Nick Martinez, Foster Griffin, and more starting pitchers using command for fantasy success

We’re suckers for a nasty swing and miss. That’s OK. I include myself in that “we.” I find myself, both as a fantasy manager and a baseball fan, drawn to the pitchers who can make hitters look foolish with wicked spin or elite velocity. However, our fantasy teams aren’t built on the back of GIFable whiffs.

Too often in fantasy baseball, we are drawn to the pitchers with elite Stuff metrics and the ability to rack up strikeouts. While plenty of those pitchers are valuable, there are also an equal number of them who have such inconsistent command that the results never truly materialize or the WHIP actively hurts our teams. The solution is right under our noses.

Far too many successful pitchers are afterthoughts in fantasy baseball because they don’t throw hard or their Stuff+ grades are below average, and so we always assume that regression, that sneaky monster, will be coming for them. It’s only when pitchers seem to “get away with it” for a few years that we start to believe they may actually just be good. Yet, in this article, I’m going to pay tribute to those starting pitchers with below-average Stuff+ grades who continue to find success because of deep pitch mixes and plus command. They may not feel as “safe” an option for your fantasy team as the Stuff+ “demons,” but they may wind up actually being more dependable.

Every starting pitcher below has a Stuff+ grade below 99 but an above-average Location+ grade and a Strike% that’s better than league average. I also tried to include only pitchers who have a deep pitch mix (a minimum of four pitches) because we have enough research to suggest that deeper pitch mixes can offset lower Stuff+ grades.

Honorable Mention Starting Pitchers

Technically, these pitchers shouldn’t have qualified, but I felt like they were worthy of at least having their names mentioned here.

Jack Perkins technically isn’t succeeding given that he has a 6.45 ERA this year, but I thought it was interesting that he qualified for this list. I hadn’t thought of Perkins as this command-centric archetype, but his Stuff+ metrics are below average, and his command results have been solid, even if the walk rate is too high. The issue for Perkins is that his four-seamer is fairly average, and he really only uses three pitches despite technically having six. On the season, the cutter has been a solid pitch for him with good strike rates and not a lot of hard contact allowed. It’s better against lefties, but I think Perkins bringing the cutter and sinker into the fold a bit more might help him reduce his walk rate and join some of the names in the next list.

Trevor Rogers, Janson Junk, and Emerson Hancock all technically have above-average Stuff+, so they can’t be on the list below, but I don’t think of them as “plus Stuff” pitchers, especially Hancock, who has seen his stuff decline as the season has gone on. Early in the season, he had added three inches of vertical movement to his four-seamer despite throwing from a lower arm slot, and his swinging strike rate (SwStr%) soared on it. In the middle of May, his arm slot fell more, and his four-seamer lost vertical movement, which hurt the pitch. Now his arm slot is changing again, but the pitch still isn’t missing bats. The problem is that he doesn’t have other pitches he’s throwing for called strikes early in the count, so he needs to use this bad-shape four-seamer. We’ve seen him fix it once, but can he do it again?

On the other hand, Janson Junk has elite shape on his four-seamer, which is 94.3 mph with nearly 19 inches of vertical movement and six inches of arm-side run. The pitch just simply doesn’t miss bats, even with its plus shape. Junk has four pitches, and you could even call it a five-pitch mix because lefties see his curve 10% of the time. Basically everything has an above-average zone rate and a below-average swinging strike rate, so you have to wonder if maybe he’s in the zone too much. That’s why I used strike rate and not zone rate here, because pitchers who truly succeed with command can get strikes even if they’re not always in the zone. Maybe Junk needs to expand his target range a bit.

Andre Pallante is technically just below the cutoff for strike rate, which was 63.8%, while he sits at 63.2%. However, I do think his overall pitch mix and approach gives him the opportunity to join the group below. He has a solid 3.77 ERA this season, but I think we could see a tiny step forward if he can get a little more chase outside of the zone. When his curve is faster, he has games where that comes to pass, so maybe it’s just a slight tweak to shape in the offseason.

Fantasy Starting Pitchers Succeeding With Command

I’m not going to cover all of these pitchers in detail, nor am I suggesting that all of them are guaranteed to have success in the future. However, all of the pitchers on the list above have below-average Stuff+ grades but have displayed plus command and a deep arsenal of pitches. That has enabled many of them to succeed beyond a level their raw stuff would suggest they should have. This is a legitimate path forward for pitchers without overpowering stuff, and many of these pitchers need to be more aggressively pursued in fantasy leagues in future seasons.

We don’t need to go too much into detail about Nathan Eovaldi, Logan Webb, Parker Messick, and Matthew Boyd. You know they are good pitchers. You also probably know that their Stuff+ grades aren’t going to register on many leaderboards, though that’s a bit more of a surprise for Eovaldi, since that wasn’t true for him when he was a younger pitcher. However, all of them have a deep arsenal of pitches, and the lefties have very good changeups that they can rely on, which is crucial when facing so many right-handed hitters. Michael Soroka and Michael Wacha are also two veterans who we know have continued to succeed due to their command and deep arsenals.

