Pitching additions on the waiver wire almost always seem to be limited to streamers. Any time a starting pitcher who could feasibly be a longer-term hold emerges, he gets scooped up immediately (well, in most cases). So how can we separate streamers from guys with staying power?
For me, I obviously start with pitchers who are performing well on the field and then try to look for guys who are missing bats and have good raw stuff. If a pitcher isn’t getting consistent strikeouts then it’s hard for them to graduate from streamer status. To help us find these starting pitchers who might be being undervalued, I created a leaderboard that included swinging strike rate (SwStr%), strikeout minus walk rate (K-BB%), and Stuff+ grades.
That tells me who is missing bats at a consistent rate but also rules out pitchers who have major command issues. It also allows me to see who pitch models believe has good movement/shape on their pitches. I believe having the stuff to fall back on is a crucial component that gives the pitcher a little wiggle room to get out of trouble or survive when they’re not having their best day. In order to not be a streamer, I need a pitcher to have one pitch that they feel like they can reach into their bag and use when they’re in trouble. If not that, they better have four or five pitches that are pretty close, like a Kutter Crawford type.
I looked at stats over the last five weeks because I wanted to get a long enough period to be about 5-6 starts per pitcher but leave wiggle room for guys who struggled out of the gate. I then focused only on pitchers who were above the league average in all of the stats mentioned above and deleted any pitchers who were rostered in under 50% of Yahoo! leagues. That left me with all the starters you see below.
For reference, the league average for starting pitchers over the last five weeks (from May 7th on) has been a 4.08 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 14.3% K-BB%, 10.6% SwStr%, and 97 Stuff+.
I wanted to put the whole leaderboard here so you could see the larger pool I had to choose from; however, I am not going to write about all 15 names below. Part of that is due to space and the other part is due to pitchers missing certain categories in a large enough way that I don’t really consider them waiver pick-ups I’m interested in. I also only added MacKenzie Gore to this chart because he’s only rostered in 63% of Yahoo leagues, which is bonkers considering his performance this year. How is Charlie Morton rostered in 10% more Yahoo leagues than Gore? Please fix this.
I won’t discuss Sean Manaea because he came in well below the average SwStr% mark and Stuff+ mark on this list. I also won’t cover Hunter Brown, because I discussed him last week in my Mixing It Up column which you can read here, and I also discussed Matt Waldron in the version before that which you can also read here. I also didn’t include Kyle Gibson because this has kind of always been who he is. The Stuff+ grades and K-BB% marks are low, but he’s a solid enough starter who you can use in good streaming situations, and he’ll go on a great run for a part of the season. Lastly, Andrew Heaney’s Stuff+ marks were so far off the mark here and he has a 1.52 WHIP over this stretch, which would just crush your ratios, so I chose not to dig into him below. I also wrote about my love of Reese Olson in the preseason and still believe in him after a couple of poor starts, so I’d be looking to add him in all 15-team leagues if he’s available and he can be streamed in 12-team leagues.
That leaves...
Ben Brown - Chicago Cubs
(Ben Brown was placed on the IL in the middle of this article being drafted)
I wish I knew Ben Brown would stay in the rotation and pitch deep enough into games to get wins. The 24-year-old has only pitched five innings twice this season and has been allowed to throw over 80 pitches only once. His career-high in innings is 104 back in 2022, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that the Cubs will give him a long enough leash to make him a viable fantasy starter the rest of the way.
Despite posting a 3.60 ERA over his last 20 innings, he has a 2.89 SIERA to go along with a 0.80 WHIP, 25% K-BB%, and 14% SwtSr%. His Stuff+ has graded out excellent overall with a 106.4 mark. However, most of that is on the back of a truly legit curveball. Brown’s curve has a 26% SwStr% on the season and has given up a .141 batting average against and just a 38% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which is 65th percentile in baseball.
The issue is that Brown struggles to command it with just a 39% zone rate and 64% strike rate. That’s a problem when you consider that his only other offering is a four-seam fastball that grades out below average by Pitcher List’s PLV metric and also has just an 8% SwStr% while allowing an ICR of 46%. He has flashed a solid changeup at times, but he throws it just 1.5% of the time and clearly doesn’t have confidence in it, so he’s forcing his curveball to carry a lot of the load here.
At the end of the day, he’s a young starter with one plus pitch that he can’t always locate and a mediocre fastball. Plus, he doesn’t pitch deep into games and may not be a lock to remain in the Cubs’ rotation.
