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 20 has an earlier-than-usual start, due to a doubleheader between the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on Monday. They'll play a split, day/night doubleheader, with one game making up their May 24 postponement. The first game is scheduled for 1:40 p.m. ET.
With the extra game, both the Cardinals and Reds have rare, eight-game weeks. In a week where 22 of the other 28 teams are scheduled to play only six times, that's a considerable volume advantage for fantasy managers with those teams' players.
The Cardinals, by the way, are scheduled to play all eight of those games on the road, with advantageous hitting matchups due to five games being played at Great American Ball Park and three at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park. They have also averaged over a run and a quarter more runs per game on the road (5.09) than at home (3.77).
If the Toronto Blue Jays are to continue their upward climb in the standings -- they're 13-8 over their past 21 games, moving within two games of the American League's final wild-card spot -- this is the week in which to make a statement. They'll play six road games, all of them against the top two teams in the AL East, beginning with the first-place Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field from Tuesday to Thursday and followed by the second-place New York Yankees from Friday to Sunday.
The National League's race for the No. 1 seed goes under the microscope during the weekend, as the East-leading Atlanta Braves and Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers (who have a 1.5-game advantage for the league's best record) play a three-game set, with NL Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski scheduled to start the middle game, on Saturday. The first two games are at American Family Field, and the finale is at Journey Bank Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for the 2026 MLB Little League Classic.
