Fantasy Baseball Week 8 Preview: Two-start pitcher rankings identify Brad Peacock, Kyle Gibson as sleepers

Week 8 is one where you'll want to be especially active on the waiver wire, according to Scott White, at least as far as your pursuit of two-start pitcher goes.

This week should be a fun one.

After a week that featured an outrageous number of two-start pitchers, particularly those on the high end, Week 8 (May 13-19) is just the opposite — not so many choices overall, but a number of interesting ones with higher availability than we're used to seeing.

The first 12 are basically must-start and not the sort of pitchers you could expect to find on the waiver wire, but Brad Peacock at No. 13 begins a string of three consecutive owned in less than 80 percent of CBS Sports leagues. Each of Peacock, Brandon Woodruff and Kyle Gibson is coming off his best start of the season, with the latter two showing a clear upward trajectory, and each is an advisable sleeper for all formats.

After Yusei Kikuchi at No. 16 come a couple more with high availability, Jerad Eickhoff, who has been surprisingly reliable since returning from the minors. Mike Fiers and Tyler Skaggs also aren't such terrible choices in a points league, if you're looking to get as much volume as you can, but I'd stop short of recommending them in traditional 5x5 formats. The chances of them hurting your ratios are just too high.

If you're really looking to push the limits, any one in the top 24 is at least defensible, though you're taking on much greater risk with the bottom five of that group. In some cases, it may not be worth freeing up the roster spot to use them.

Rank	Pitcher	Start 1	Start 2
1	Chris Sale, BOS	vs. COL	vs. HOU
2	Carlos Carrasco, CLE	at CHW	vs. BAL
3	Shane Bieber, CLE	at CHW	vs. BAL
4	Noah Syndergaard, NYM	at WAS	at MIA
5	Jose Berrios, MIN	vs. LAA	at SEA
6	Matthew Boyd, DET	vs. HOU	vs. OAK
7	Charlie Morton, TB	at MIA	at NYY
8	Joe Musgrove, PIT	at ARI	at SD
9	Aaron Nola, PHI	vs. MIL	vs. COL
10	Robbie Ray, ARI	vs. PIT	vs. SF
11	Jack Flaherty, STL	at ATL	at TEX
12	Kyle Hendricks, CHC	at CIN	at WAS
13	Brad Peacock, HOU*	at DET	at BOS
14	Brandon Woodruff, MIL*	at PHI	at ATL
15	Kyle Gibson, MIN	vs. LAA	at SEA
16	Yusei Kikuchi, SEA	vs. OAK	vs. MIN
17	Jerad Eickhoff, PHI*	vs. MIL	vs. COL
18	Mike Fiers, OAK	at SEA	at DET
19	Tyler Skaggs, LAA	at MIN	vs. KC
20	Mike Foltynewicz, ATL	vs. STL	vs. MIL
21	Reynaldo Lopez, CHW	vs. CLE	vs. TOR
22	Tanner Roark, CIN	vs. CHC	vs. LAD
23	Danny Duffy, KC	vs. TEX	at LAA
24	Trent Thornton, TOR*	at SF	at CHW
25	Kyle Freeland, COL	at BOS	at PHI
26	Jonathan Loaisiga, NYY*	vs. BAL	vs. TB
27	Andrew Cashner, BAL	at NYY	at CLE
28	Jeremy Hellickson, WAS	vs. NYM	vs. CHC
29	Shelby Miller, TEX	at KC	vs. STL
30	Manny Banuelos, CHW	vs. CLE	vs. TOR
31	Freddy Peralta, MIL	at PHI	at ATL
32	David Hess, BAL	at NYY	at CLE
33	Chris Paddack, SD	at LAD	vs. PIT
34	Ryan Carpenter, DET	vs. HOU	vs. OAK
*RP-eligible | ^expected to follow opener