Fantasy baseball managers often pay for last year’s results, even when the underlying skill tells a very different story. That disconnect is where studs are undervalued, breakouts are missed, and busts get overdrafted. Stuff+ provides a skill-based lens to evaluate pitchers by the quality of their arsenal rather than surface-level outcomes. Leveraging it properly allows you to stay ahead of the market and make sharper draft-day and in-season decisions.
In this article, we’ll first break down what Stuff+ is and how to apply it in your fantasy evaluation. We will then dive into real-world examples, highlighting my favorite studs, breakouts, and busts at the starting pitcher position. Let’s get started!
Your first step… Well, okay, your second step, right after reading this article, is to head over and devour our updated Top 500 Dynasty Baseball Rankings for 2026.
2026 Fantasy Baseball: Understanding Stuff+ and Why It Matters
Stuff+ is a pitch-level metric designed to evaluate the raw quality of a pitcher’s arsenal rather than the results it produces. It measures physical characteristics such as velocity, release point, movement (Vertical & Horizontal), and spin rate, and applies this to each pitch in a pitcher’s arsenal.
In short, Stuff+ attempts to identify the nastiest pitches in baseball. Like many other metrics, Stuff+ is set to a 100-scale where 100 is league average, with numbers higher than 100 being above average and numbers lower being below average.
For me, Stuff+ is best used to identify upside through strikeouts, and that makes it the most beneficial for points leagues. With that said, it can be used in any format to help identify pitchers due for breakouts or to find possible regression in their fantasy performances.
2026 Fantasy Baseball: Using Stuff+ to Identify Studs
Hunter Greene – Cincinnati Reds (ADP – 45)
Greene was on his way to elite status in 2025 before a groin injury had him visit the injured list multiple times. The second time was the costly one for the Reds as he missed just over two months from early June to mid-August.
Before the injury, he was cruising, allowing two or fewer earned runs in nine of 11 starts, leading to a 2.72 ERA and adding elite upside with 30.8% K rate. He finished the season strong as well, leading to an overall 2.76 ERA and career-low 3.27 xFIP.
What stands out the most to me from an analytical standpoint is the fact that he has improved his Stuff+ numbers in each of the last three seasons, hitting 124 in 2025. That led all pitchers with 40 or more innings pitched and was the highest Stuff+ recorded by a starting pitcher over the last three seasons.
When looking at Stuff+ broken down by arsenal, Greene made his biggest leap with the fastball, which was 117 Stuff+ last year after back-to-back seasons posting a 105 Stuff+ with the heater. He paired that with a slider that reached 137 Stuff+ with a 37% K rate in 2025. Sure, it was a smaller sample size (107 IP) due to injury, but if he can stay on the field in 2026, he is easily a Top 10 starting pitcher in fantasy baseball and could even reach the Skubal/Skenes level!
Max Fried – New York Yankees(ADP – 58)
Without Gerrit Cole last season, it was newly acquired Max Fried who stepped up in a huge way, becoming the Yankees’ ace pitcher. He was a complete workhorse with 195.1 innings pitched(4th most in MLB), posted the 8th best ERA at 2.86, and led the league with 19 wins.
Fried has become more of a command and control type pitcher over his career and posted just a league-average strikeout rate (23.6%) in 2025. With that said, I am optimistic he can get back to near-elite K numbers when looking at his advanced metrics. He not only improved his overall Stuff+ numbers progressively over the last three years, but he also posted career-highs with every pitch except the changeup, which is his lowest usage pitch.
He is currently going outside the Top 12 starting pitchers in drafts and around the mid to end of the 5th round. That makes him one of my top targets at starting pitchers this season and fits my load up on hitting early and find an ace in the 4th-6th round strategy.
2026 Fantasy Baseball: Using Stuff+ to Identify Breakouts
Jacob Misiorowski – Milwaukee Brewers(ADP – 170)
The Brewers’ #1(Jackson Chourio) and#2 (Jacob Misiorowski) prospects from 2024 are on a fast track to being core franchise players going forward. Chourio has already made his breakout over the last two seasons, and now it’s Misiorowski’s time.
He got called up in June last year and, despite a lot of inconsistency, flashed his elite upside. Over 15 appearances (14 starts), he posted an elite 119 Stuff+, which tied Shohei Ohtani for second in MLB last season. His four-pitch arsenal is highlighted by an elite fastball that has a 121 Stuff+ and ranks in the 99th percentile of fastball velocity. He backs that up with a slider that had a 118 Stuff+ and a curveball that ended up at a whopping 127 Stuff+. While he does have some control issues to work on, it is very positive to see an xFIP (3.62) almost a full run lower than his ERA (4.36) and an xERA (3.41) sitting in the 77th percentile.
With his elite strikeout upside, it is more than worth the control risk, especially in points leagues. He is currently going off the board in the 11th round as the 36th pitcher. There is a good chance this is the last time we see him drafted outside the Top 100, and I am all-in for 2026.
Cam Schlittler – New York Yankees (ADP – 130)
Schlittler is being drafted right behind Misiorowski and is another prime candidate to crush his ADP this season. He was called up in July last year, and while he didn’t flash the same upside as Misiorowski, he was way more consistent. He went five or more innings in 11 of his 14 starts and went into the 6th or later in six of his final eight starts.
His usage was very heavy on a near-elite fastball that he threw 55% of the time. It had a slightly above-average 102 Stuff+, but I expect that to go up as the velo ranked in the 95th percentile and the K rate in the 82nd percentile. While thrown less often, his cutter, curve, and slider had a Stuff+ higher than 120.
The question now becomes, can he perform at a high level for a full season? If it does happen, and I believe it will, he should be a draft steal this season.
2026 Fantasy Baseball: Using Stuff+ to Identify Busts
Logan Gilbert – Seattle Mariners (ADP – 39)
Let me preface by saying I love Logan Gilbert as a pitcher and had lots of shares in 2025 across my fantasy leagues. That won’t be the case this season as he is going off the board inside the Top 40 and inside the Top 10 among pitchers. Despite his very solid stats throughout his career, he has yet to finish inside the Top 10 among pitchers when looking at Fantrax fantasy points.
Looking at this year’s ADP, he is one of just two starting pitchers who finished with a sub 100 Stuff+ last season. In fact, after posting a 108 Stuff+ in his rookie season back in 2021, Gilbert has slowly regressed each season and has now finished back-to-back seasons at just 96. Despite an elite splitter(144 Stuff+), four of his five pitches fall below average.
He is a terrific overall pitcher in a terrific pitching environment, but his ADP is just too high for me with too many other, higher upside plays in the same range.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto – Los Angeles Dodgers (ADP – 25)
Making bust calls is one of the hardest parts of pre-season analysis, and like Gilbert, this is another tough one. It really just comes down to upside vs. ADP and Yamamoto, as the fifth pitcher off the board, didn’t even post Top 10 fantasy points (13th) in an elite season.
Despite an elite 2.49 ERA and 3.05 xFIP in 2025, he finished with a sub 100 Stuff+ for the second straight season. His very unique six-pitch arsenal has generated a low 30% hard contact rate and elite 52% ground ball rate. I have him more around 9th or 10th in my rankings this season.
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