Welcome to David Mendelson’s Weekly Starting Pitcher Streamers for the week of July 4 – July 7.
Welcome to Week Thirteen of your pitching streamers! Here we like to give you an edge over your competition every week by helping find diamonds in the rough when it comes to borderline rosterable pitchers. Everyone needs to do this in one way or another during the season, and it’s important that you have the best information for making these decisions when it comes to beating your opponent.
Sometimes, your draft doesn’t work out how you intended it to. Whether it be injuries, lack of performance, or maybe your draft was just awful. At some point, you’re going to need to pick up pitchers off the waiver wire and stream them (in other words pick them up for a start or two). This becomes crucial as hitting on the right pitchers consistently will help your ratios, while also potentially beating an opponent for those that play in H2H formats.
So how do we determine which pitchers to stream? Well, there are a lot of ways but I’ve found a few ways to be most effective. This can include looking at the trends of the opposing teams over recent periods of time, how they’re faring against certain handiness, and of course, how that streaming pitcher is currently performing.
I’m here to try and help you narrow it down to five names from all games Monday – Thursday every week, my goal all season being to provide you with the BEST pitching streamers each week to hopefully help you when you’re in a pinch. It’s important to remember that I won’t always be right (no one is), but I hope to provide you with winning streamers more often than not. The criteria for being in this article? The pitcher must be rostered in 50% or less of leagues on FantasyPros (the site being referenced for these articles).
This article will go out every Sunday morning so make sure to make necessary adjustments with postponements, starts skipped, IL stints, etc affecting the projected pitcher starting. The hope for these articles is to keep having more data that we can build off of as the season moves along.
With that being said, here are some factors that go into my streaming picks:
Percentage Rostered – Pitcher must be rostered in 50% or fewer according to FantasyPros to qualify for this article.
wRC+ of Opposing Team – wRC+ or Weighed Runs Created Plus, takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors — like ballpark or era. It’s adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average. This is one of my favorite stats to look at when picking not just pitching, but hitting as well.
Home/Road ERA Splits – How a pitcher does at home versus how they do on the road. The biggest example of this is someone like German Marquez and how he pitches on the road compared to at Coors Field.
Other Analytics – Things like a pitcher’s swinging strike rate, K-BB ratios, ISO, & OPS are some of the other data that get considered for each player.
Let’s take a look at my top pitching streamers for this week.
Week 13 Pitching Streamers
Dane Dunning (11% Rostered) Monday @BAL – While a 1-6 record with a 4.09 ERA is far from anything sexy, Dunning has quietly been pretty good as of late. Over his last four starts, Dunning has gone at least six innings in three of them, while allowing two earned runs or less. Overall, in June, Dunning pitched to an effective 3.74 ERA across his 33.2 innings pitched and showed he could pitch decently against weaker opponents.
Baltimore would qualify as a weaker opponent as judged by their .294 wOBA and 90 wRC+ against RHP this season. Over the last two weeks, they’re striking out nearly 27% against righties as well. Dunning should be a solid streamer here.
Mitch White (5% Rostered) Tuesday vs COL – A somewhat unexpected contributor to the Dodgers this season, White has been effective with a 3.85 xERA and nearly a strikeout per inning as he’s floated between the rotation and the bullpen. White has done an excellent job of limiting hard contact, as shown by his 33% hard-hit rate, and has his slider and curveball both getting 34%+ whiff rates on them.
White has a great matchup in the road Rockies, who have a .261 wOBA & 65 wRC+ against RHP on the road this season. Those are both second-worst in baseball. White should have no problem giving you a quality start in this game.
Alex Cobb (27% Rostered) Wednesday @ARI – If you’ve followed Alex Cobb this season, you know his stats don’t tell the full story of just how good he potentially could be. In a season marred by injuries and bad luck, Cobb has ranked in the top 7% of baseball in xSLG, xwOBA, barrel percentage, chase rate, and xERA. Not only that, Cobb is striking out a career-high 25.6% of batters, while allowing a career-low 33.6% hard-hit rate. The regression to the mean has begun as Cobb has a 1.88 ERA over his last four starts and looks to be settling in nicely.
Arizona has a .289 wOBA on the season against RHP and an 83 wRC+ over the last two weeks (4th-worst in baseball). Cobb should be ready to deliver in a big way in this one.
David Peterson (L) (28% Rostered) Thursday vs MIA – Peterson has really burst onto the scene over his last three starts, going 18.1 innings and pitching to a 2.48 ERA with an eye-popping 25 strikeouts. The big reason in the transformation is Peterson’s slider becoming an incredible pitch, with a 48.9% whiff rate. It has two extra ticks of velocity, nearly 100 more rpm’s of spin, and he’s using it roughly 2% more in his starts this season than in 2021.
Peterson goes against the Marlins at home, who have a nearly 26% strikeout rate against LHP over the last two weeks, and a .305 wOBA against them on the season. Peterson should be a no-brainer streamer and you might have to pick him up a few days early to beat your league mates to him.
Michael Lorenzen (30% Rostered) Thursday @BAL – Finding the fifth streamer was harder this week than normal, but Lorenzen gets the spot here against the Orioles. Lorenzen’s expected stats still show that he’s a solid pitcher, and I think in the right matchups, he can fill in admirably. While four of his last five outings have been subpar to say the least, they’ve been against good offenses in the Phillies, Mariners, and Astros.
The Baltimore Orioles are not them. Especially with their .294 wOBA and 82 wRC+ against RHP over the last two weeks, with one of the worst offensive ballparks in the majors this season. Lorenzen should be able to help you out if you’re in a pinch.
Make sure to follow me on Twitter @DMendy02 and tag me if I helped you strike gold with one of these pitching streamers. Good luck!