Week 8 Hitting Planner

The Fantasy Baseball Hitting Planner is the essential guide to setting your lineup for the upcoming week. Every Saturday, we provide you with favorable hitting matchups for teams, as well as which hitters are hot or not. The Pitching Planner, complete with upcoming two-start pitchers, will be posted on Sunday.

Taking BP: Ryan Howard (strained quadriceps) is expected to return from the 15-day disabled list to play at Atlanta on Friday. He has been taking batting practice and he's about to go on a rehab stint at Class A Lakewood … Randy Winn has a 17-game hitting streak going through Friday … Only 20 other major leaguers have more stolen bases this season than Russell Martin's seven … Derrek Lee is hoping to be ready to play this weekend, but a strained neck makes him a risky start for Week 8 … Edgar Renteria and J.J. Hardy are the only two shortstops hitting at least .300 with six or more home runs and 20 or more RBI … Jose Vidro leads all designated hitters this season with 46 hits … Reggie Willits leads all AL rookies with a .371 batting average and has a hit in 22 of his last 24 games. The Angels will keep giving him starts as long as he's hitting like this … Shannon Stewart left Friday's game against San Francisco after getting hit in the left wrist by a pitch … Brandon Phillips extended his hit streak to 20 games on Friday … Rickie Weeks is still dealing with a sore right wrist, so check his status Sunday before making a decision on him this week.

Projections are for May 21-27 games. All stats are through Friday's games.

Taking into account all games with at least a 50 percent chance of precipitation according to the Weather.com, the following might be threatened by poor weather: Tampa Bay at Chicago White Sox (60 percent), Pittsburgh at Cincinnati (60), Oakland at Baltimore (60) on Saturday; Tampa Bay at Chicago White Sox (60), L.A. Angels at N.Y. Yankees (60), N.Y. Mets at Florida (60), Seattle at Kansas City (60), Pittsburgh at Cincinnati (60), Boston at Texas (60) and Cleveland at Detroit (60) on Sunday.

Five other favorable hitter schedules

1. Minnesota Twins -- at TEX (3), vs. TOR (3)

• The Rangers and the Blue Jays rank among the bottom five pitching staffs in the majors for the month of May.

• They'll stay at home for seven games this week, and their opponents both have ERAs higher than 4.30 on the road.

• While the Indians are on the road all week, they happen to face two staffs that have ERAs higher than 4.40 in the month of May.

• The Cards have the same schedule as the Reds, just inverted, and they get six games at home.

• The M's are on the road for seven games, but two series are against two of the worst staffs in baseball.

Five other below-average hitter schedules

1. N.Y. Yankees -- vs. BOS (3), vs. LAA (3)

• The Bronx Bombers face two of the top three pitching staffs in the AL this week.

• The Rockies will be away from Coors Field for six games, and they'll face two staffs that currently rank in the top 10 in ERA.

• The Red Sox staff sits just behind the Padres in staff ERA and the Twins are better than average.

• The Cubbies have the same schedule as the Brewers, just switched around, but they're a better offensive club on the road than Milwaukee.

• While they do have six home games, they face the second-toughest pitching staff in the AL (OAK) and the Devil Rays haven't been pitching horribly in May (4.49 ERA).

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