VERDICT: STREAMER IN THE RIGHT MATCHUP
Taj Bradley - Tampa Bay Rays
Taj Bradley is surely the biggest name on this list (well, maybe second behind Hunter Brown), but is he the best add? On one hand, he has a 5.17 ERA and 1.18 WHIP over his last 31.1 innings. On the other hand, he also has a 13.9% SwStr%, 22.1% K-BB%, and 108.2 Stuff+. Many people are touting Bradley as a clear add or trade target because those underlying stats suggest positive regression, but I’m not so sure.
The big issue here is command. Bradley pops on Stuff+ models because the movement on his pitches is pretty good; however, Pitcher List’s PLV metric takes location into account, so it’s worth noting that they have below-average grades for every one of Bradley’s pitches other than his four-seam fastball. That fastball has been good in 2024. He gets great Induced Vertical Break (iVB) at 18.7 inches and has a flat fastball that thrives up in the zone, which is where he throws it 69.4% of the time. That’s why it is missing bats to a 14.6% SwStr%, which we love to see.
The issue is that he also throws it in the zone just 49% of the time and can sometimes miss his spots, which has led to a 64% ICR. 64 PERCENT!!! That means 64% of Bradley’s four-seam fastballs allow potentially damaging contact. That’s second percentile in baseball. Yeah, that’s not good.
The splitter, cutter, and curve have all flashed the ability to be solid pitches at times, but their locations are not consistent. He throws the splitter middle-middle 7% of the time. He throws the curveball up in the zone nearly 30% of the time and it has just a 40% strike rate. The cutter is in the strike zone just 43% of the time and gets 32nd percentile called strikes. None of these pitches are bad; you simply don’t have any confidence he’ll have one or more of them on any given day.
Until he can get his command in check, he’ll always be a pitcher who flashed plus stuff by inconsistent results.
VERDICT: TEAM STREAMER IN 15-TEAM LEAGUES WHERE YOU PICK YOUR STARTS; TRADITIONAL STREAMER IN 12-TEAM LEAGUES.
Jake Irvin - Washington Nationals
(Submitted prior to Wednesday night’s game)
Perhaps we’re overlooking most of the Nationals’ rotation. In his 36.1 innings before Wednesday’s start, Irvin had a 2.48 ERA, 0.85 WHIP with a 19.6% K-BB%, 12.6% SwStr%, and 97 Stuff+. That Stuff+ ranking is league average over that time frame, but that’s not surprising given that Irvin is more about the sum of his parts than any one pitch. Depending on which pitch model you prefer, Irvin’s best pitch is either his curveball or sinker. Both PLV and Stuff+ believe the curve is an above-average offering since he can throw it for strikes and also get decent swinging strikes on it with a 13.3% SwStr%.
The rest of his arsenal is basically three variations on a fastball (four-seam, sinker, and cutter) that he uses off one another. PLV prefers the sinker because that modeling system takes location into account, and the sinker is a 70% strike rate pitch that Irvin uses primarily to righties. The cutter and four-seamer both give up a decent amount of hard contact, but Irvin has been successful of late in keeping the pitches both up in the zone, which has limited the damage. He doesn’t really get whiffs on any of those pitches, but if he’s able to mix and match them properly then he can limit hard contact which is better than nothing but not confidence-inspiring when it comes to being a long-term add.
VERDICT: STREAMER IN THE MIDST OF A HOT STREAK. THE CURVE IS THE ONLY PITCH THAT WILL MISS BATS, SO THE STRIKEOUT UPSIDE ISN’T SUPER HIGH AND HE WALKS A TIGHTROPE WITH HIS FASTBALL MIX, BUT HE HAS IT WORKING RIGHT NOW.
Tylor Megill - New York Mets
Many of us have been teased by Megill in the past. Since coming off the IL, he has a 3.32 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in 21.1 innings with a 21.5% K-BB%, 12.2% SwStr%, and 112 Stuff+. That raw Stuff+ number is better than every other pitcher on this list, including MacKenzie Gore. In fact, every pitch that Megill throws, except his curve, grades out as an above-average pitch on Stuff+. However, since Megill has just a 92 Location+ grade, we know PLV, which factors in location, will not be as high on Megill. The only pitch PLV thinks is above average is Megill’s cutter, which has a 5.30 PLV grade where 5.20 is average.
In many senses, it’s easy to side with PLV here. Raw stuff is great, but if Megill can’t control it then what good is he to us in fantasy? On the season, Megill has a 10% walk rate because he has a below-average 41.3% zone rate and 61.2% strike rate. For example, Stuff+ loves the four-seam fastball, which is 95.7 mph with elite 7.5 feet of extension. Megill also has a 1.2 Heigh Adjusted VAA, which means he has a flat fastball that should thrive up in the zone. Except he throws it up just 40% of the time and uses it low 30% of the time. Also, he’s thrown his fastball middle-middle 13% of the time. That’s well above the league average of 7.5% for starters.
