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 Jackson Jobe, Cristian Javier, Hayden Wesneski, and Gage Jump.
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 | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
| Jacob Lopez | 11% | vs TB | 12s and deeper |
Fairly Confident | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
| Andrew Painter | 10% | at STL | 12s and deeper |
| Hayden Wesneski | 18% | at SF | 15s and deeper |
| Christian Scott | 35% | at ATL | 15s and deeper |
Some Hesitation | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
| Jameson Taillon | 5% | vs BOS | 15s and deeper |
| Dean Kremer | 8% | vs BAL | 15s and deeper |
| Hunter Dobbins | 4% | vs PHI | 15s and deeper |
| Blade Tidwell | 2% | vs HOU | 15s and deeper |
I know it’s wild to suggest starting Jacob Lopez in Sacramento, but he’s been really good over his last four starts, and we’ve seen him get on these runs in the past where it doesn’t matter if he’s pitching at home. His fastballs are landing up and the breakers are landing down, and it’s all working right now. Andrew Painter and Hunter Dobbins have intrigued me with some pitch mix and shape changes in recent starts, but it’s a small sample size, and Dobbins has a bad matchup right now. Cristian Scott also has a bad matchup, but I might take the gamble on Hayden Wesneski, who I wrote about in detail below.
Cody Bradford went 4.1 innings in his last outing, and the command was iffy, but that’s to be expected coming off of elbow surgery. I think the matchup here is good, and I expect him to at least go give here. I don’t love the other plays, but Martin Perez and Mitch Bratt have solid opponents and can be usable. Drew Anderson is not yet stretched out, so I’d avoid him for now.
This is a pretty good day for streamers. I know the Padres are heating up, but I still trust Dustin May on perhaps the best team in baseball. Same argument for Eric Lauer against a much worse Royals offense, and Merrill Kelly gets the Rockies outside of Coors, which is always nice. I also think Tyler Mahle looked pretty good in his Braves debut and gets a mediocre Mets offense. David Peterson also gets a Nationals lineup that won’t have James Wood, Luis Garcia Jr., or Curtis Mead.
It’s pretty barren out there on Thursday, but Walbert Urena has seen his roster rate plummet recently. I would happily use him in this start. I also have more faith in Keider Montero than others, but he has good command and a deep pitch mix, and I think this could work against the Guardians.
I know Landen Roupp and Clay Holmes were bad their last time out, but I’m trusting the overall talent of the pitchers in two good matchups. Holmes was also making his first start in over two months, so we should have expected rust. I wrote about both Jackson Jobe and Gage Jump below, so check that out, but I struggle to start Jump at home in Sacramento. Brandon Pfaadt’s recent performance is very real, thanks to pitch changes I covered here, but the strikeouts will not be there, which makes him tough to use against good offenses like the Braves. The ceiling just isn’t that high.
Sean Manaea has been on a bit of a heater recently, and we covered above how much talent the Nationals lineup has lost in the last week. I would roll the dice here. I do like Cristian Javier adding in a cutter, which I wrote about below, but I can’t use him quite yet.
If I was gonna start Jacob Lopez at home against the Rays, then I’ll do it against the Rangers too. Christian Scott also gets a better matchup in his second start of the week, as do Andrew Painter and Blade Tidwell. By this start, Drew Anderson may be up to five innings, so keep an eye on him.
Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix/Shape Changes
Jackson Jobe - Tigers (Season Debut)
Jobe only threw 71 pitches in his season debut, but we saw some really interesting things that I covered in a video for us over on the website. His four-seamer sat 98.3 mph, up almost 2 mph from last season, with 17 inches of vertical movement and a flat attack angle. He commanded it really well up in the zone, which was a crucial development for him and would allow him to get the whiffs on that pitch that he simply couldn’t get last year. That 17% swinging strike rate on the four-seamer here was really encouraging.
As was the improvements to his command. Some of that could be attributed to the fact that he shifted more to the center of the rubber to help clean up some of his mechanics and have him attack more downhill to the plate. He had a 12.4% walk rate last year and just a 60.8% strike rate, so improved command would be crucial for his success going forward.
Apart from that, not a ton is different from last year. He’s still a four-seamer, slider, and sinker to righties with changeups and the odd curve mixed in to lefties. His raw stuff still looks really good, so if he can improve his command and get the four-seamer up in the zone consistently, we could see some real strides forward.
Cristian Javier - Astros (New Cutter)
Over his last three starts, Cristian Javier has added in a cutter and is using it 13.3% of the time. The pitch has been used pretty much exclusively to righties; although, in this last start on Sunday Night Baseball, he did use it 11.4% of the time to lefties. In his last three starts, against righties, he’s using the cutter 73% of the time early in counts, and it has an 80% first-pitch strike rate. It wasn’t getting many called strikes, but posted a 33.3% early called strike rate on Sunday, so maybe that is changing. The cutter also has a 15.4% swinging strike rate to righties in this stretch, likely because of how it plays off his four-seamer.
Javier’s cutter is 88 mph with 3.7 inches of horizontal break and 9.5 inches of vertical break. Meanwhile, his four-seamer is 93 mph with 5.4 inches of arm-side run and 16.7 inches of vertical break. That’s pretty elite vertical movement, and the reason why Javier loves to throw his fastball up in the zone. However, he has really poor extension (6.1 feet) and his velocity is below average too, so the four-seamer hasn’t been a great pitch for him against righties historically and is struggling more so this season because he has been slow ot adjust to the new top of the zone with the ABS system.
