Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers will face his former team -- the Tigers -- in the last week of the fantasy baseball regular season. Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Tristan H. Cockcroft is senior writer for fantasy baseball and football at ESPN. Tristan is a member of the FSWA Hall of Fame. He is also two-time LABR and four-time Tout Wars champion.
Fantasy baseball's Week 21 represents the final week of the regular season in ESPN standard head-to-head leagues. After this week, the top four teams in the standings will advance to a four-week playoff tournament, with teams squaring off against each other in two-week matchups.
The New York Yankees, the American League's leading wild-card team (up 9.5 games on the first team outside the cutoff) and sixth-best team in the majors in terms of winning percentage, face a challenging week of home matchups. Their recent October rivals, the Houston Astros, visit Yankee Stadium from Tuesday through Thursday, before their longtime rivals, the Boston Red Sox, come to town for a four-game series Friday through Sunday.
That series includes a Saturday doubleheader, with one of the games making up their June 6 postponement. There's a chance that Max Fried (elbow, 15-day IL, who the team claims shouldn't be sidelined for more than the minimum stay) might be ready to make a start against the Red Sox. He'd be eligible for activation beginning on Saturday, meaning he could pitch in either the doubleheader or the Sunday finale.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have a compelling week of matchups, beginning with a three-game trip to Truist Park to face the Atlanta Braves. The Dodgers hold a two-game lead on the Braves for the NL's No. 2 playoff seed -- which brings with it a first-round bye (the No. 3 seed does not) -- at publishing time, while trailing the Milwaukee Brewers for the No. 1 seed by two games.
The Dodgers then host the Detroit Tigers (Tarik Skubal's former team) for a three-game weekend series from Friday through Sunday. Skubal is projected to face his former teammates in a Saturday start.
The Red Sox-Yankees doubleheader is neither the only one of the week nor the only one on Saturday. The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants also play a double-dip on that date, but it's to accommodate the Giants' travel to fit in a Monday, Aug. 31 makeup game in Atlanta (which is the Monday of fantasy's Week 22). The Diamondbacks and Giants will both be off on Sunday, with that game merely moving up by a day.
The Chicago White Sox, who continue to maintain an AL Central lead of 3.5 games, visit the Minnesota Twins, the next-closest team in the divisional standings. They'll play three games at Target Field from Friday through Sunday in a series where the Twins could get staff ace Joe Ryan back in action. (Note: Ryan is not yet projected as part of the Forecaster grid, as it's still unclear whether or not he'll first require a minor league rehab start before activation.)
