Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit for Ottoneu points leagues. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.
I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.
Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less.
The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.
The Cubs entire pitching staff has been decimated by injuries this year, and the bullpen has been hit particularly hard. Closer Daniel Palencia was placed on the IL last week with a strained oblique, joining fellow high leverage relievers Phil Maton and Hunter Harvey. That has opened up an opportunity for Caleb Thielbar to start earning some work in the ninth inning. He converted his first save of the season on Saturday and worked the top of the tenth inning on Sunday. From a skills perspective, Thielbar is striking batters out at close to a career high rate right now; his K% is up to 32.4% from 25.5% last year. His walk rate is also up pretty significantly because he’s throwing in the strike zone at a career-low rate. With so many other relievers on the shelf, Thielbar is essentially the last remaining high-leverage reliever in Chicago’s bullpen, so he’ll continue to get opportunities. I don’t love his peripherals right now and wouldn’t be surprised to see some hiccups before Palencia returns.
The injury bug has derailed any progress Josh Jung hoped to make after his breakout season in 2023. In 2024, it was a wrist fracture, and in ‘25, it was a minor neck injury, though it certainly seemed like the wrist was still an issue last year. He seems to be healthy to start this season and he’s suddenly producing at the plate again. Over his last 10 games, he’s collected 14 hits including two home runs and seven doubles. His underlying stats back it up too; his hard hit rate is at a career high, though oddly, he’s only barreled up one batted ball despite all those extra-base hits.
The most important development has been his career-high contact rate thus far. He’s always run a high strikeout rate but managed to offset all those swings and misses by pounding the ball back in 2023. Well, he’s cut his swinging strike rate by more than three points and increased his in-zone contact rate by nearly six points. He’s still chasing at a pretty high rate but when pitchers challenge him in the zone, he’s punishing the ball. That’s led to a much-improved walk-to-strikeout ratio and a lot more balls in play.
Over his last 10 games, Jeremiah Jackson has collected 14 hits including five home runs. An unheralded utility infielder, he made his debut last year and impressed in 48 games, posting a 117 wRC+ while playing solid defense at three positions. With Jackson Holliday sidelined by hamate surgery to start the year, Jackson has been filling in at second base full time and has run with the opportunity.
There are a couple of yellow flags for me right now. He only took his first walk of the season last Sunday and strikes out at a decently high rate. With all those batted balls in play, you might expect his BABIP to be high, but it’s currently .327, well within the realm of normal. Still, the hyper aggressive approach could lead to cold streaks when the balls aren’t falling in for hits. His batted ball quality is a bit of a mixed bag; his hard hit rate is 14 points lower than it was last year but he’s added nearly five points to his barrel rate. He’s pulling the ball more than half the time which is how he’s managed to maximize his contact despite hitting with less authority.
And then there’s the question of his playing time. Holliday is nearing a return from his injury — I’d guess within the next week or two — which means Jackson will probably be bumped from his everyday role into a utility role like he played last year. Jackson has played well enough, and there are enough holes in the Orioles lineup, that it’s certainly possible he’ll be an everyday player by bouncing from position to position each day. It’s something to monitor as Holliday gets closer to being activated off the IL.
Hot Performers Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days rostered in 80% of leagues or less.
Not so long ago, Everson Pereira was a well regarded prospect in the Yankees organization, though he did have significant concerns about his hit tool that prevented him ranking high on the team’s prospect list. He debuted in 2023, moved to the Rays in the Jose Caballero trade, and struck out way too much to have much of an impact in the big leagues. He latched on with the White Sox this offseason and has looked much more polished in limited playing time. He played in five games to start the season before spraining his ankle. He was activated off the IL last week and collected seven hits, two home runs, and three doubles in his first five games back in the big leagues. It’s only 10 games, but his strikeout rate is below 30% and his contact quality looks solid. It’s too early to make a determination about whether or not his hit tool has taken a step forward this year, but he’ll get a long look to prove he can stick in the majors with Chicago.
I never expected to be writing about Antonio Senzatela in this column, but here we are. He’s been a long time member of the Rockies starting rotation, though his career ERA is over five and his career strikeout rate is just 14.7%. It’s surprising, to say the least, to see that he’s struck out 32.7% of the batters he’s faced this year. Granted, he’s pitching out of the bullpen full-time now and throwing his fastball 2.5 mph harder as a result. He’s also added a hard cutter to his pitch mix and ditched his old slider. He allowed his first run of the season on Sunday and is seeing high-ish leverage opportunities at the back of the Rockies bullpen. It’s also worth noting that all six of his outings have been multi-inning appearances — he’s using the stamina he had built up as a starter to thrive in a fireman-type role.
Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit for Ottoneu points leagues. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.
I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.
Note: The two-game SDP-ARI series on April 25–26 will be played in Mexico City at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú. The park factors for this stadium are off the charts — it’s at a higher elevation than Coors Field without the enormous outfield dimensions of that ballpark. Start your Padres and Diamondbacks SPs at your own risk.
Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less.
The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.
A former top prospect, Nick Yorke has gotten off to a hot start this season after two failed cups of coffee in the big leagues the last two years. His carrying tool as a prospect was his bat. He’s got a discerning eye at the plate, great bat-to-ball skills, and above average raw power. He’s also got one of the weirdest batted ball distributions; his extreme inside-out style of hitting means he’s often peppering the opposite field with line drives and he struggles to get to his power in game situations. It also means he runs a pretty dramatic reverse split.
His hot start to the season looks pretty mixed under the hood. He’s been extremely patient, cutting his swing rate to just 42.3% while improving his in-zone contact rate to 97.8%. That’s a big reason why both his strikeout and walk rates have improved significantly. His hard hit rate is sitting right at 50%, but because of his swing, he’s pounding the ball into the ground and has collected just three extra-base hits. He’s getting regular time at third base in the middle of the Pirates lineup, so the opportunity is there, but I’m just not sure how high his ceiling is.
Sam Antonacci found the spotlight during Italy’s Cinderella run to the semifinals of the WBC this March. He blasted a home run off Nolan McLean in the upset victory over Team USA and played fantastic defense at short. He’s gotten off to a strong start in his first taste of Triple-A, slashing .289/.484/.444 through 13 games. With the trade of Lenyn Sosa on Monday, the White Sox have cleared some space on their big league roster, though Antonacci’s promotion hasn’t been officially announced. If he does make his debut, it’ll probably be as a utility player who will probably get pushed to the outfield because Chicago’s infield is pretty crowded at the moment.
Antonacci was ranked 11th on the White Sox top prospect list with a 40+ FV grade. He’s a speed and contact merchant without much game power — WBC homer notwithstanding. If he does end up getting called up — and if it doesn’t happen on Tuesday, it shouldn’t be long before he breaks into the big leagues — his utility for fantasy baseball might be a little limited. He’ll steal some bags which will help in 5×5 leagues, and his high on-base rate gives him a solid floor in points leagues, but he doesn’t have the high power ceiling like some of the other top prospects around baseball.
Angel Martínez has struggled to establish himself in the big leagues thanks to a pretty dramatic platoon split, even as a switch hitter. He’s historically crushed left-handed pitching but struggled against right-handers. It’s significant, then, that his hot start this season has come primarily against right-handed pitching. He’s improved his contact rate to 88.3%, he’s lifting the ball to the pull side more often than ever, and he’s already set a new career high max exit velocity.
If Martínez has truly turned a corner against right-handed pitching, it would elevate him from simply a platoon outfielder to a bonafide everyday player. And with his improved contact rate and emphasis on getting to his pull-side power, we could be seeing the first inklings of a breakout season. The one thing I want to pump the breaks on is his contact quality. Right now, his hard hit rate is just 32.4%, which is a career high, but still well below league average. Yes, he’s putting the ball in play more often, and he’s pulling it in the air when he does, but there still isn’t much authority behind that contact.
The Rangers bullpen was a bit of a mystery heading into the season. Robert Garcia had finished 2025 as the nominal closer but his skillset wasn’t really suited to the ninth inning. There were a bunch of new relievers in the fold this spring plus holdovers like Garcia, Chris Martin, and Cole Winn. After a few weeks of play, Jakob Junis has emerged as one of the most trusted relievers for Texas. He hasn’t allowed a run across eight innings and seven appearances, and he’s converted a save in his last three straight outings. His strikeout rate isn’t much to write home about, but he’s actually been a pretty solid reliever over the last couple of seasons. If you’re looking for a high-leverage reliever, Junis is a pretty good bet to hold onto that role in Texas as long as he continues to be effective.
Hot Performers Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days rostered in 80% of leagues or less.
