Fantasy Baseball: 5 Pitchers to Stream for Week 24

Doug Fister, Boston Red Sox

Start: September 13th vs. Oakland Athletics
ESPN ownership: 36 percent

Here's another American League East veteran who also seems like an appealing play for Week 24.

Doug Fister has been in fine form over the last month, rattling off 34 1/3 innings of 2.62-ERA ball with a respectable 23.5% strikeout rate along with an impressive tandem of a 27.5% soft-contact rate and 56.7% ground-ball rate. He'll look to keep things rolling against an Athletics squad that is a three-true-outcomes bonanza, posting high marks since the break in isolated slugging (ISO), walk rate, and, of course, strikeout rate.

A pitcher with modest stuff like Fister (his swinging-strike rate on the year is an unspectacular 7.7%) doesn't seem like an ideal candidate to overpower the Athletics, but consider that his go-to sinker is coaxing a 20% strikeout rate this year, up more than 8% from last season, and the Athletics have struggled to produce against sinkers all season.

At the very least, Oakland's power-sapping home park (third-worst in home run factor over the last three seasons) puts a quality start firmly in the heart of Fister's range of possible outcomes.