columns.
The appeal is easy to see if you are trying to patch innings without emptying the wallet. Through eight starts, McGreevy owns a 2.18 ERA and a 0.86 WHIP, numbers that fit a pitcher helping fantasy staffs right now. He has also stacked up a quality start in each of his last three outings, giving him the sort of short-term stability that often drives waiver bids in the middle of a season.
The catch is just as easy to see. McGreevy’s strikeout rate remains modest, with a 6.6 K/9 on the season, so this is not the profile of a pitcher likely to carry a fantasy rotation on swing-and-miss alone. Even after the nine-strikeout breakout against San Diego, the larger question is whether he can keep missing enough bats to hold this level while the run prevention stays this strong.
For now, the answer in FAAB terms is modest rather than aggressive. McGreevy looks like a useful add for managers chasing stability, especially in leagues that make decisions on Thursday, but his value still depends on the same thing that made him relevant in the first place: keeping the ball on the ground, limiting traffic and giving the Cardinals enough innings to finish the job.