Casey Schmitt has been on a pretty insane heater over the last few weeks; he’s collected hits in seven of his last eight games, multiple hits in four of those games, and had a particularly great series in Baltimore last weekend where he picked up seven hits, a home run, and three doubles. As you’d expect for someone on such a hot streak, his BABIP is clearly unsustainable at .520. He has improved his contact quality significantly this season which is something to monitor. He’s getting regular playing time as the Giants’ designated hitter, and I’d expect that to continue until his bat cools off.
Jeffrey Springs shocked everyone by holding the Yankees scoreless across seven innings in his last start last Thursday. He’s only allowed three runs total across his three starts this year, though his strikeout-to-walk ratio looks pretty normal for him. Most of his peripherals point to some looming regression — his SIERA is 3.97 and his xFIP is 3.91 — though his xERA is a tidy 2.19.
If you’re looking for a significant change to latch onto, you might consider his new arm angle. He’s raised his arm slot pretty significantly this year, and when combined with the extra half tick of velocity on his fastball, that means his heater is generating an extra 2.5 inches of IVB. All of his pitches are benefitting from some extra carry, leading to a ton of weak contact. His changeup has always been a fantastic swing-and-miss offering, but now he might have added contact management to his bag of tricks. It bears monitoring. I would be a little weary simply because his home ballpark is absolutely horrendous for pitchers, but he’s showing some early signs of improvement under the hood.
Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit for Ottoneu points leagues. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.
I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.
Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less. (I won’t include this section until we’re a few weeks into the regular season.)
The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.
Garrett Mitchell has had a terrible time staying on the field, which in turn has affected his ability to progress in his development. He’s missed more than 400 games over the last three years thanks to a shoulder injury in 2023, a fractured finger in ‘24, and an oblique strain in ‘25. He’s healthy now, and currently raking for the Brewers to start the season. He’s collected multiple hits in three games already and has four extra-base hits in eight games (seven starts). Many of his underlying peripherals look promising too; his hard hit and barrel rates are well above his career norms and his walk rate is up nearly six points.
I’d caution you to pump the brakes a bit. Mitchell has always struggled with contact issues — his career strikeout rate is 34% — and it doesn’t seem like he’s solved that problem despite the improvement in contact quality. So far this year, he’s chasing more than ever, swinging less frequently, and making contact at just a 63.3% rate. Sure, the contact that he has made has been loud, but his plate approach just isn’t sustainable at this rate.
It’s all super small samples right now, and it’s very possible Mitchell will be able to figure out his contact rate issues. With the improvement in contact quality he’s shown, that would probably lead to a pretty significant breakout. I don’t think he’s there yet, and you might be stuck with paying for a hot start to the season without the foundation to back up the results.
Unlike Mitchell, Liam Hicks already had a solid plate approach established but simply lacked the ability to make authoritative contact. Last year, Hicks ranked in the 91st percentile in whiff rate and the 98th percentile in chase rate, leading to a solid 14.4% strikeout rate and a 11.0% walk rate. Unfortunately, his hard hit rate was 16th worst in baseball and his EV90 was just a hair better at 17th worst.
This year, he’s reworked his swing to add a big leg kick and the results have been dramatically different. His swing speed is up two miles per hour, his hard hit and barrel rates are significantly improved, and his approach looks just as solid as it did last year — he hasn’t whiffed a single time in eight games! The results speak for themselves; he’s blasted three home runs already and is currently sporting a 214 wRC+ with just a .238 BABIP and a .495 expected wOBA. It really seems like the changes he made to his swing have unlocked a new ceiling for him.
What makes Hicks even more exciting from a fantasy standpoint is that he’s eligible at catcher and he’s picking up playing time at first base when he’s not behind the plate. The one thing to monitor is his platoon usage; he’s sat against four of the five left-handed starters the Marlins have faced so far.
James Tibbs III is getting some attention because he blasted seven home runs in his first nine games at Triple-A this year. He bounced through three organizations last year — he was included in the Rafael Devers trade in June and then in the Dustin May trade in July — and finally landed with the Dodgers to close out the year. As the results indicate, Tibbs has monstrous power from the left side and a pretty good plate approach to support the raw power. His issue as a prospect — and the reason why he was flipped twice in the span of two months — is that he doesn’t really have a defensive home. He’s been used in right field and at first base after joining Los Angeles’s farm system, and it’s likely he’ll make his way to the majors as a bat-first, platoon outfielder. Unfortunately, the Dodgers have a pretty crowded big league roster, particularly at the positions best suited for a player like Tibbs. Yes, he’s currently raking in the minors, but the path to a major league debut is pretty murky right now.
