Last Tuesday, the Red Sox acquired Sonny Gray from the Cardinals, allowing him to don his sixth uniform in 10 seasons. It’s pretty surprising to see a guy with a career ERA- of 87 to be constantly packing his bags to join a new team, but perhaps the positive spin is that so many organizations want him! After spending two seasons calling Busch Stadium home, let’s dive into the park factors to find out how the move to Fenway Park might impacts his results.

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A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the early starting pitcher Stuff+ risers and fallers. Unfortunately, comparing 2025 Stuff+ to 2024 Stuff+ meant that I was missing a whole group of potentially interesting pitchers to evaluate — both injury returnees and rookies. So I dedicated a post to reviewing these two groups’ Stuff+, but without any comparisons to the previous season. Let’s find out how they finished the season.

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In late April, after about a month of the season was in the books, I compared starting pitcher Stuff+ grades to their marks from the 2024 season, identifying the risers and fallers. Just like with any other metric, could pitcher go on a stuff hot streak or suffer through a slump? Or does such changes early on tend to stick? Let’s review the names to see how they finished the season in both Stuff+ and strikeout rate, which correlates strongly with the former.

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The preseason and early season reviews continue! Today, I’m going to review the early starting pitcher velocity changes to find out if the gainers held onto their gains and if the decliners suffered their losses all year. Since we know that fastball velocity positively correlates with strikeout rate, I’ve included the change from 2024 to 2025 as well to see if both moved in the same direction.

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The theme of this offseason for the Ottoneu wing of RotoGraphs is self-reflection and accountability. I’ve already gone through some of the lessons I learned from the big mistakes I made this year and reviewed my bold predictions. Last week, Chad Young reviewed his weekly Hot/Cold Right Now column to see if the advice he was giving throughout the season was useful and actionable.

Following in Chad’s footsteps, I’d like to review my semi-regular Ottoneu Drip articles. The goal of this column is to identify under-rostered pitchers who might be able to help your team in both the short- and long-term. By its very nature — limiting analysis to pitchers owned less than 60% across all Ottoneu leagues — the hit rate on my advice is pretty low. These pitchers aren’t rostered for good reasons. Still, I was able to uncover a handful of very valuable pitchers who produced excellently over the long-term and there were a few more short-term wins that could have helped throughout the season.

I wrote eight Ottoneu Drip articles during the season with a bonus article written for the final weekend of the season that I opted not to include in my analysis. I identified 64 pitchers in these articles — 54 of them unique — and I graded my advice along the same 1–5 scale that Chad used in his Hot/Cold review:

1. Bad advice, this pitcher was bad over the short- and long-term.
2. Didn’t work out, but there might have been some short-term value there.
3. Neutral, there might have been some short-term value or the possibility of long-term value if you squint.
4. Good advice that had some strong long-term value or extended short-term value.
5. Solidly good advice that had excellent long-term value.

Here’s what I found:

• My average score was 2.53. If you ignore the article posted after the first weekend of the regular season on April 1, the average is slightly boosted to 2.70.
• That April 1 article was a disaster. All eight of the pitchers were busts; the average rest-of-season FIP in that group was 4.85 and the average rest-of-season P/IP was a ghastly 2.91. Two of pitchers identified in that article — JP Sears and Mitchell Parker — returned some slight short-term value over the next few weeks but they eventually turned into pumpkins. I guess the lesson there is to not jump to any conclusions based on a single start and wait for a bit of a bigger sample before making any recommendations.
• It shouldn’t surprise, then, to see that my average score from June through August was 2.74, half a point higher than it was in April and May. Making recommendations with a larger body of work to reference is a lot easier than taking a shot in the dark.
• There was one outlier article in April posted on the 16th. In that piece, I identified Tyler Mahle, Matthew Liberatore, Randy Rodríguez, Phil Maton, and Gabe Speier as pitchers with plenty of short- and long-term value. Mahle and Liberatore eventually succumbed to injury and fatigue, respectively, but they were solid pitchers for most of the spring and early summer. Rodríguez was one of the best relief pitchers in baseball this year but Tommy John surgery will keep him from providing any value next year unfortunately.
• I had a lot more success identifying relief pitchers (3.0 average score) than starting pitchers (2.3). Along with the trio above, I also called out Will Vest, Brendon Little, Garrett Whitlock, Louis Varland, Reid Detmers, and Seranthony Domínguez as helpful relievers before they were snatched off the waiver wire. My most successful starting pitcher recommendations included Trevor Rogers, Ryne Nelson, Ian Seymour, Chad Patrick, Quinn Priester, Mike Burrows, Mahle, and Liberatore.
• If you had somehow managed to follow every single one of my recommendations, you would have added 3.28 P/IP over the following 30 days after the article was published. And you would have added 3.46 P/IP over the rest of the season.

