Fantasy Baseball Streaming Starting Pitchers: Roll with Joey Cantillo and Luis Morales

We’re now into the final two weeks of the fantasy baseball season. While many managers have phoned it in for the season, a few of us are still grinding away for head-to-head titles or trying to earn a few final roto points. Streaming starting pitching properly over these final weeks is a huge component of the week-to-week mindset that is so crucial for this time of year.

To help you do that, I’m going to rank and break down my favorite streaming matchups each week from here until the end of the year. Below you’ll find multiple tables that rank streaming starting pitchers based on those I have a strong preference for, those I’m fairly confident in, those I’m hesitant about, and those I like but have questions about their usage. Within the tiers, you can make some changes based on your own needs. If you need strikeouts more than ratios, you can bump up the two-start pitchers over the pitchers with one good matchup, etc.

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Starting Pitcher Strategy

At this point in the season, you also need to be adjusting your strategy for rostering and using your starting pitchers. For example, if I have two starters really close for this upcoming week, but one of them gets an elite matchup the following week and the other is in a matchup I want to avoid, then I’d prefer to add the pitcher I’ll use for two straight weeks because that makes my team better in the long run. This is the time of year when we need to be ruthless. If you’re not going to start a pitcher for two weeks, move on. If a pitcher has been great for you but now has bad matchups, move on.

Your decisions will change based on your league type and settings, but I’ll do my best here to give you the information that will help in your formats. 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.

Offenses to Attack

Before we get into our rankings, just a quick note about the offenses we want to attack. I used FanGraphs team stats over the last month, searching for metrics like wRC+, strikeout rate, OPS, etc., and narrowed down the list of offenses to ones that have struggled in those areas.

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To stream starting pitching, we want to target pitchers going against the Guardians, Rays, Nationals, Cardinals, and Rockies/Reds on the road only. Think of these as HIGHWAY OFFENSES – not stopping at all.

I also am more than comfortable using pitchers against the Orioles, Tigers, Angels, Marlins, Giants, Rangers, Red Sox, White Sox, Pirates, Athletics on the road, and Mariners in Seattle. Think of these as GREEN LIGHT OFFENSES – you can’t open it up like you can on a highway, but you’re good to go.

IMPORTANT RANKINGS NOTE: Pitchers within the same tier can be treated almost interchangeably. If a pitcher is under 40% rostered on YAHOO and does not appear below, then I have no interest in starting him this week.

Streaming Starting Pitcher Rankings: Wednesday, September 17th to Sunday, September 21st

We had Bubba Chandler in the lead spot last week, and he delivered, so we’re more than happy to go back to the well here. Same for Eury Perez, who handled the Rockies in Coors on Tuesday and now gets a banged-up Rangers offense at home. Brandon Sproat has also delivered for the Mets in two starts and gets a great matchup with the Nationals, while Joey Cantillo has been a really underrated arm all season and gets a Twins offense that is littered with left-handed hitters. Lastly, Luis Morales was about 60-70% rostered a few weeks ago, and I know the last two starts haven’t been great, but those have also been two starts at home in perhaps the most hitter-friendly park in baseball. He now gets the Pirates in Pittsburgh, so I’m more than happy to ride the talented rookie there.

These are all pitchers that I’d roll out this week with some level of confidence. Martin Perez, Jeffrey Springs, Andre Pallante, Luis Severino, and Tyler Wells are all about the matchups here. Parker Messick is to a certain extent as well, since the Twins are so left-handed-heavy that I think he should put together a strong outing there.

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Justin Verlander has been electric over his last four starts, allowing three earned runs on 17 hits in 24 innings with 25 strikeouts and 10 walks. His four-seamer hasn’t been great, so some of that is a mirage, but he also gets Arizona and St. Louis next, so we love this end-of-season run from him.

Ryan Weathers is technically in a bad spot in Coors Field, but he looked good in his return from the IL, and we just saw Eury Perez pitch well in Coors, so I’m OK using Weathers here. Same for Jameson Taillon, who gets the Reds at home, which is not an ideal pitching environment, but I don’t love this Reds offense, and I think Taillon is a good pitcher who gives you a good chance at a win.

Trey Yesavage was electric in his MLB debut, striking out nine and walking two while allowing one run on three hits in five innings. He also did it in a tough pitching environment in the minor league park in Tampa Bay. His splitter is a filthy pitch that works really well off of his four-seamer, given his super over-the-top delivery. However, splitters are notoriously inconsistent pitches, and Yesavage’s slider is just OK, and his fastball doesn’t miss many bats. This makes me a little nervous that he will live or die with that splitter, but the debut was good enough that I’ll take the gamble against the Royals.

Connelly Early also just had another really good start for Boston, and while I’m not sure he can keep up this level of production, I think he’s a solid arm. I don’t love the fact that he has to pitch his next game in a minor league park, but it’s hard to bench him after his first two MLB outings.

These are all guys who give me a bit of pause, but I would consider them in deeper formats or if I really needed a starter.

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Jason Alexander, Taijuan Walker, Adrian Houser, Patrick Corbin, Simeon Woods-Richardson, JT Ginn, and Randy Vasquez are all here strictly due to their matchup. Joey Wentz kind of is too since the Tigers are an average lineup but perform better against righties than lefties.

I like Ian Seymour and Johan Oviedo, but they both get bad matchups, so they fall from the fairly confident tier into this one. I don’t think they’ll crush you, but I don’t see tons of upside. Same for Cade Cavalli, who has strikeout upside but a bad matchup against the Mets.

Cristian Javier has been super inconsistent since coming off the IL, but we had to expect that after missing so much time following Tommy John surgery. This Texas lineup isn’t toothless, but it’s not the same without Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, so I could see Javier putting together a solid outing. I just can’t say he’ll do it with any confidence.

I like Tyler Mahle, but this feels like a situation where he is going to split this game with Jacob Latz since Mahle hasn’t built up a huge pitch count while on the IL. That makes it tough for wins and tough to use him. Similar for Payton Tolle, who may start but also may just pitch 3-4 innings of relief, so it’s hard to narrow down his true value.

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The others are likely guys I wouldn’t consider unless I really needed to hunt for wins or strikeouts.