Fantasy Baseball Week 13 Preview: Top 10 sleeper pitchers include Hunter Brown, Taj Bradley (2024)

Hunter Brown has been fading his four-seamer of late and has seemingly turned his season around with a 2.91 ERA, 0.97 WHIP and 10.1 K/9 in his past six appearances. It seems unlikely that the White Sox, of all teams, would put an end to that run.

Taj Bradley is showing the makings of an elite bat-misser in his second major-league season. The Twins are a mid-tier lineup, but he just had an 11-strikeout gem against a similar Cubs lineup in his latest outing.

The matchups are terrible, with the one at Coors Field being particularly scary, but Jake Irvin has been so reliable all season that he's sort of automatic in a two-start week. If you're apprehensive about this one, though, then the next seven probably aren't for you either.

Braxton Garrett is coming off a pair of bumpy starts and doesn't seem to have as sharp of a slider as a year ago. But he's had some good outings, too, and has the benefit of facing two bottom-five offenses this week.

Kyle Gibson's starts have been good, for the most part, with the strikeouts ticking up in the last few on the strength of his sweeper. He should be in for more of the same against a Marlins lineup that rates as the second-worst in baseball by runs scored.

Brandon Pfaadt has been one of the biggest underachievers by xERA but hopefully began to close that gap with a strong performance against the Angels last time out. He'll be facing a Nationals lineup this week that isn't a total breeze but does rank in the bottom third in runs scored.

I know I said I'd cool it on the Reese Olson hype, including in the video auto-playing on this very article, but these matchups are just too inviting for me to forgo him in a points league, where it's less about ratios than pure accumulation. The White Sox are of course the lowest-scoring team in baseball, and the Braves have been among the lowest-scoring since late April.

Chris Paddack lined up for two favorable starts in Week 12 (June 10-16) and came through in the first one with 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Rockies. The second will come against the Athletics this weekend, giving us a sneak peak into his one matchup against that same bottom-feeder lineup in Week 13 (June 17-23).

After falling into a bit of a rut, Alec Marsh did a better job mixing his six pitches in his latest start against the Yankees and wound up one-hitting them over seven innings. If he can do that to that lineup, imagine what he could do to the Athletics this week.

Even in his best starts this year, Triston McKenzie has struggled to keep the WHIP down because of all the walks, so this recommendation is strictly for Head-to-Head points leagues. But in that format that rewards volume over efficiency, you have to like what he's working with this week, facing two lineups (Mariners and Blue Jays) that rank in the bottom third in runs scored.