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 Griffin Jax, Anthony Kay, and Ian Seymour.
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 the whole week, I won’t be able to provide a detailed analysis for each one; I’ll highlight the matchup and offer 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. I also won’t be mentioning pitchers that I would not start in any format.
Check out this week’s MLB Power Rankings!
Starting Pitcher Streamers of the Week
Monday | |||
The top three guys here aren’t available in most shallow leagues, but they’re all solid pitchers who are throwing the ball well and can be trusted in these matchups, even if none of them are smash spots. I’m not so sure that you can trust Eric Lauer, but he’s pitching well, and pitching for the Dodgers always gives you a decent chance for a win.
Tuesday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
| Andrew Alvarez | 1% | at SF | 15s and deeper |
Merrill Kelly is just above the threshold here, but I wanted to give him a little love. I’m also not sure how Kumar Rocker is pitching this well, but it’s happening, and this is a decent matchup, so I think you can let the dice roll. I also am not afair of this Padres offense, so I’m OK using Andre Pallante in deeper formats.
Wednesday | |||
I don’t love any of the streamers today, so keep that in mind. JR Ritchie is back from the minors and showcasing a bit of a change in approach, which I wrote about below. Peter Lambert has been a decent streamer for us this season, but the Tigers are going to throw tons of lefties at him, and that worries me a bit. I also like what Anthony Kay is doing, and I wrote about that below, but this is a bad matchup, even without Aaron Judge.
Thursday | |||
I wrote about Shane Drohan last week, and he had a decent start against the Phillies. It wasn’t all pretty, but he got plenty of whiffs, and so I would roll him out there against the Guardians. It’s hard to know when to trust Jack Leiter, but this is a decent matchup. I also like the matchup for Gage Jump, but I always get a little nervous about games in Sacramento. Sean Manaea has been good lately, and I’m interested, but just not against the Phillies.
Friday | |||
Griffin Jax rebounded with two really solid starts this week; I’m still in on him in all formats. I like what Stephen Kolek is doing, and Lance Brozdowski wrote about how a lot of it comes with jamming lefties inside more. I don’t love that he doesn’t really miss bats, so this feels like a run that could end in a big outing soon. Cade Cavalli is really not somebody I can trust, but he’s pitching OK, and this is a fine matchup against a Rays team that doesn’t hit many home runs. I’m not sure if Trevor McDonald will get this start, but if he does, I would use him against the Marlins.
Saturday | |||
I was a huge Ian Seymour believer in the offseason, and I love that he may get a shot in the rotation. He was good for three innings on Sunday and then faded, but that’s going to happen as he gets stretched out. I wrote more in detail about him below.
Sunday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
Dustin May still needs to be rostered in more formats. Seth Lugo is on the concussion IL, so it’s not a lock that he returns for this start, and Tyler Phillips does make me nervous, but he also intrigues me. Watch his start on Tuesday before deciding on this one.
Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes
JR Ritchie - Braves (Fastball Usage)
Ritchie was recalled from the minors last week and didn’t seem to have a spot in the rotation, but an elbow injury for Spencer Strider means that Ritchie can take his spot. The rookie threw five shutout innings in relief of Strider on Friday, striking out five, walking two, and allowing two hits. After his brief stint in Triple-A, we saw Ritchie come back up with a different attack plan for lefties and different usage of his fastballs altogether.
Against righties, Ritchie threw his sinker 57% of the time, which was up 27% from his previous marks this season. The issue is that he had just a 38% strike rate on it in this outing. That’s been a bit of a concern for him all season. He has a 24th percentile strike rate on his sinker against righties, perhaps because the pitch has 16 inches of horizontal run, and he worries about running it inside too much and hitting batters. Regardless, his four-seam fastball got absolutely clobbered by righties this season with a 100% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), .311 xBA, and .532 xwOBA. I’d rather he keep working to command that sinker than throw the four-seamer to righties.
In fact, the four-seamer is pretty average to lefties too. It has a well below-average 4.5% swinging strike rate (SwStr%), a league average 41.2% ICR, and a 41% line drive rate. Since lefties haven’t been able to elevate the four-seamer, it hasn’t led to too much damage, but I don’t love him leading with a pitch that can’t miss bats and also had just a 2nd percentile strike rate. Yes, his strike rate on his four-seamer to lefties is 46%, but the league average for starters is 65%. So, in this start on Friday, he threw only four of them to lefties, and they were all elevated. What he did instead was pitch backwards with the change and curve to lefties. Throwing both of them a combined 52%. The curve missed a ton of bats, with a 27% SwStr%, so that was nice to see.
