Fantasy baseball streaming starting pitchers: Hunter Brown rebounds, Bubba Chandler tweaks his slider

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 Bubba Chandler, Justin Wrobleski, and Hunter Brown.

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

This is a Mets lineup without Juan Soto and with morale dwindling as the trade deadline looms. It’s hard to trust Martin Perez in many leagues, but I think I can do so in this matchup. Not so much for Zac Thornton, who has been riding a hot streak, but is more of a command pitcher against a Braves lineup that will have Ronald Acuna back. Keider Montero has been a solid pitcher in long relief for the Tigers, and I think he could continue that production in the rotation against a banged-up Orioles offense. Lastly, there’s the question of whether or not you can ever really trust Brandon Sproat or Tatusya Imai. The answer is no, but the matchups are good this week, so it depends if you want to chance it.

Tuesday is not a great day for streaming. I like Christian Scott, but I hate this matchup. I don’t trust Seth Lugo much despite the decent matchup, but I do think there is something to Brandon Pfaadt’s pitch mix change that has led to far more control and weak contact. I just hate this matchup. I may also be done with Gage Jump for 2026. The home park is too brutal.

Yes, I’m still in on Ian Seymour, and I don’t care that he acted as a bulk follower in his last outing. In fact, that may make him more valuable in terms of wins, especially against a banged-up and struggling Texas offense. Shane Drohan is also in a good spot against the Giants on the road, so I’d happily roll the dice here. Grant Holmes and Eric Lauer is streamers for wins in solid matchups with good offenses behind them.

Roki Sasaki doesn’t qualify, but he’s close, and I think the changes that he’s made are legitimate. In a solid matchup against the Mariners, I think you can trust him. Less so for Dustin May, who faces a tougher matchup against the Cubs.

Another tough day for streamers, and I wish I could trust Robert Gasser more, but the matchup is good, so I think I’d roll the dice in most formats. Andre Pallante and Carson Whisenhunt are fringe streamers, who I don’t fully trust against offenses that should be far better than they are. They could wake up at any moment, and neither starter is truly impressive, so you may want to limit that start to deeper formats. I also wouldn’t start Jordan Montgomery yet, but I just wanted to highlight that he appears to be back.

Part of me wanted to put Connor Prielipp in the strong preference category, and I still think I might. He looked good in his one start back from the blister issue, but he also has not been consistent in his rookie season. Zac Thornton is now in a much better matchup, but I still don’t fully trust him as a left-hander without a plus changeup. If he pitches well against the Braves on Monday, then I’d feel a little better about this. I also think I’m done trusting Noah Schultz for the 2026 season. There is just too much inconsistency, and I think he loses his starting job after the trade deadline.

Another great matchup for Brandon Sproat, who has a truly great two-start week despite not being a pitcher that we really want to trust right now. Same, again, with Tatsuya Imai, who has a decent matchup against Texas. I still don’t see real consistent growth from him right now. This will be Clay Holmes’ first start off the IL, so it’s not a situation I’d like to trust, but this is also a trade deadline showcase, so I might muster up the courage. However, Merrill Kelly is my favorite streamer against a mediocre Guardians offense.

Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix/Shape Changes

Bubba Chandler – Pirates (Slider Shape and Usage, Four-Seam Shape)

In his last outing, Bubba Chandler had his best start of the season, throwing 6.1 shutout innings against the Yankees, while allowing two hits and one walk and striking out five. At the core of the start were two key changes to his pitch mix that we’d love to see stick going forward.

For starters, his slider averaged 91.9 mph, which was up 1.7 mph from his season-long average. The harder velocity meant that it lost nearly three inches of vertical movement, which may seem like bad news on the surface, but I don’t believe it is. The harder/tighter shape on the slider may have been easier for Bubba to control. He had an 83% strike rate on his slider in this one, which is a significant improvement from his 65% strike rate on the season. In fact, he has only two other starts all season where his slider returned over a 75% strike rate, and they were both in April. That type of harder/tighter slider almost seems like a cutter, so it’s not surprising that Chandler threw his slider to the Yankees’ lefties 14% more often than he’s thrown it to lefties this season. Maybe it was just a one-game blip against a team with plenty of left-handed hitters, but Chandler has a good changeup, so using the slider as more of a cutter creates a nice pitch mix for lefties, and the slider had an 18% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) to lefties in this one, so it clearly worked.

