We’re following up on last week’s article covering a few rookie starting pitchers. This feels like an outlier season with so many rookies making positive impacts on our fantasy baseball lineups. We’ll examine four more rookie-eligible starting pitchers, including a pair of teammates. We’ll continue examining rookies throughout the season, including advice on whether to buy, sell, or hold in keeper and dynasty formats.
Last week, we covered starting pitchers who lost stuff and command. This week we will examine three starting pitchers who have gained stuff and command. We’ll look at what contributed to the gains to determine if we should buy, sell or hold.
We have covered several hitters for our rookie check-ins. Though we will cover more in the future, we wanted to shift our attention to three starting pitchers worth highlighting that were rookie-eligible heading into the 2026 fantasy baseball season. Several rookies have been performing well, with some struggles. We’ll continue examining rookies throughout the season, including some advice on whether to buy, sell, or hold in keeper and dynasty formats.
I’ll often wonder and speculate on what’s happening and why, without researching the idea. Somehow, most of my interesting ideas tend to happen when I’m driving or doing something where I can’t stop and research the data. One of those ideas was to examine which starting pitchers have lost stuff and command in 2026. compared to 2025. That said, here’s a look at the starting pitchers who threw 20 innings with a three-point decline (we rounded, so you’ll see a difference of 2.5 or more) in their Stuff+ and Location+ in 2026.
Though these pitchers have lower Stuff+ and Location+ grades, they might not remain that way for the rest of the season. Several of these pitchers make sense since they often relied upon command. We can toss out Cole Ragans and Garrett Crochet (injuries). Meanwhile, Freddy Peralta, Parker Messick, and Ranger Suarez have been showing above-average command numbers in both seasons.
Whenever a starting pitcher is struggling or succeeding, we want to understand the why and try to determine whether the results have been sustainable. This is a beefy one, with a deep look into three starting pitchers who lost significant stuff and command in 2026.
Last week, we looked at five of the top rookie hitters to examine their major league path, performance, skills, and how to value them moving forward. There have been many rookie hitters who have been providing value in redraft, keeper, and dynasty leagues of various sizes, so we wanted to cover five more. It’s helpful to digest their prospect grades and reports to see how they align with the underlying metrics. Should we buy, sell, or hold these five rookie hitters? We plan to cover pitchers in a future article if you’re wondering what’s next.
It’s hard to project how a reliever will turn into a starting pitcher, especially within a season. We expect velocity to decline as a starter, and we imagine arsenals will evolve as they pitch deeper into games. Today, we’ll dive into three pitchers who made this transition in 2026. Two of these pitchers were on fantasy rosters this year and in the past, both entering the season in different roles than they have now. The third’s path to fantasy relevance was through deeper formats.
Like most of my pitching articles, we’re looking at the underlying skills and metrics, diving into the arsenal, movement profiles, locations, and command.
Among the top 100 hitters on the Fantasy Player Rater, several hitters are highly touted rookies or players who entered the season rookie-eligible. We’ll examine five rookie hitters. The goal is to provide redraft, keeper, and dynasty thoughts on these rookie-eligible hitters to figure out whether fantasy managers should consider holding, selling high, or buying in various formats. Though keeper and dynasty formats can have different rules and scoring, we’ll do our best to consider these differences.
Welcome to my debut article, covering three starting pitchers struggling in 2026. Beyond the typical luck and skill factors, we want to examine a pitcher’s pitch mix, movement profile, location, and more to figure out whether these starting pitchers are likely to improve as the season progresses. Two of the struggling pitchers are veterans with a lengthy track record; the third is a less established arm who has teased us with his skills.
Will these starting pitchers perform better soon? Or should we consider dropping or selling low in some formats?