Foster Griffin has come back to the States and emerged with a similar profile. Griffin is not as changeup-focused as Messick and Boyd, but he throws his changeup 14% of the time to righties, so it is a consistent part of his arsenal. He also throws six pitches at least 10% of the time, which gives him arguably the deepest arsenal of any pitcher on this list. I was slow to buy into Griffin this season, and only partially because he had just come back from overseas. I saw a pitcher with an 88-mph cutter and a 91-mph four-seam fastball, and it didn’t seem like an arsenal that would work against MLB hitters. Yet, he throws plenty of strikes but doesn’t live in the strike zone, so he gets more than enough chase outside of the zone. He can command multiple pitches for called strikes early in the count and rarely gets behind hitters. It’s clearly a profile that works.

Perhaps Shota Imanaga can learn from Griffin. Imanaga is another lefty with below-average Stuff+ grades who has good command. However, unlike Griffin, Imanaga is really a three-pitch pitcher with 74% of his arsenal being his four-seamer and splitter. Imanaga doesn’t throw a changeup, which is a bit of a bummer, but his splitter has a 94th-percentile strike rate to righties, so he can use it like most people would use their changeup. We just likely need to see a pitch mix expansion from Imanaga if he wants to avoid the home run issues and get closer to the Griffin-Messick range of pitchers. He uses a sinker 9% of the time to lefties. He has great command of it, and it doesn’t give up hard contact, so that feels like it needs to be a bigger part of his game, and we might need to see a cutter to righties. That, or he could use his 87 mph slider as more of a tighter, harder counter to his sweeper and see if that works to give righties another look.

Justin Wrobleski is another pitcher whose pitch mix is not all that deep. 78% of his arsenal is his four-seamer and slider. He doesn’t throw a single other pitch over 10% of the time overall, but he does throw his sinker nearly 20% of the time to lefties, so that’s kind of a three-pitch mix with some fillers. I wrote in my streaming starting pitchers article this week how Wrobleski is trying to work back in his sweeper. In that article, my big takeaway was that Wrobleski will need a bit more swing-and-miss to righties. Since his four-seamer is so good up in the zone to lefties, he has a 23.1% strikeout rate and 12.8% SwStr% to lefties this season, compared to just a 17.4% strikeout rate and 9% SwStr% to righties. You know what could help against righties? Hey, yeah, a changeup would do it. Wrobleski could also work to separate his harder, tighter slider a bit more and use that against righties. Regardless, he is a command-focused arm that will have value beyond his Stuff+ grades.

His teammate Eric Lauer is on this list because he has a 3.35 ERA in 45.2 innings for the Dodgers this season and had a 3.18 ERA in 104.2 innings for the Blue Jays last season. That tells us that, even though Lauer doesn’t consistently succeed, his approach matches the one that has given these other pitchers success, and he has shown the ability to harness that approach in multiple seasons. He just needs the right environment around him to do it, and much of that likely has to do with run support and infield defense.

Zac Thornton – Mets

It might not be a surprise to you that Thornton is on this list. In fact, he may have been the first name that came to your mind, considering he has a 2.43 ERA in his first 29.2 MLB innings despite throwing an 87 mph cutter and 92 mph four-seamer. Much like Imanaga, Thornton is a lefty without a real changeup, using it just 5% of the time to righties. However, he does have four pitches, including three fastball variations. The cutter is not really an early-in-the-count weapon for him against righties, but he uses it to get swings and misses by playing it off his four-seamer. The sweeper does have a 21% SwStr% to lefties, and that’s a big reason that his swinging strike rate overall is better against lefties.

For me, what is stopping me from fully buying into Thornton’s recent success is that he’s too focused on two pitches to righties. He throws his sweeper 13% of the time to righties, but it doesn’t miss bats. Yes, it’s not getting hit hard right now, but it’s just kind of an average offering against them. He also throws his sinker 9% of the time to righties, but it’s getting hit hard. The hits haven’t dropped yet, but a 28.6% barrel rate and 43% hard-hit rate in a small sample is concerning. His changeup actually looks solid in limited usage, and I wonder if that will be a point of emphasis for him in the offseason. If he can get up to like 10-15% usage to righties with that changeup, I think we’d see a bit more swing-and-miss, and I’d feel more confident that Thornton could be like the next pitcher.

Jake Bennett – Red Sox

Right now, Bennett has two things Thornton doesn’t: a plus changeup and elite extension on his four-seam fastball. Bennett sits 92.9 on his four-seamer, which is less than one mph faster than Thornton; however, Bennett has 7.1 feet of extension from his 6’6″ frame, so that pitch actually looks closer to 96 mph. He keeps it up in the zone well and then can dot his changeup low and away. Righties see that changeup 30% of the time, and the changeup-four-seamer pairing works well for him. Yet, despite having a 14.1% SwStr% against righties, Bennett actually has a better strikeout rate against lefties, and lefties have a lower batting average and lower barrel rate against him.

