Below are the latest pitcher playing time projection changes since last Friday, headlined by Justin Steele’s season-ending elbow surgery:

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The wave of early season injuries has hit hard and your fantasy baseball team is more than likely feeling the effects. One of my Ottoneu teams has eight pitchers currently on the IL and I dropped two other injured pitchers in my desperate search for reinforcements. Hopefully, these eight under-rostered pitchers — four starters and four relievers — can help you in your own search for pitching help.

Tyler Mahle is finally healthy after working back from Tommy John surgery in 2023 and a shoulder injury last year. At his peak, he was a strikeout generating machine, producing a 27.1% strikeout rate across three seasons from 2020–22. He hasn’t reached that same level of effectiveness yet, but his first four starts this year have been promising. So far, he’s allowed just two earned runs and eight hits across 19.2 innings, and it seems like the command issues that limited him to just 1.2 innings in his first start are behind him. The velocity on his four-seamer hasn’t returned all the way — and it might not — but he’s getting more induced vertical movement on the pitch than ever before. Opposing batters aren’t swinging and missing against his secondary pitches yet, but the whiff rate on his heater 36.2% of the time! He’s gotten a bit lucky in the batted ball department so I’m sure some regression is coming, but as long as he’s healthy, he looks like he can be a useful starter in all fantasy formats.

Andrew Heaney has been a frequent recommendation in this column over the last few years. He’s the type of pitcher who has hot streaks where he looks incredibly impressive for a time but he isn’t consistent enough to deserve a high roster rate. He’s started off this year on a heater, allowing six runs across 18 innings in his first three starts with a phenomenal 20.0% K-BB%. He’s adjusted his repertoire to feature three different variations of his sweeping breaking ball — Statcast classifies them as a curveball, slider, and slow curve but they’re all generally the same shape with different velocities. He’s also added a sinker to his mix which gives him another weapon to keep batters off his four-seamer. These adjustments to his arsenal have my attention and I’m interested to see if they can help him reduce the amount of hard contact he allows off his heater.

After struggling in the starting rotation for a season and half, Matthew Liberatore found some success pitching out of the bullpen late last year. The Cardinals moved him back to the rotation to start this year and his first three starts of the season have been fantastic from a peripherals standpoint even if the actual run prevention hasn’t been up to snuff. He’s struck out 18 and walked just one in 18.1 innings and he’s managed to work around the platoon issues that have been a problem for him throughout his career. You can chalk that up to a greater emphasis on his changeup and cutter and better command of his entire repertoire.

After signing late in the spring, the Brewers called up Jose Quintana to make his season debut last week and he held the potent Diamondbacks offense scoreless over seven innings. At 36 years old, his best years are probably behind him, but he’s been a useful innings eater for a few years now. One thing to note: he threw his sinker more than half the time in his first start and more than half the balls in play off him were on the ground. Something to keep an eye on if you’re looking to add him.

Many teams are still sorting through the pecking order in their bullpens as they figure out which guys they can trust with high leverage opportunities. The four relievers listed above aren’t necessarily pitching in the ninth or eighth inning, but their peripherals are so good that they could find themselves in those spots sooner rather than later.

Randy Rodríguez has struck out more than 40% of the batters he’s faced so far this season and the Giants are starting to give him more and more high leverage work as a result. Tyler Rogers has been their long-time setup man but Rodríguez’s high-octane stuff fits the role a lot better.

After the Astros traded away Ryan Pressley this offseason, a spot towards the back of their bullpen opened up. Bryan King has quickly filled that opening by also striking out more than 40% of the batters he’s faced. As a left-hander, he’ll likely get high-leverage work when facing pockets of left-handed batters in the late innings, giving him some specific usage patterns.

The Cardinals didn’t really have many good setup options in front of their All-Star closer Ryan Helsley. In steps Phil Maton. He quickly grabbed the eighth inning role in St. Louis and doesn’t really have many competitors for the role.

Injuries wrecked Gabe Speier’s season last year but he’s healthy and firing bullets at the back of the Mariners’ ‘pen. Like King, Speier should see some specific usage patterns as a left-handed reliever and the impending return of Matt Brash could see him pushed down the pecking order in a few weeks.

Here are the latest pitcher playing time changes since last Friday, when I first took a look at playing time changes for the regular season.

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Welcome to the first Pitcher Playing Time Changes rundown of the regular season! As with position players, the methodology is a little different in the regular season.

For starting pitchers, instead of displaying raw games started projections like I did during Spring Training, I’m switching to percentage of a team’s remaining starts. When looking at this on a weekly basis, pitchers who are closer to coming back from injury will have their percentage go up, since they’re projected to miss less of the remaining season. Pitchers who were injured since the last update will, of course, have their percentage go down.

Relievers are going to be more streamlined, in that I’m not going to actually show projected innings pitched, because the way we project them internally always show as full-season innings, even if there’s only 50% of the season left. For example, a relief pitcher who started with 70 projected innings pitched and had his projections unchanged will still show as 70 innings pitched after 81 games. So, instead, I’ll just be showing percent change for notable relievers and we won’t be focusing on the actual innings they’re projected for when we’re only talking about a week of difference. That allows me to zero in on pitchers who’ve gotten injured or demoted.

Away we go:

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The reliever landscape has faced some of the biggest changes in recent years as many teams have gone away from anointing a single guy to be their closer, instead embracing committees where they trust a number of relievers to close the game out in the 9th. The committee strategy often includes putting their best guy in a fireman role meaning he could come in for any sticky situation from about the 6th inning on. This is undoubtedly a smart way to run a bullpen from a “real life” standpoint, but it can be rough on us fantasy folks where Saves remain a prominent category.

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Below are the latest playing time changes for pitchers since Monday, with the Patrick Corbin signing further reshuffling projected starts for the Rangers.

Below are the notable pitcher playing time changes in the last 48 hours or so. For further detail on the methodology and more recent changes, my first rundown from Tuesday is here.

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The Relief Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

• Closer Landscape
• Closer Strategy
  • Should you invest in an elite closer?
  • Is it viable to draft two top-10 closers?
• Would you rather?
• Breakout relievers

Closer Situations

• Free Agents
• American League
• National League

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

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Following up on yesterday’s post going over position player playing time changes, we now turn our attention to the pitchers. Unlike hitters, where all playing time is shown in plate appearances, we’re splitting into two tables here. Starters are shown with games started, and relievers are shown with relief innings. When looking at our projections on a player page, you’ll notice that for all relievers, innings and games pitched are the same; that’s just how our projection system works to allocate reliever innings. I’d pay more attention to the innings, since the projected games pitched number will often be higher than the actually-expected number simply to inflate a pitcher’s innings to what we feel is accurate.

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One Ottoneu manager’s cuts are another Ottoneu manager’s auction bids. But take heed pretend baseball general manager! These pitchers were cut for a reason. Maybe their signature pitch no longer fell out of the zone at the last split second like it used to. Maybe injury has the general public concerned. But, maybe those criticisms will be your opportunities. This article provides some context about the pitchers who were dropped the most at the keeper deadline, using “% of leagues with a cut in the last 7 days” as the starting point.
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