Fantasy baseball streaming starting pitchers: Andrew Painter is a new man, but is Grayson Rodriguez?

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 Andrew Painter, Kade Anderson, Tyler Mahle, and Grayson Rodriguez.

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

George Klassen has had two really good starts in a row because he’s thrown strikes for two starts in a row. Can you trust him to do it again? I dunno. Throwing strikes consistently has always been a problem for him. I understand if you want to roll the dice, but it’s a risk. Jose Urquidy has a mildly interesting two-start week and looked pretty good in his last appearance for the White Sox. I think that could be a decent gamble.

Clay Holmes is just over the threshold, but I just wanted to highlight him briefly here. I also think Anthony Kay has a decent matchup here, and Adrian Houser has been pitching much better since coming out of the bullpen for the Giants. Jackson Jobe is struggling to miss bats, but the raw stuff is still there, so I can see taking a chance, and Brady Singer has a good matchup here. Max Scherzer has a good two-start week on paper, and three of his last four starts have been decent, so I understand taking the gamble in deeper formats. There are very few strikeouts anymore though.

Dustin May was awful in his last start, but I believe in a bounceback here in a good matchup, and I think Landen Roupp (and his new lower arm slot) should handle the Reds. Will Dion will serve as a bulk following for the Nationals against the Rockies, and so I really like his chances to steal a win in this one. He has been really good since coming over from the Guardians.

Not a lot of games here on Thursday, but I think you can trust Sean Manaea and his increased velocity, but I can’t trust Spencer Arrighetti or Hayden Wesneski against a Yankees lineup that is gonna throw a lot of lefties at him.

This is a really good day for streaming. Jacob Lopez has been on a heater that we can’t ignore, and Jared Jones is simply too good to fade against a struggling Cardinals offense. I also wrote below about the myriad changes that have been very in on Andrew Painter. I like what Dean Kremer is doing in Minnesota, and this isn’t an awful matchup, and Christian Scott is going to face a lot of righties with the Astros, so this could work for him.

Martin Perez feels like a great bet for a win against the Rockies, and Brayan Bello has been good enough in the bulk relief role that I can use him here on a doubleheader day. Daniel Lynch IV was up to 59 pitches in his last outing, so maybe he pushes 70 pitches against the Guardians. That could work out for us. Cristian Javier is making good choices with his new cutter, and I have to believe that the results will eventually come around too. Janson Junk is just a ratios play against a struggling Nationals offense.

Shane Drohan was back in the rotation this weekend, so if that continues, I like this spot for him. This is also the second start in the risky two-start weeks for Andrew Alvarez and Max Scherzer. Matthew Liberatore is also on the radar against a slumping Pirates offense.

Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix/Shape Changes

Andrew Painter – Phillies (Four-seam shape/velocity, New Changeup, Sweeper Shape)

I’ve talked a lot about Painter’s changes recently and even mentioned him as Cade Cavalli 2.0 for a pitcher who completely re-invents himself in the middle of the season. Since rejoining the Phillies rotation on July 31st, Painter has a 3.62 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and 23.4% strikeout rate in 27.1 innings. However, I’m more excited than those results would suggest because he’s been making small changes along the way and we’re now seeing them all come together.

The first major changes were adding depth to his sweeper and tweaking his splitter into more of a true changeup. When he came back to the Phillies, his sweeper had three more inches of drop and an extra inch of sweep. However, he had also taken an 87.4 mph splitter with 10 inches of arm-side run and 6.8 inches of vertical drop and made it a 90.9 mph changeup with 13.3 inches of arm-side run and just 3.9 inches of drop. This changeup has a 40.2% zone rate and a 99th percentile strike rate of 70.6%. He isn’t overly worried about burying it at the bottom of the strike zone, and he will throw it to both righties and lefties. Lefties get more changeups earlier in the count, but righties have seen the changeup most often in two-strike counts over the last five starts, and it’s posted an elite 38.5% PutAway Rate as a sneaky whiff offering. It’s a legit weapon for him, and he’s using it 23% of the time in these last five starts.

However, the biggest change may be the recent change to his four-seam shape. In a recent episode of “On the Corner,” Nick Pollack and I referenced Cole Weintraub’s coverage of Painter’s four-seamer in recent starts. Painter told Weintraub that his four-seamer felt the best it has since before he had Tommy John surgery, and we’ve seen why in his last two outings. He’s been up to 18 inches of vertical movement on the pitch and has added velocity, even hitting 100 mph on his final pitch of the game over the weekend. There doesn’t appear to be a grip change for Painter, so it’s likely connected to mechanical adjustments that have seen him lower his arm angle about five inches since returning to the rotation. It’s possible that throwing from a lower slot has allowed him to get on top of the ball a little more. A lower arm slot would usually lead to more horizontal movement, but sometimes it’s also just about a pitcher’s comfort and unique biomechanics.

What we do know is that Painter has a harder fastball with more vertical movement, which covers a major weakness for him. He also has another secondary offering that he can both zone and miss bats with. When you pair that with a better sweeper, his harder slider, and a sinker and curve as complementary offerings, you have the profile of a young pitcher who could be turning into a legit difference maker.