Similarly, the splitter grades out well but has just a 14% zone rate, so even though it misses bats with a 25% SwStr%, Megill can’t seem to locate it in the strike zone and it has literally zero called strikes on the season. All of this makes Megill hard to trust because the pure stuff is there, but the command is not and, frankly, the command has always been a bit of a concern.
VERDICT: TEAM STREAMER. You rarely find players with this kind of raw stuff on the waiver wire, and the Mets want to give him a shot to stay in the rotation, so I can see holding Megill and hoping an approach starts to click. It could just lead to a lot of inconsistency that hurts your ratios.
Chris Paddack - Minnesota Twins
A lot of people were in on Paddack at the start of the season thanks to a brief stint in the Twins bullpen last year and his prior prospect pedigree. However, a 4.79 ERA on the season isn’t exactly winning over fantasy managers and a 4.81 ERA over his last 39.1 innings is not any better. However, that 4.81 ERA comes with a 3.55 SIERA, 19.8% K-BB%, and 12.1% SwStr%. So why does SIERA like what Paddack is doing?
For starters, in the last two starts, Paddack has been sitting 95 mpg with his four-seamer which has led to a combined 12 whiffs. That’s important because he also gets elite extension on the pitch and a solid 16 iVB. He does throw it in the zone often and has a good 13.4% SwStr% on it this season, but it also gives up a lot of hard contact with a 47.6% Ideal Contact Rate. If Paddack can sustain the velocity on the fastball then it could give him a decent second offering to pair with his changeup.
The change grades out as his best pitch, but it’s interesting to note that it is league average when it comes to zone rate and also below average in both SwStr% and called strike rate. Its value appears to be that he has good location down in the zone which means the pitch doesn’t get hit hard and Paddack has also been unlucky with the pitch so far this year. Pitcher List has him for a +9 hit luck which means he’s allowed nine hits on the changeup alone that should not have been hits according to the quality of contact.
The bigger issue for Paddack has always been that third pitch. He needs either the slider or the curve to take a step forward for him to stick on fantasy rosters. The curve was great against the A’s on Monday and he leaned on it often. However, he rarely uses the pitch that much because he rarely has that good of a feel for it. The curve grades out as slightly above average on PLV, so that’s the most likely pitch to be a good third pitch for him, but until we start seeing that with consistency, he’s unlikely to be more than a streamer.
VERDICT: STREAMER WITH POTENTIAL FOR MORE. The new velocity is nice for Paddack, so we want to see that stick. If he just has new velocity on the four-seam to go with the changeup then we should see better results since he’s some positive regression on the changeup. If he can get that curveball going, he may graduate to being a team streamer.
Spencer Arrighetti - Houston Astros
I’ll admit that I fudged this a little bit for Arrighetti, but he’s been much better over his last four starts and his 15.3% K-BB% and 11.4% SwStr% over that span both qualified him, so I felt like he was worth looking at. So what has changed for Arrighetti over that span?
For starters, Arrighetti has gone to his cutter a bit more often, which is nice to see since it’s his best pitch according to PLV. Stuff+ hates it, but Stuff+ has an admitted blind spot to cutters, so we’ll go with PLV here. He uses the cutter to both righties and lefties, and it has a 59% zone rate and 74% strike rate, which are both 90th percentile. In addition to pounding the zone with the pitch, it also has a 15.2% SwStr% and allows just a 38.5% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR).
He’s also been going to his curveball more than he did in April, which we like since both PLV and Stuff+ say it’s an above-average pitch. While he uses it more to lefties, he throws it 14% of the time to righties and it has a 13.8% SwStr% overall. It’s an average zone-rate pitch, but he keeps it in the bottom half of the zone well and it doesn’t give up much hard contact at all with just a 36.4% ICR. Considering Arrighetti also has a sweeper that grades out as above average, he now has three supporting pitches that we like.
The issue is that we don’t love his four-seamer. It’s 93.7 mph with elite 7.3 feet of extension and a 1.6 Heigh Adjusted VAA which means it’s a flat fastball. However, like with Tylor Megill, Arrighetti doesn’t get it up in the strike zone a lot, which is where you want flat fastballs. He’s better with it than Megill but a 51.5% hiLoc% (high location) is essentially league average. As a result, the four-seam is league average with swings-and-misses and league average with ideal contact allowed.
VERDICT: ADD (FOR NOW) IN 12-TEAM LEAGUES. We basically just described a pitcher with an average fastball and three good supporting pitches. That’s a pretty solid mix. He also pitches for a good team which will give him a solid chance at wins. I think I’m digging what Arrighetti is doing at the moment; although, I don’t know how long it will last.