Last season, the four-seamer had a solid 13.9% swinging strike rate against righties, but also had a 9% barrel rate. Because Javier prefers to elevate his four-seamer, it also had just a 43.4% zone rate and just a 52% first-pitch strike rate last year. It’s really a pitch that’s best used to get whiffs above the zone; however, in order to use it that way, he needs another fastball that he can command in the zone for strikes. In his start on August 3rd, Javier exclusively followed up the cutter with either the sweeper or the four-seam fastball. Elevating the four-seamer after the cutter makes sense as an approach, but he just needs to do a better job of elevating the four-seam fastball than he has so far.
Last year, Javier also had a below-average 9.5% swinging strike rate on his sweeper to righties but has seen that rise to 12.5% this season, which is just average but is also a big improvement for him. It’s his main secondary to righties, so he’s going to need to increase that swinging strike rate to have more sustained success. The cutter could be a way to do that because his sweeper is eight mph slower and has nearly 12 inches more horizontal movement, so he could land cutters in the zone and then follow up with the sweeper farther off the plate. So far, in his last three starts, the sweeper has a 12.9% swinging strike rate to righties and was tremendous on Sunday, with a 25% SwStr% to righties on eight pitches.
Javier also only throws his changeup 8% of the time to righties this season and 3.5% last season, so adding in the cutter also gives him three pitches he can throw regularly to righties, which will keep hitters from picking one of his offerings and sitting on it. It’s likely not a surprise that two of his last three starts have been his best outings of the year.
Gage Jump - Athletics (Sinker and Curve usage)
When he debuted, Jump was known for a four-seam fastball with good velocity that got plenty of whiffs in the minors. However, that pitch, despite missing bats, has a .286 batting average against and a 44% hard-hit rate allowed against MLB hitters this season. It has struggled to miss bats versus lefties as well. Both of those reasons might be why, in his last two starts, Jump has started to increase his sinker usage, throwing it 22.7% of the time on August 2nd and 12% on the 8th. While he has mixed in a few against righties, the sinker has become Jump’s primary fastball against lefties with a 42.4% usage and 42.9% usage against lefties in each of the last two starts.
Jump’s sinker is 95 mph with 13.5 inches of arm-side run and 11.8 inches of vertical movement. Meanwhile, his four-seamer is 96.3 mph with nine inches of arm-side run and nearly 16 inches of vertical movement. Theoretically, if Jump gets his sinker in on the hands of lefties, he can then elevate the four-seamer over the top of it to get more whiffs.
In his last two starts, that’s worked as the four-seamer has a 22.2% swinging strike rate against lefties. Granted, that’s only been on nine total pitches because Jump has dialed back on it so much, but it’s worth noting. The sinker itself is not missing bats, but it has a 59% strike rate, which is above league average despite having a poor zone rates. It’s allowing weak contact and giving Jump four pitches he can use consistently against lefties, which is good.
Another change for Jump is that he’s begun throwing his curveball slower and with less spin over his last three starts. On the year, Jump’s curve averages 82.5 mph, but it has been 80.8 mph, 80.1 mph, and 80.7 mph in his last three starts. This doesn’t appear to be just fatigue or random variance because Jump had been losing significant horizontal movement on the curve until this final start. His vertical movement has also been snapping back into place, but the velocity remains down, so it seems like this is a pitch he is genuinely trying to tweak. Since Jump primarily throws his curve to righties, that means it will pair most often with his slider, which is 87.4 mph. Perhaps Jump is trying to create more of a velocity gap between the two secondary offerings.
What we do know is that, while Jump is feeling out these curve changes, he has moved away from it as a two-strike pitch. He had been using it 49.6% of the time in two-strike counts against righties, but that has gone down to 31.6% over his last three starts. That could, again, just be a temporary change as he works to regain feel for the slower curve, but it’s something to monitor.
Hayden Wesneski - Astros (Mechanical Change, Sweeper Shape, Four-Seam Usage
Hayden Wesneski has made two starts for the Astros since coming back from elbow surgery, and we seem to be seeing some real changes. For starters, it appears that he’s throwing from a genuinely different arm slot. His arm angle has shifted upwards on every single pitch in his arsenal roughly two to five degrees. That could be accounting for his recovery from surgery, or it could be a preventative measure to have him throw from an angle that feels more natural, but it has had a real impact on some of his pitches.
For example, his sweeper, which is his most-used pitch this season, has nearly 20 inches of horizontal break, up from 18.2 inches last season, and the vertical drop has increased from 1.5 inches to six inches. All of that with a drop in velocity from 83.3 mph to 80.8 mph. As you can imagine, with that much more movement, he is landing it in the zone far less, but he’s also missing far more bats. However, he’s actually using it in two-strike counts less often and trying to get early chases when hitters might be looking for a fastball or a cutter.
As a consequence, he has also moved away from the four-seam fastball considerably, dropping its usage from 36% to 21%. His usage against righties has fallen from 32.2% to 14.7% in favor of a cutter he’s done a good job of stealing early called strikes with. The four-seamer has also lost extension and some vertical movement, which could be a result of the arm angle, but it was a below-average pitch for him last season, so I have no problem with him moving away from it. Going sinker, cutter, sweeper to righties is an interesting mix, and then he is still four-seam, sweeper, changeup, cutter to lefties while tabling his curve.
He may struggle against lefty-heavy lineups, but I kinda dig these changes.
