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 Jared Jones, Gerrit Cole, 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 all week, I’m not going to be able to give a detailed analysis for each one; I’ll 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.
Check out this week’s MLB Power Rankings!
Starting Pitcher Streamers of the Week
Monday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
This is a good two-start week for Griffin Jax, and it starts on a small-slate Monday. I know David Sandlin and Shane Drohan (both pitchers the Red Sox traded this off-season) are trendy right now, but neither one of them has gone five innings reliably at any point this season, so that could severely limit their fantasy upside, and give them some added risk this week.
Tuesday | |||
No strong recommendations here, but I do like the confident tier. I know Steven Matz isn’t pitching as well as he did before the injury, and Connor Prielipp is struggling in his last two starts, but I believe in the talent for both of them. Trevor McDonald should remain in the rotation, and I remain relatively in on him. I broke down Gage Jump’s debut below, and while I was generally in on it, this matchup is not good. The inverse is true for Grayson Rodriguez, who has a great matchup but just hasn’t looked good.
Wednesday | |||
I’ve been trying to add Troy Melton everywhere the last couple of weeks, and he’s looked good in his two starts so far this season. I know the strikeout rate hasn’t been there, but I still believe he can find it again. Maybe he’s just a streamer for now, unless the strikeouts come back, but I believe in the talent we saw prior to his injury. Walbert Urena is on a roll right now and has a great start lined up here, and Andre Pallante is making some changes that have me intrigued now that he doesn’t have to face the Cubs.
Thursday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
I know Jared Jones technically doesn’t qualify as a streamer, but he is just over the threshold, and I covered his season debut below, so check that out. Brayan Bello has looked great as a bulk reliever, but I’m not sure he’s doing much of anything different, so that’s why I can’t put him higher than this. He still makes me nervous. As does J.T. Ginn against a good Cubs team, even if he has been rolling.
Friday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
The Padres are worse against left-handed pitchers, but I’m still OK using Christian Scott against them because I believe in his talent. Peter Lambert and Martin Perez have both been pitching well and have good matchups at home, which makes them safe floor plays. I know Kumar Rocker has good results lately, but I don’t believe he has truly figured out lefties, and that’s all Cleveland will let him see.
Saturday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
Is Tatsuya Imai a new man? I broke it down below. Jack Leiter is a good option if you want strikeouts, but the ratios could be risky, and I still believe in Spencer Miles’ profile, but he has not pitched deep enough into games.
Sunday | |||
Strong Preference | |||
| Pitcher | Roster% | Opponent | League Type |
These are all two-start pitchers, except for Sean Manaea, who I like in a bulk relief role against a team that struggles against lefties. He could pick up a sneaky win here.
Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes
Jared Jones - Pirates (Season Debut)
We knew we weren’t going to start Jones this week because we don’t start pitchers in their first start off the injured list, especially ones coming off a major elbow surgery. The results weren’t there for Jones, but he looked promising. For starters, he averaged 99 mph on his four-seamer, and while he was mainly 97 mph by the later innings, that’s where he was in 2024, so the worst-case scenario is that he has the same velocity. However, I do expect some of these velocity gains to stick, which is important, since his arm angle was down slightly, which led to 1.6" less vertical movement on the four-seamer. That will be OK if he’s throwing 98+, but it becomes an issue if the velocity gains leave him. Still, his vertical approach angle was elite and, in many ways, that matters more when it comes to swing-and-miss on the four-seamer.
His slider seems similar to what we saw before, perhaps with a bit more drop. He threw it in the zone often, but, like with the four-seamer, he did miss some spots in the strike zone. That’s to be expected with a pitcher coming off a UCL injury, and might be something we continue to see for the next month or two. He threw his slider 44% of the time to righties in that first start, which is up from 2024. It could be because he was using his four-seamer less, but it was only one start, so usage could all be down to feel.
However, it was nice to see him using his changeup and curve almost 20% of the time each. The changeup was a pitch we wanted to see more of in 20245, so this was nice, and he was also sitting 92.8 mph on it, which is up about three mph from 2024. His curve was also up nearly four mph but had the same amount of break, which is wild to see. Maybe this is all adrenaline, but Jones found the strike zone often and showed a deep arsenal that missed plenty of bats. This was encouraging.
Gerrit Cole - Yankees (Four-seam fastball shape)
One of my biggest concerns about Cole coming into this season, apart from coming off Tommy John surgery, was that his strikeout upside was starting to decline prior to the injury. Given that he’s 35 years old and has thrown almost 2,000 career innings, it felt safe to wonder if we’d actually get a version of Cole with the strikeout upside we saw before the nerve issues in 2024. Through two games in 2026, we may actually be seeing that version of Cole, and a big reason is his four-seam shape.
This year, Cole’s four-seamer is 96.3 mph with 16.4 inches of vertical movement and a height-adjusted vertical approach angle of 1.3 degrees, which means that even if the vertical movement is down slightly, this is the flattest fastball Cole has thrown since 2020. This four-seamer also has over three inches more arm-side movement, in part due to added spin efficiency on the pitch. We like to see these changes, but what we don’t like is that he’s throwing his four-seamer up in the zone just 43.5% of the time. It was 60.5% in 2024 and 55% in 2022. This fastball shape will miss bats upstairs, so we just need to see Cole execute that. I believe he will, but his arm angle has also dropped six degrees this year after surgery, so perhaps he is still adjusting to throwing from that much lower of an arm slot.
Gage Jump - Athletics (MLB Debut)
Let’s start with the good news. Jump’s four-seamer fastball was sitting 96 mph with 16.4 inches of vertical movement and a strong 1.6 degree height-adjusted vertical approach angle. This has the makings of a truly elite four-seamer. However, he struggles to get it up in the zone and worked low in the zone far too often in his debut. He has a really low release height, so you wonder if that’s going to be something he can’t quite shake.
He pairs that with a harder slider at 87.2 mph with 6.4 inches of horizontal movement and barely one inch of drop. He’ll throw that to both righties and lefties, and then save his 85.3 mph sweeper with 13 inches of horizontal break mainly for lefties. The breakers flashed some intriguing raw stuff, but the sweeper was up in the zone a lot, which is a bit of a concern. He also threw a few changeups to righties, but he threw only one of them in the strike zone, so command of that may be an issue. At the end of the day, we have a young pitcher with intriguing raw stuff but questionable command who pitches in one of the best ballparks for offense. That’s a recipe for a matchup-based road-only streamers.
