Waiver pickups are one of the keys to any fantasy manager’s success, of course. Making the right pickup in even a single week could be the difference between winning or losing your league at the end of a grueling six-month season.

Two-start pitchers, in particular, always garner an enormous amount of interest. Whether you play in points, categories, or rotisserie formats, a pitcher who is set to make two starts in the upcoming week is sure to generate significant attention and FAB bidding.

But what if you could avoid all the competition for two-start pitchers by adding them . . . a week early? Sure, you probably wouldn’t want to start any of them immediately, but wait a week and they’d be hot commodities.

If you have the room, adding a two-start pitcher a week before his two-start week can not only save you time, effort, and FAB dollars, but it can give you a significant edge on your competition. So, in this article each week, I’ll provide a list of the widely-available two-start options for two weeks down the road, ranking them in terms of likely value during that week.

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A couple of notes:

First, you don’t need me to tell you that if Jacob deGrom is making two starts in a week, you should pick him up off your waiver wire (though you should invite me into your league). Instead, I’ll use a cutoff of 70% rostered (and for this week, I’ll push it to 71% so I can add in Eduardo Rodriguez, given how poor the options are).

Second, it is incredibly difficult to assess rotations at the moment given the extra off-days MLB has built into the early-season schedule. Teams can easily skip a spot in the rotation without missing a beat. So this week, in particular, the options are underwhelming, and I’ve done my best to carefully look at the upcoming schedules and make an educated guess as to projected starters.

I told you this was a rough week! Of the options, Rodriguez and Andrew Heaney should be rostered regardless, and Johnny Cueto, Trevor Rogers, and Matt Harvey can be used in a pinch given their matchups. Other than that, you’ll need to be utterly desperate to take a dip in the waters.

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