With a third of the season in the books, the sample size for certain data and metrics has grown from too small to large enough that it must be taken seriously. The New York Yankees post a wRC+ of 123 against left-handed pitching — the best mark in baseball. The Mariners, another pre-season World Series contender, sit at 75. That 48-point gap between the two elite lineups on paper, against southpaws, is no longer such a small sample that we need to ignore it. Leveraging platoons has long been an important strategic lever for lineups looking to gain an advantage. Using wRC+ through the first stretch of the 2026 season, we can see every team’s offensive production against left- and right-handed pitching to find where the real discrepancies lie, and how we can target these matchups on both sides of the ball as we move deeper into the season, and what trends we should be watching.

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Beyond the Obvious Multi-Fastball Breakouts

Building on the chart we used last week to identify multi-fastball starters, some interesting names did not receive the analysis they perhaps deserved. This second piece seeks to address that, diving deeper into the names that did not fit the profiles identified in the initial piece but deserve coverage nonetheless, both from a pure baseball and fantasy perspective. Of the 38 qualified starters using a multi-fastball approach, 24 utilize a true multi-variant arsenal. The majority of these pitchers are already well known. Deep dives on Bryan Woo or Max Fried are not necessary at this point, but having covered some of the more obvious fantasy adds in part one, there was still plenty more to explore. The updated chart below reflects the latest qualified starter data, including some new names worth keeping an eye on.

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Once considered anomalies, cutters and sinkers have moved to the forefront of pitchers’ arsenals in 2026. As pitchers develop and pitching staffs look to push the boundaries, increased horizontal and vertical movement on fastball variants has given pitchers yet another edge over hitters. While these pitches have always existed, rather than being utilized as a primary pitch in isolation they are now being used more and more often in relationship to one another. This juxtaposition is what makes them such a challenge for hitters and increasingly popular as an arsenal tool.

So the real question for hitters has become: which fastball is coming? They are being used increasingly interchangeably, thrown from similar release points, with almost identical velocities, which compounds the challenge with each at-bat. From a fantasy perspective, this trend toward a certain profile or archetype of multi-fastball pitcher is one worth monitoring as we consider draft strategy — particularly in the later rounds — or waiver additions, as the never-ending search for value continues.

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