I think that’s because Bennett also throws his changeup 11.3% of the time to lefties but mixes in a sinker 48% of the time and his sweeper 14.4% of the time. Even though none of those offerings perform as well as his changeup to righties, they provide him with a deeper pitch mix to attack lefties with. This approach works for Bennett, and I think what we’re seeing is mostly real, but I also think he needs another offering to righties that can keep hitters guessing a little bit more. The answer is already there since Boston loves a cutter, and Bennett is using one 6% of the time to righties. Since he was just acquired from the Nationals this December, it’s likely that the Red Sox haven’t really had enough time to shape his arsenal the way they’d like. I imagine we see a bigger emphasis on the cutter in the offseason, and that could make Bennett even more intriguing next year.

Nick Martinez – Rays

Nick Martinez is an interesting name on here because the Rays actually narrowed his pitch mix this season. He was throwing 11% curveballs and 10% sliders last season, but the Rays shrunk that to 6% and 3%, respectively, this year. What they did do was increase his same-handed changeup usage from 14% to 23.4%. Martinez gets plenty of whiffs on that changeup, but he also has an above-average strike rate. In contrast, the slider, which he used 16% of the time against righties last year, had just a 29th-percentile strike rate despite having a similar swinging strike rate to what the changeup is producing this season. So Tampa Bay basically took the pitches that Martinez could command and focused more on them. As a result, even though his swinging strike rate and overall strikeout rate remain below-average, Martinez is having his best year yet by throwing more strikes and getting more called strikes early in the count than he ever has.

This is kind of a fascinating use case for me because Tampa Bay didn’t try to make Martinez something he wasn’t. They decided not to hunt for whiffs because he’s not a strikeout pitcher and never really has been. Instead, they said, let’s just focus on commanding your arsenal as well as we can and attacking the zone with it. That has led to more advantageous counts for Martinez, resulting in weaker contact and far better results.

Keider Montero – Tigers

Now that it seems that Keider Montero is back in the starting lineup, it seems right to highlight him here. His stats above are strictly from his innings as a starting pitcher this year, so it’s not boosted by his long relief work. This season, Montero tightened up both his curve and his slider, throwing them both a bit harder and with less movement. That took away a decent amount of swing-and-miss on his slider, but it also gave him far better control of the slider. The new movement profile on the slider has been far better against lefties and, surprisingly, even though the overall SwStr% is down against righties, his slider is performing even better in two-strike counts. The overall loss of SwStr% has also been offset by a step forward from the curveball. Having less vertical movement on the curve has enabled Montero to attack more areas of the strike zone with it. The curve has seen a 9% increase in swinging strike rate against righties, with more called strikes as well. With a five-pitch mix and improved command, Montero has landed himself firmly on a list of pitchers who can outperform their stuff.

Sean Burke – White Sox

It’s been quite a breakout season for Burke, who has been electric of late. Near the end of June, I wrote about his new cutter and his increased use of the sinker. Last year, Burke threw the sinker 5% of the time and 9.7% of the time to righties. This season, he’s up to 15% usage overall and 20.1% versus righties. At that point in June, he was struggling to command the sinker, but the command of it has improved as the year has gone on, and he’s now just under league-average with the pitch. He also added a cutter this season, which he throws nearly 9% of the time to lefties and has allowed him to dial his four-seam usage down by 9% against lefties. Much like the sinker, the cutter had a 33rd percentile zone rate against lefties at the time of my article, but it now has a 63rd-percentile zone rate and 76th-percentile strike rate against lefties. Improved command of those pitches has been crucial for Burke because it’s not only given him better command overall, but it has allowed him to elevate his four-seamer late in the count for more whiffs and strikeouts.

Brandon Pfaadt – Diamondbacks

Last week, I dissected all of the changes Pfaadt has made to his arsenal since rejoining the rotation. He then pitched on Monday and had yet another strong outing. I’d encourage you to check out the article, but the short version is that Pfaadt has altered his arsenal to maximize command and weak contact, and it appears to be working.

Shane Drohan – Brewers

Back when he was a Red Sox prospect, Shane Drohan still had a five-pitch mix. His four-seam fastball was more of a command-centric pitch, and he paired that with a newer cutter that he was learning to command. His changeup then led a group of three secondaries that could all miss bats. There was upside there but less consistency. At some point in the last year, most likely after his trade to the Brewers, Drohan also added a sinker as his primary fastball to lefties, and the command of his cutter improved, which has helped him miss bats with the four-seamer over the top of it. The tradeoff has been that Drohan’s changeup, which was his go-to out pitch against righties as a prospect, has now been limited to 6% usage. His command of that pitch was reportedly strong in the minors but has not carried over to the big leagues, which makes you wonder if the Brewers were trying to change the shape in any way. Drohan has a better swinging strike rate and CSW against lefties, so bringing that changeup back could help him take another step forward against righties, but this is a five-pitch mix with plus command and multiple fastballs, which should help Drohan continue to outproduce his Stuff+ grades.