Tyler Mahle (Four-Seam Velocity, Splitter Velocity)

Mahle was traded to the Braves in an underrated deadline move. In four starts with his new team, he has a 1.52 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, and 24.7% strikeout rate in 23.2 innings. Some of this could simply be tied to the fact that his four-seamer has averaged 93.2 mph in those four starts and was up to 93.8 mph in his last outing. That’s a nice improvement from the 92.7 mph he has averaged on the entire season. He’s also keeping the four-seamer up in the zone 8% more often than he has on the year, which has led to a 12.7% SwStr% over these four starts; that’s well up from his 8.2% mark on the season.

He has also leaned into his splitter far more often, throwing it 38% of the time with the Braves, after throwing it a little over 26% of the time with the Giants. He’s also been throwing the splitter harder, averaging 87.8 mph in his last outing, which is almost two mph up from his season average. That has cost him some drop, but he has a 72% strike rate on the splitter with the Braves, which is up from 66% before being traded. He’s missing slightly fewer bats, but now that he’s throwing it more often, getting it in the zone more and getting weak contact is not a bad strategy. Especially when you pair it with a four-seamer that he’s elevating up in the zone more often because the pitcher can work more in tandem.

Mahle also appears to be toying with the shape a little bit too, adding a bit more drop and horizontal cut in his last outing. The metrics of his cutter have been changing each start recently, which suggests he and the Braves are working on something, so that’s another development we’ll need to keep an eye on.

Kade Anderson – Mariners (MLB Debut)

Kade Anderson finally debuted on Saturday, and it wasn’t much different than I thought it would be when I recorded a video about him on Friday. He threw 65.4% of his pitches for strikes and was able to locate his four-seamer up in the zone as he had all season in the minors. The issue was that, as Lance Brozdowski’s tweet below shows, Anderson had far less spin and vertical movement on his four-seamer with the MLB ball. This isn’t to say it will always be like this, but Anderson will need time to adjust to the new ball, which has different seams than the ball he was using in Double-A.

We saw a nice slider from Anderson in this debut too, with five whiffs and a 30% CSW. He kept it on the edges of the zone, and, much like with his changeup, for plenty of swings on pitches that were off the plate or on the edges. He also used his curveball 20% of the time to give him a true four-pitch mix. The fact that he threw 65.4% strikes but had a 33.3% zone rate speaks to just how good his command is. If the four-seam shape can begin to come back to what we saw in the minors, this type of approach will lead to high-end results. If we continue to get a four-seamer with far less vertical movement, that’s going to lower Anderson’s ceiling, but the command and deep pitch should give him a safe floor.

Grayson Rodriguez – Angels (Arm Angle Change, Slider Shape, Curve Shape)

On August 11th, the Angels fired essentially their entire pitching coach staff because of a desire to shift into more modern technology and analytics. As you can see from the tweet below, in a really small sample size, the results have been good. Similarly, Grayson Rodriguez has been much better since late July, posting a 3.33 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 27.7% strikeout rate in his last 27 innings (five starts). So does his arsenal actually look better? Has anything changed since the firings, or is this just a coincidental good run?

The first thing I noticed when digging in was that Rodriguez has raised his arm angle. Back in the middle of July, he was throwing from a 36-degree arm angle, and that has continued to rise, with him throwing from a 39-degree angle in his last start last Thursday. As you might expect, that has changed the movement profile on a few of his pitches, namely his slider and curve.

In the middle of July, before raising his arm angle. Rodriguez’s curve was 80.7 mph with about eight inches of vertical movement and 7.5 inches of horizontal movement. In his most recent outing, his curve was up to 82 mph with just 5.9 inches of drop and 3.8 inches of horizontal movement. That’s a significantly tighter movement profile, which would make sense with the more over-the-top arm angle. He also threw 67 percent of his curves for strikes in this outing, which would be a major improvement from his 55% strike rate on the season. However, it was just three pitches, so we’re not working with a large sample here. The curve has been tightening increasingly in recent starts, but this one feels a bit extreme, and he threw just 57% of them for strikes on August 14th, so the command hasn’t clearly improved with the new arm angle.

As far as the slider goes, before the arm angle change, his slider averaged 84.6 mph with around zero inches of vertical movement and 5.5 inches of horizontal break. It was up to 87.2 mph in his last outing with 4.8 inches of rise and 3.8 inches of horizontal movement. He also had 3.8 inches of rise in the start before, so this is clearly a slider that is also getting harder and losing any vertical drop that it may have had. It’s becoming far more of a cutter. He also threw 78 percent of them for strikes in this last outing, which is well up from his 60% rate on the season, so maybe the more cutter shape of the slider can help him command the pitch better.

The issue is that the harder/tighter shape of his two breaking pitches isn’t getting him any more whiffs. Those two pitches combined for zero whiffs in his last start, five in the start before (four from the slider), and three in his start on the 9th. He is still relying primarily on his changeup for whiffs, which is tough for a right-handed pitcher. Especially one with a four-seamer that has below-average vertical movement.

All in all, none of these changes really excites me. I could see the cutter/slider being a decent pitch if he can locate it down and away from righties after elevating some four-seamers, but we’re just not seeing that right now.