As the season drags along, the quality of players in the free agent pool continues to dwindle, although the diamonds in the rough certainly continue to command plenty of demand and fairly high prices. Here's a recap of this past week's FAAB action:

As one can see, Jacob Faria was easily the hottest commodity this week after yet another quality start for Tampa Bay. In two starts on the season, the right-handed pitching prospect allowed just two earned runs while posting a 13:3 K:BB in 12.2 innings pitched. Although he paid a steep price for him, Tim Heaney has a 23-year-old pitcher with plenty of upside, something that could bode well for him as he hopes to compete this season and in the future.

Faria headlined this week's crop of pitchers, who dominated the FAAB bidding. Seven of the 11 players claimed were hurlers, with three of the top five bids going to pitchers. Streaking starting pitching seemed to be the main calling card, as Peter Tongas, Josh Fathollahi and Mike Rose all opted to nab starters who fired multiple quality starts in a row. I especially like the pickup of Jason Hammel by Tongas, as he's posted sub-4.00 ERAs each of the past three years, and despite a rough start to the season, he's 2-0 with a 2.21 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP in his last three outings.

Middle infielders were also highly sought after, as three of the four position players picked up were shortstops. I'd like to highlight what I regard as the top value pick of the week: Mike Rose grabbing Jose Iglesias for just $1. The Tigers' shortstop has been scorching hot as of late, going 22-for-52 (.423) over his past 14 games played, raising his season batting average from a dismal .211 mark to a passable .268 clip. He also scored nine runs and drove in five more, both of which raised his season totals by roughly 50 percent. Iglesias is just a season removed from two consecutive .300-plus batting average campaigns, so this could be the time the 27-year-old shortstop finally turns things around and gets back to those high-average ways.

Multiple owners went out to get this week's award for most pickups, with Heaney, Tongas, Fathollahi and Rose all swiping up a pair of players. I'll give the award to Heaney since he spent the most FAAB dollars between his two pickups ($21). He managed to grab Faria to bolster his league-leading pitching staff, but he also went out to grab Alcides Escobar to fill a hole in his roster left by yet another injury (for reference, he currently has five hitters on the disabled list: Carlos Gomes, A.J. Pollock, Marcus Semien, Chris Davis and now Kevin Kiermaier). Although Escobar is hitting below the Mendoza Line for the season, he has three consecutive multi-hit games, and his .246 BABIP suggests that he's been experiencing an unusual amount of bad luck this season.

Finally, Josh Rudd takes home the title for biggest mover of the week in the standings. Rudd used a mix of FAAB pickups and trades to upgrade his team to jump from sixth place into fourth place, one of the highly coveted money spots. Probably the biggest move he made was a trade this last week with Chris Benzine, in which he gave up Bradley Zimmer to acquire Jake Lamb and Mark Melancon, helping to raise many of his hitting stats and improve his chances to compete in the saves category.

Only two trades were completed this past week, with the exchanges summarized in the table below:

What did you think of this week's moves? Let me know on Twitter (@IsaacButtke) what you think or send any FAAB-related questions my way as well. Good luck to all of you in the upcoming week!