Ritchie actually threw nine sinkers to lefties (18% usage), and they returned an 89% strike rate and 44% called strike rate. That could be because lefties were shocked he was using a sinker to them (he came in averaging 2% usage to lefties), but he also did a good job of keeping it away. Considering he was also throwing so many changeups away, I don’t mind him using the sinker out there as well, so long as it’s sporadic. Which means, these are all changes I can get behind, but I think we may need to wait a few starts to see if the command and execution clicks into place.
Ian Seymour - Rays (Pitch Mix Breakdown)
Ian Seymour was one of my favorite late-round starting pitchers in the offseason, but he didn’t win a rotation spot out of spring training. Now that it seems like the Rays are going to give him a shot. I remain excited. He was good for his first 2.1 innings on Sunday, but then allowed a home run and two walks, which led to a few more runs in his final inning of work. Still, I’m looking at the bigger picture.
Seymour has an elite changeup that he keeps in the zone often to lefties, locating it well in the lower third of the zone but not always inside. It still boasts an elite SwStr% (26.7%) and a great PutAway Rate (34.8%), even though he also uses it as an early-count strike pitch. That’s because he also has a sweeper that he uses 32% of the time in two-strike counts to lefties. That’s down from almost 43% last year, but I think a lot of that is because his changeup has just been so good. Against righties, Seymour still has an above-average SwStr%, but it’s down a bit from last year because he’s not getting it outside enough. I’m not concerned about that long-term because it’s a great offering, and he’s still getting good results on it, even as a two-strike pitch.
His four-seamer is a solid pitch for lefties, but this year also also going to a sinker far more often against them. The sinker has an above-average strike rate and doesn’t allow a lot of hard contact, so we like that. That has enabled him to go to the four-seamer more in two-strike counts against lefties (71% usage), and it has a really good PutAway Rate. Against righties, he had been using a cutter, but that hasn’t been a factor this season, and he didn’t throw it all on Sunday. Instead, he threw his four-seamer 29% of the time to righties, and I wonder if that will stick because it’s not a great pitch. That being said, Seymour can still use primarily three pitches to righties (four-seam, changeup, and sweeper), but the changeup is so elite that I think that’s enough. Against lefties, he has five pitches that he uses at least 10% of the time: four-seamer, changeup, sweeper, sinker, and slider. I think this is going to click soon.
Anthony Kay - White Sox (Fastball Usage, Slider Usage, Sweeper Usage to Righties)
We’ve seen a pretty stark change in Anthony Kay’s results between his first seven starts and his last seven. In his first seven starts, he posted a 5.70 ERA, 1.67 WHIP, 14% strikeout rate, 8.4% SwStr%, and 59.5% Str%. Over his last seven starts, he has a 3.22 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 21% strikeout rate, 11.5% SwStr%, and 63% Str%. So what has happened to lead to this kind of success?
For starters, he’s dialed back his four-seam fastball usage from 30% in his first seven starts to 20% in his last seven and increased his sinker usage from 15% to 22%. His four-seamer has been a pretty mediocre pitch to both righties and lefties, so using it less often makes some sense. It’s 96 mph, which is good for a lefty, but it doesn’t miss many bats because it has mediocre vertical movement, and he has terrible extension on it. He doesn’t throw his sinker much to righties, so what he has been doing is using his sweeper far more for early strikes. In his first even starts, he threw his sweeper 57% of the time in early counts to righties and did a mediocre job of keeping it low in the zone, just 45.6% of the time. Over his last seven starts, he’s throwing his sweeper 81.3% of the time early in counts to righties and getting it low in the zone over 57% of the time. That has led to a 21.3% called strike rate and 29.3% CSW to righties. Awesome stuff.
Another thing that he’s done is increase his slider usage from 4% to 6%, but that’s been over 10% in each of his last two starts, and he only started throwing it to lefties in his last three starts. The slider is 86.8 mph with 3.5 inches of horizontal movement and 3.8 inches of vertical break, compared to his sweeper, which is 82.6 mph with nearly 14 inches of horizontal movement and over two inches of vertical break, so the harder slider is a far better option against righties. Over his last seven starts, he has leaned into that and has upped the usage of his slider in two-strike counts to righties from 46% to 89%. That means he’s almost exclusively throwing his slider to righties in two-strike counts, but because he’s using the sweeper more often early in the count, it’s working. The slider has a 29.2% PutAway Rate to righties and a 26% SwStr%. That’s also because he’s getting it low in the zone 88% of the time (up from 50%) and using it on the outside corner as well as on the inside corner.
These changes are a big reason why his SwStr% against righties has gone from 6.7% in his first seven starts to 10.2% in his last seven and even 14.6% in his last start. I’m not sure if a nearly 15% SwStr% to righties is sustainable, but I think an 11% one is, and that’s league average, which would be a big boost for Kay. He’s a solid streamer in 12-team leagues in most matchups, but I’d avoid tough ones, like the Yankees in Yankee Stadium this week.