The other change we saw from Chandler was a 3.5-inch increase in horizontal movement on his four-seam fastball. Yes, that came at the cost of one inch of vertical movement, but he still averaged nearly 17 inches of vert on his four-seamer, which is elite. Adding that much horizontal movement while keeping elite vertical movement allowed Chandler’s fastball to be a legitimate two-plane pitch and is the reason it posted an 18% SwStr% on the day, his best numbers of the season. His 41% CSW is also far and away his best effort of the year, but his 64% strike rate is exactly his season-long average, so there remain some command issues on Chandler’s four-seamer.

None of this means that Chandler has “arrived.” His four-seamer was the only pitch to get a swing and miss against right-handed hitters, and his command of the pitch remains a question mark. However, these two changes move him in the right direction, so we’d love to see them stick around on Tuesday against the Diamondbacks.

Justin Wrobleski – Dodgers (Sweeper Usage)

Over the last three starts, Justin Wrobleski has increased his sweeper usage, throwing the pitch 10.6% of the time, including 13.5% of the time against the Phillies. Now, this isn’t technically a new pitch for Wrobleski; he threw 110% sweepers in his first start of the season, but then he didn’t throw a single one until a month ago.

There is a reason for that, and it’s mostly due to command. On the season, Wrobleski has a 50% strike rate on the sweeper, which is well below the 59.2% league average. The pitch has a 5th-percentile called strike rate and a 5th-percentile swinging strike rate, so it hasn’t been working much so far. However, it has an intriguing shape. It’s 84.7 mph with over 16 inches of horizontal movement and nearly six inches of drop. That type of movement profile would set it up as a good swing-and-miss pitch to lefties, but he also used it 6.3% of the time to righties in his last outing.

Yet, swing-and-miss to lefties isn’t really what Wrobleski needs. Because 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. It’s possible that mixing in the sweeper at 85.2 mph could help his 87 mph slider get more whiffs because it could create more deception. However, he’ll need to command his sweeper better before that can become a reality.

Hunter Brown – Astros (Arm Angle)

In Hunter Brown’s first two starts of the season, before his shoulder injury, his arm angle was 55 degrees at release. In his first six starts back from the injured list, his arm angle was 54 degrees. In those six starts, he had a 5.22 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, and 19.4% strikeout rate. It seemed like he wasn’t fully healthy after an early-season shoulder injury. Then, in his last start on July 25th, his arm angle dropped to 50 degrees, and he had his best outing of the year, throwing seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts and no walks with just two hits.

Now, we can’t just say that the arm angle was the reason for the good outing, but a five-degree drop in arm angle is a noteworthy change, so it’s worth looking into. In particular, we saw the lower arm angle impact his sinker movement. In this outing, the sinker was not only up 0.7 mph, but it had over an inch less horizontal movement and nearly two inches less drop. That may not seem great, but Brown threw it for a strike 81% of the time. His season-long rate is 63%, and it was 62% in his previous six starts. He also had a 38% SwStr% on the sinker in his last outing after posting a 6% mark in his previous six starts.

Brown threw almost all of his sinkers to lefties in this one, which makes me think that he liked the way it tunneled with his four-seamer. The two pitches were just 0.5 mph apart, but the four-seamer had five inches more vertical movement, while the sinker had six inches more run. He didn’t throw a single two-strike sinker in this one, but he got plenty of swings and misses early in the count from hitters who thought they were getting a four-seamer. That may have also given him the confidence to locate the four-seamer in the zone because that pitch had a 70% strike rate in this one, which is way up from the 50.8% strike rate he had registered in the previous six starts.

Additionally, the release height impacted the movement on Brown’s curveball, as did him throwing it two mph harder. The curve lost 1.1 inches of drop, but the harder, tighter movement helped it register a 65% strike rate and 25% swinging strike rate, which were far improved from the 56.3% and 12.5% marks, respectively, that he had posted in the previous six starts. The curve has been Brown’s best pitch for most of his MLB career, so getting the swinging strikes back up on that is huge for him.

Now, this is not to say Brown looks like the same pitcher we thought we’d see coming into the season. The four-seam shape is still not great, and he got lucky with some hard contact in this one that led to outs. However, he can get by without an elite four-seamer if he can throw strikes with the sinker and curve and miss bats with the curve. The lower arm angle may be him compensating for some residual tightness with his shoulder, or he may still be searching for something that feels “right,” but it’s nice to see him making tweaks and moving in the right direction.