It’s hard to notice beneath his ugly season stat line, but Bryce Elder actually finished 2025 on a hot streak. Over his final seven outings last year, he ran a 2.82 ERA and a 3.30 FIP, backed by a fantastic 18.6% K-BB%. The key to his success in those final outings down the stretch was a fastball that had a little extra oomph behind it and a slider that had a few extra inches of sink to it.
Fast forward to this year and he’s continued his run of success with two excellent starts. His fastball velocity has fallen back towards his career norms, but his approach and pitch mix look a little different. Adding a cutter to his pitch mix was actually Greg Maddux’s idea — maybe Elder’s improvement this year can be traced back to his conversations with the Hall of Famer back in 2024 — and he’s used the new pitch to attack left-handed batters. That’s allowed him to cut back on the usage of his sinker, and he’s now throwing his slider as his primary pitch. That breaking ball still features the additional vertical movement he added late last year and the pitch has limited batters to a .116 expected wOBA so far. Elder still has excellent command of his repertoire, though Stuff+ isn’t necessarily enamoured with his arsenal despite the tweaks. He isn’t a guy who is going to overpower batters with raw stuff anyway, and he was an All-Star back in 2023, so there’s at least some history of success with his approach.
With starting pitching always difficult to find, I’m interested in seeing if Elder has actually taken a significant step forward with all these changes to his mix and pitch characteristics. He’ll get plenty of runway to prove himself with all the injuries in Atlanta’s starting rotation.
Like many of you, I fantasy baseball at multiple sites (Ottoneu primarily, but also FanTrax, CBS, and ESPN) and so I find myself navigating leaderboards at multiple sites. Kind of.
Yes, I do use the leaderboards at those other sites to find players, but that’s mostly out of laziness. When I have the time and the desire, my preferred way to find free agents and evaluate players is to come back to FanGraphs and use our player pages and leaderboards. CBS can tell me what a guy’s OBP is over the last 30 days; but it can’t tell me what has changed to drive that newfound on-base talent. So I identify free agents at one place, dig into them back here, and then head back to the other place to make FAAB bids or waiver claims.
The integration between Ottoneu and FanGraphs is one of the best and yet most underutilized aspects of the Ottoneu platform. And there are some little tricks you can use to make them even more powerful.
Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit for Ottoneu points leagues. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.
I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. And they are right. But you know what else is the mother of invention? People saying seemingly weird things and then stopping and thinking, “Wait, maybe this is something!”
That’s where the latest Ottoneu innovation came from, and it’s a fun one. During the heat of draft season, when we run out of things to talk about other than the 10,000th debate over Edgar Quero’s auction value, a discussion about slow auctions (the 10,000th of those, too) resulted in people to start making outlandish suggestions about how to run drafts. And then Ottoneu creator Niv Shah commented:
What if players were randomly distributed?
He immediately got an “I would sign up for that” response. I half-joked, “Randomly assigned players with randomly assigned salaries.”
“Error bars around last 10 salary,” Niv replied. “So some variance, but generally market.”
And from that “a random league” was born. And while this sounds like a gimmick there is real interest in it and real value to it (which you can see from that thread). Niv and I will be co-managing a team in that league and I want to talk about a) why I think this is not just an interesting experiment, but a useful concept and b) what Niv and I need to do as managers of our randomly created team.
Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less. (I won’t include this section until we’re a few weeks into the regular season.)
The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.
Emerson Hancock threw the best start of his career to open the 2026 season, blanking the Guardians over six hitless innings while setting a career high for strikeouts with nine. Despite being the sixth overall pick in the 2020 draft and working his way through Seattle’s vaunted pitching development pipeline, Hancock has struggled across parts of three seasons in the big leagues. Coming into this season, his career FIP was sitting over five with just a 15.6% strikeout rate.
Hancock had a pretty good spring training as he worked on honing his pitch mix; he struck out 21 across 15 innings of work in Arizona. The improvements were evident in his performance on Sunday evening. The biggest difference for him was a four-seamer that featured nearly three inches of added IVB and a sweeper that featured more than an inch and a half of added horizontal break. We don’t have arm angle data yet in this young season, but I suspect that the new movement profile on Hancock’s pitches is thanks to a slightly lower arm slot. He’s lowered his arm angle pretty significantly over the last two years and his release height was a few inches lower in his start on Sunday.
