Welcome to your fantasy baseball starting pitcher happy place. This is a new column for me this year that will combine a few things I’ve done in the past. In this article, every Monday, you’ll not only get a list of my favorite streaming starting pitchers for the whole week, but underneath that, you’ll get a breakdown of a few pitchers who are making interesting changes to their pitch mix. Today I covered Cade Cavalli, Dylan Cease, Sandy Alcantara, Randy Vasquez, and MacKenzie Gore.
It’s a little bit of rankings and a little bit of analysis and, hopefully, a lot of help for your teams.
As far as which pitchers on this list you’ll want to stream, your decisions will change based on your league type and settings. Since I’m listing starters for all week, I’m not going to be able to give a detailed analysis for each one; I’ll just highlight the matchup and some quick thoughts. As is usual with my articles, a streaming starter pitcher is rostered in less than 40% of Yahoo formats, so just keep that in mind as we’re going through because I won’t be mentioning pitchers who are rostered in more leagues than that, and I also won’t be mentioning pitchers who I would not start in any format.
Starting Pitcher Streamers of the Week
Cody Ponce gets a great matchup and has a tremendous two-start week, so he was my favorite add where available last night. I like the upside that Ryan Weathers has against a Seattle team in a good pitcher’s park. The rest are basically matchup plays, and even though I think Jack Leiter has more upside than many arms on this list, his matchup is not ideal. Kyle Harrison is another high-upside arm, but we haven’t seen his new pitch mix against MLB hitters for a full regular-season game yet, so that will make this a risky play.
Max Scherzer is also in a good spot against a mediocre Colorado lineup in Toronto. Scherzer is mostly always good when he’s healthy, and he’s healthy now, so I’m happy to use him. I am also really in on Zach Eflin this year. I don’t LOVE the matchup, but I’m gonna trust Eflin. I do love the matchup for Andrew Painter, but he’s making his MLB debut, and the emotions of that can always make the performance inconsistent, so this has me a tiny bit worried, but not enough. Brandon Williamson and Jameson Taillon are just matchup plays.
Most teams have their aces lined up for this day, so there aren’t really many streaming options. Matthew Liberatore is not in a great spot, which is why you see him in the bottom tier.
Thursday is “Get Away Day,” so we don’t have many games today.
Joe Boyle had a strong outing and showcased a more sinker-heavy approach that should help with command, and his roster rate rose...1%. I guess people have been fooled too many times, but I’m OK taking the plunge for this week. Reid Detmers also had a really solid start going until he tired in the fifth inning, and then the reliever that came in after him allowed all of his baserunners to score. I’m OK taking a shot on him against a Seattle lineup that I think is just OK. I do really like Joey Cantillo, but I don’t love this matchup.
Eric Lauer and Emerson Hancock were the big winners from Sunday’s games. Lauer showed off a new changeup with increased usage to right-handed hitters and altered his fastball approach a bit to attack up in the zone. He looked good. I also liked what Hancock did, and I recorded a video on him that you can watch here. I also know that Brandon Sproat and Mick Abel were not good in their season debuts, but I’m not going to fully abandon them yet, especially Abel, since he made the team as a starter and then had his first appearance come in relief, since the Twins have so many off days early on.
You’ve seen all these names on the list from earlier in the week. I like Parker Messick, but I don’t love this spot for him. I also am not a huge believer in Nick Martinez, but this is a good matchup. See how he looks in his first start earlier in the week, because there’s a good chance he’s not fully healthy, in which case you’d obviously not use him here.
Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes
Cade Cavalli - Washington Nationals (New Sweeper)
Cade Cavalli unveiled a new sweeper this season and used it primarily against righties. However, it didn’t register a single swinging strike or called strike, so I have some concerns. For starters, it’s 86 mph with nine inches of drop and 13.5 inches of horizontal break. His curveball is 85 mph with 12.5 inches of drop and nine inches of horizontal break. He also ADDED almost three inches of sweep to his curve this season, so these two pitches are blending in a bit to me. The curve had just a 5% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) to righties, so, after just one outing against a good team, adding the sweeper isn’t convincing me that he can add more swing and miss upside this season.
Dylan Cease - Toronto Blue Jays (New Changeup)
Cease looked impressive in his season debut, and a big reason for that is a new changeup. This year’s version of the pitch is about five mph harder with less drop. He used it 15% of the time to lefties and posted a 43% SwStr% on those pitches. That’s huge for him because he rarely threw the changeup to lefties last year and has been limited by being essentially a two-pitch pitcher for much of his career. Another way he remedies that is to increase his sinker usage 15% to right-handed hitters. That gave righties two real fastball variations to look out for, in addition to the slider and (sometimes) curve. If this new pitch usage holds, that could be massive for Cease. He’s a screaming buy.
Sandy Alcantara - Miami Marlins (New Sweeper)
We saw Alcantara display a new sweeper in Spring Training, and that carried over into the regular season. It’s about 83.5 mph with four inches of drop and around nine inches of horizontal break. That alone isn’t great, but he also took over three inches of drop off of his harder slider, so he’s creating two more distinct versions of a slider. That we do like. He uses both of them more so against righties than lefties, but will mix them in to both. The sweeper didn’t get a swinging strike in this first outing, but the slider had a 29% SwStr% and 43% CSW, so perhaps the addition of the sweeper is helping the slider more than doing the damage itself. We’re OK with that.
Mackenzie Gore - Texas Rangers (New Sinker, Slider Usage Change)
We knew that Gore would make some changes going to a new organization, and we saw a few of them in high debut. For starters, he has a new sinker that he used 27% of the time to left-handed hitters. That allowed him to really dial back on his four-seamer usage to lefties, down 32%, which is a good thing. The sinker itself isn’t great, but it’s good to see him have two fastballs for lefties. He also has the same for righties since his cutter usage to righties was up 17% from last year. It was more of a two-strike weapon to righties, rather than a strike pitch, but it had a 17% SwStr%, so we love to see that. Some other tweaks are that Gore used his slider 25% more often to lefties than last year, which is the result of his fastball usage decreasing, and he also seems to have tweaked his changeup, adding four inches of armside run. The pitch had a 40% SwStr% to righties, but he threw only five, so we need to see that play out more. At the end of the day, these are all the changes we WANT to see, but we also need to see him command his arsenal consistently because that has always been the biggest thing for Gore.
Randy Vasquez- San Diego Padres (Velocity bump, Cutter tweak, Curve tweak)
There was a lot of hype around Vasquez after a velocity bump in the spring that he carried over into his first start. His four-seamer fastball was up 1.5 mph, and added 0.7" of Induced Vertical Break (iVB). However, his extension was also down, so that negates a lot of the velocity improvement. He also tweaked his cutter, adding four inches of drop, even though it still does seem to “rise,” as it approaches the plate, but also adding 2.5 inches more cut. His usage was up 12% to right-handed hitters, and he posted a 14% SwStr% there, so that could be big for him because he needs some swing and miss. His curve was also up 2.5 mph, and he used the pitch 12% more often to lefties than he did last year. With the added velocity, there was less drop and break, but he posted 15% SwStr% and 39% CSW against lefties, so that has me intrigued. I still think he’s more of a 15-team option for now.
