Fantasy Baseball Forecaster for Week 24: Playoffs Week 2, Sept. 8-14

Fantasy baseball's Week 24 wraps up playoff semifinal matchups in ESPN standard head-to-head leagues, with the two teams that emerge victorious squaring off in the championship round beginning next week. Ten of the 30 teams are scheduled for seven games, no team is scheduled for as few as five, and there are no games at Colorado's Coors Field.

Several Eastern Division teams are aligned for critical, playoff-relevant series that represent their final head-to-head chances against one another:

• The New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies begin the week with a four-game series at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, Monday through Thursday. The Phillies held a six-game lead in the National League East race entering play on Friday, Sept. 5, while the Mets had a four-game lead for the final NL wild-card spot.

• The New York Yankees host the American League Central-leading Detroit Tigers for three games at Yankee Stadium from Tuesday through Thursday. Though the Yankees trailed in the AL East race by three games at publishing time, their record was only 2 ½ games behind that of the Tigers, should the division lead change hands.

• The Toronto Blue Jays welcome the AL West-leading Houston Astros to Rogers Centre for three games from Tuesday through Thursday. The Blue Jays entered play on Sept. 5 with a half-game lead for the AL's No. 1 playoff seed (over the Tigers) and a 4 ½-game lead over the current No. 3 seed Astros.

• The Yankees then wrap up their week with a three-game weekend series against the Boston Red Sox, played at Boston's Fenway Park from Friday through Sunday. The Yankees began play on Sept. 5 a half-game ahead of the Red Sox, with the two teams currently aligned to battle it out for home-field advantage for a wild-card series as the AL's Nos. 4 and 5 seeds.

Among intriguing starting pitching matchups projected for Week 24, the Texas Rangers' Jacob deGrom aligns for a Friday start against the Mets at New York's Citi Field, which would be his first against the team with whom he won the 2014 NL Rookie of the Year Award and back-to-back NL Cy Young Awards in 2018-19. In that Yankees-Red Sox series, we also project to get a rematch of the Yankees' Max Fried and Red Sox's Brayan Bello, who squared off in New York for a dazzling pitchers' duel on Aug. 22, that one won by the Red Sox, 1-0.

Lineup lock times

Scheduling quirks for Week 24

Starting pitchers for Week 24

Hitting charts for Week 24