The issue with Hancock is opportunity. He’s getting this shot in the starting rotation because Bryce Miller started the year on the IL with an oblique injury which will keep him sidelined into May. Of course, Hancock made 16 starts last year because four of the five Mariners’ starters spent time on the IL during the season. Hancock looks like he’s finally made the adjustments he needed to to become a successful big league pitcher, and for now, he’ll have a spot in Seattle’s rotation to prove that he can stick.
The first save of the season for the Twins went to Cole Sands on Saturday. He walked one and struck out two en route to closing out a 3-1 win over the Orioles. The ninth inning picture in Minnesota was very unclear this offseason and Sands was one of the primary candidates to pick up saves alongside Taylor Rogers and Justin Topa.
Like I said in this column last week, you don’t have to go chasing saves in Ottoneu leagues (non-5×5 leagues, anyway) which means we’re free to evaluate relief pitchers on their skills rather than their role. For Sands, the 29.1% strikeout rate he ran in 2024 definitely looks like the outlier; the 21.4% mark matched what he ran in 2023 and it was a few points lower than that in his debut year in ‘22. He’s got solid command but doesn’t have the overpowering stuff you’d normally see from a high-leverage reliever. I’m not sure there’s anyone better in the Twins bullpen right now, so Sands could definitely run away with the ninth inning job early this season.
The big story for Randy Vásquez this spring was a huge jump in velocity. We saw the effects of that extra oomph in his first start against the Tigers on Saturday; six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts. His fastball averaged 95.0 mph after sitting around 93.5 mph last year, and his sinker, curveball, sweeper, and changeup all saw similar jumps in velocity as well. The only pitch that wasn’t thrown harder was his cutter and that pitch had a completely different movement profile. It was a bit flatter with a couple of inches of added horizontal movement and Vásquez earned three whiffs on seven swings against that pitch (a 43% whiff rate). I’m also encouraged by the added velocity on his breaking balls; he earned a combined four whiffs off his curveball and sweeper.
The extra velocity is great to see, but batters will adjust to the added heat on his fastball. I’m interested to see if his breaking balls have turned into swing-and-miss weapons and if the cutter is going to be more effective now that it’s acting more like a hard slider. We could be witnessing a pretty significant step forward from Vásquez but you might want to wait a week to see if he can prove it against a tough Red Sox lineup this weekend. If you have to make a bid now, bid conservatively and be cautious in using him against Boston.
Everything I said about Sands and high-leverage opportunities above could be copied and pasted here for Jordan Romano. At least with Romano, you have the long history of success in the ninth inning earlier in his career. Injuries derailed his career back in 2024 and he was pretty terrible in 2025 for the Phillies. His fastball velocity is actually a tick lower than it was last year at just 94.6 mph. It’s really early, but that isn’t encouraging. What is encouraging is the amount of carry he’s getting on his heater. The pitch is seeing nearly two inches of added IVB this year and a lot less armside movement. His release height is a few inches higher which seems to have given his four-seamer much purer backspin.
The Angels signed a bunch of veteran relievers this offseason — including Romano, Kirby Yates, and Drew Pomeranz — and that trio should be in the mix for saves until Ben Joyce returns from the IL. If Romano has truly turned back time and figured out how to make his fastball more effective despite his reduced velocity, he could be a solid pick up. The down tick in velocity worries me, however, and I’d want to wait to see if he’s really back to his old self before chasing him.
Luke Raley blasted home runs in three straight games to start the season, a very good sign for his health. An April oblique injury shelved Raley for two months last year and his swing was never right even after returning during the second half of the season. It’s pretty easy to diagnose what the underlying problem was. Even though his contact quality stayed relatively stable, his swing speed dropped from 75.0 mph to 73.8 mph after his injury. Through four games this year — a small sample to be sure — his swing speed is back up to 74.3 mph.
If you remember his breakout season in 2023 or his equally fantastic follow up in ‘24, you know that Raley can be a solid contributor in leagues with deep rosters like Ottoneu. The Mariners will utilize him in a pretty strict platoon so he won’t provide everyday at-bats for your fantasy team. When he’s in the lineup, he’s been productive, and it looks like his swing is back to normal after last year’s disaster.
