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Welcome to David Mendelson’s Weekly Starting Pitcher Streamers for the week of June 13th – June 16th.
Welcome to the ninth week of your pitching streamers! This is where we aim to give you an edge over your competition each week by helping you find uncut diamonds when it comes to borderline serviceable pitchers. Everyone has to do this in one way or another during the season and it’s important that you have the best information to make these decisions when it comes to beating your opponent.
Sometimes your design doesn’t work out the way you envisioned it. Be it injuries, lack of performance or maybe your draft was just terrible. At some point, you’ll need to pick up pitchers from the waiver wire and stream (in other words, pick them up for a start or two). This is vital as consistently hitting the right pitchers will help your odds and also potentially beat an opponent for those playing in H2H formats.
So how do we determine which pitchers to stream? Well, there are many ways, but I’ve found a few ways that are the most effective. This may include looking at opposing teams’ trends over the past few periods, how they’re performing against specific handies, and of course, how this streaming pitcher is currently doing.
I’m here to help you narrow it down to five names across all games, Monday through Thursday each week. My goal throughout the season is to bring you the BEST pitching streamers each week to hopefully help you out when you’re in a bind. It’s important to remember that I won’t always be right (nobody is right), but I hope to provide you with winning streamers more often. The criteria to be in this article? The pitcher must be listed in 50% or fewer of the leagues on FantasyPros (the site referenced for these articles).
This article comes out every Sunday morning, so be sure to make the necessary adjustments with shifts, skipped starts, IL stints, etc. affecting scheduled pitcher start. The hope for these articles is that as the season progresses we will have more and more data to build on.
With that in mind, here are some factors that go into my streaming picks:
Percentage tiered – Pitcher must be listed in 50% or less according to FantasyPros to qualify for this item.
Opposing team’s wRC+ – wRC+ or Weighed Runs Created Plus takes the Runs Created statistic and adjusts that number to account for important external factors – like ballpark or era. It is adjusted so that a wRC+ of 100 is the league average and 150 would be 50 percent above the league average. This is one of my favorite stats to look at when picking hitting as well as pitching.
Home/Road ERA Splits – How a pitcher performs at home compared to his performance on the road. The best example of this is someone like German Marquez and how he hits the street versus Coors Field.
other analyses – Things like a pitcher’s swinging strike rate, K-BB ratios, ISO and OPS are some of the other data considered for each player.
Let’s take a look at my top pitching streamers for this week.
Table of Contents
Set up streamers week 10
Josiah Gray (36% Rostered) Monday vs ATL – Josiah Gray is someone I don’t usually enjoy streaming, and with good reason. Over two homers per nine for a second straight year, along with 14 homers ALREADY allowed this season. For reference, that’s what ZIPS Gray predicted for the full season. What suddenly fascinates me about Gray is his last three starts.
In Gray’s last three starts, he has recorded 16 innings with 11 hits, 2 earned runs and 18 strikeouts. What coincides with this is that Gray has finally stopped throwing his four-seam fastball as often as he has in the past. He’s lowered his use of that pitch from 50% in four straight games to 32.7% in his last start. That’s a big deal because Gray has conceded 11 of his 14 home runs against fastball this season. I’ll buy the gray change, and so should you.
Zach Eflin (23% Rostered) Tuesday vs. MIA – Eflin is definitely intriguing simply because he has two starts this week against the Marlins and the Nationals. If that’s not enough to entice you, Eflin has looked very solid this season, placing in baseball’s top 10% for average opponent exit velocity, hard hit percentage, and xWOBACON. His 3.76 ERA and 1.18 WHIP aren’t too shabby either. He may not be flashy with the strikeouts, but he can definitely give you innings, as seen when he faced the Angels on June 3 and only allowed one run in eight innings.
The Marlins of the season are mid-table in terms of runs per game, but rank in the bottom third of the league in terms of wRC+ and K% in the season against RHP. Be sure to pick up Eflin for the two starts.
Alex Faedo (7% Rostered) Tuesday vs. CHW – Faedo Baggins, as I like to call him, surprised many with his performances this year. Faedo hasn’t conceded more than two earned runs in any start this season while recording a sparkling 2.92 ERA in just over 37 innings. A big part of that is his nasty slider, which opposing hitters huff at a rate of 41%. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, however, as his expected stats show that regression is on the horizon for the young right-hander and caution should be exercised at the start.
In that start, I really like him against the White Sox. The Sox have had a lazy .070 ISO & 73 wRC+ against RHP for the past two weeks. Both bottom three in baseball. Against his division opponent, I think Faedo is a good start for your fantasy team.
Spencer Strider (26% Rostered) Wednesday @ WSH – We’ve seen the flashes of why Strider is so appealing for building your fantasy team. 49 strikeouts in 32.2 innings with a 2.76 ERA and a fastball averaging 98 mph. It’s very appealing, to say the least. However, Strider goes with a 13.5% clip and only maintains a 37.9% GB rate, well below the major league average. There’s no denying Spencer “Quadzilla” Strider puts Strider on the mound at launch, and right now he’s someone you need to have in the right pairings.
That would coincide with the game against the Washington Nationals, who are in the bottom third of baseball in runs per game this season, while over the past two weeks against RHP they are in the midfield on all offensive stats. Strider should be great on this one and it all depends on how many innings he’s going to pitch.
George Kirby (39% Rostered) Thursday vs LAA – I’ll start by saying that his statcast page isn’t pretty, with enough blue to need a sweater. However, in Kirby’s two-start week last week, he combined for 12 innings while conceding nine hits, two earned runs and 11 strikeouts. That while walking just one batter and sticking strongly to his control pitcher narrative. Kirby also increased his slider usage on those two starts, with both achieving near 30% usage after experiencing such a case on all of his starts this season.
The Angels fired their manager and just recently ended their 14-game losing streak, which means they’re a vulnerable target. Combine that with the fact that as a team they hit over 27% of the time and have an 84 wRC+ against RHP in the last two weeks and that makes this matchup even better for Kirby.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter @DMendy02 and tag me if I’ve helped you strike gold with any of these pitching streamers. Much luck!