I have no idea what any of these results mean in context. That amount of analysis will have to come next year with this year as a baseline. I do think I need to be a bit more careful about recommending players so early in the season. It’s easy to take one strong start with some interesting velocity readings and assume the pitcher is about to breakout — I’m looking at you Jordan Hicks. I also think I need to follow Chad’s lead and evaluate fewer players more deeply. A deeper dive into some of these early season picks would have likely revealed that nothing under the hood had really changed.

What’s your feedback? Is this column useful? Is my 60% rostered threshold too low (or too high)? Any changes you’d like to see?

Yesterday, I reviewed my $14 NFBC offense, filled with 14 hitters with an average auction value of $1 in late February when I published my imaginary roster. Today, let’s now flip over to reviewing my fake $9 pitching staff. I would imagine it’s easier to hit on some big wins from the crop of $1 pitchers than $1 hitters, so let’s see if that was the case this year. As a reminder, I rostered three true hits on the hitting side, composing just over 21% of my team. Did I do better on the pitching side?

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The ever-shrinking share of innings going to starting pitchers in today’s game has us focusing on volume more than ever. “Bankable” these days is someone with back-to-back 150+ IP seasons, a total that doesn’t even qualify for the ERA title (requires at least 162). A blind spot in my analysis has been that I don’t follow up the year after their surge. I’ll read or even create content in the spring of a given year highlighting the big IP gainers from the previous year just so people are knowledgeable about the big spikes, but I don’t circle back to see what those guys did for an encore.

We will look at the biggest IP gainers from 2023 to 2024 and see how their 2025 fared. There were 21 pitchers who added at least 75 innings in 2024 and they’ll serve as our focus group here broken down into a few clusters. Later in the offseason, I’ll take a closer look at the 2025 IP gainers with some thoughts on their 2026 outlook.

100+ IP HEROES

Nine pitchers added at least 100 innings in 2024, averaging just 38 innings per season in 2023 before surging to 158 per in 2024. Meanwhile, the group’s average FIP dropped as well, down 78 points to 3.89.

Frankie Montas essentially missed all of 2023 with just 1.3 IP so virtually all of his 2024 was surplus. Unfortunately, the results weren’t anywhere near his 2021-22 output (3.55 FIP). An early-spring lat injury kept anyone from investing so his flop season with the Mets (39 IP of 6.28 ERA and TJ surgery) wasn’t really felt on the fantasy landscape.

Garrett Crochet, Tarik Skubal, and Carlos Rodón are the major outliers on the list, all adding volume to their 2025 total with elite production. Crochet’s FIP went up, but only 20 pts to 2.89 in 205.3 IP, most in the AL. Skubal, of course, is headed toward a second straight Cy Young win. Rodón did have a 1.40 improvement on his FIP in 2024 but that only got him to 4.39, though 16 Ws and 195s Ks helped him still finish SP42. He was back to stud Rodón this year with an SP10 finish.

Simeon Woods Richardson couldn’t maintain his 2024 volume, but he did still lower his ERA and WHIP despite the 40-point jump in FIP. He delivered occasional streamer value en route to a 4.04 ERA/1.28 WHIP in 111 IP.

Ronel Blanco was felled by TJ (internal brace version) which is a bummer because I would’ve liked to see how he followed up his breakout season. His skills remained intact with a 14% K-BB and he was still extremely difficult to square up with a .207 AVG against. Now he’ll miss most of 2026 and have to climb back up the hill at age-33 in 2027.

Nestor Cortes had a disastrous Opening Day in Yankee Stadium (8 ER), was traded to San Diego during a 4-month injury absence and looked decent again in his August return before a torn biceps injury cut him down and will now keep him out for half of 2026. He is completely off the fantasy radar at this point.

Trevor Rogers is the most unique case on the board. He ramped back up to 153 innings if you count his MiLB work but struggled so much that he became an fantasy afterthought. He was also going to miss upwards of two months to start the 2025 season leaving no reason to draft him anywhere outside of maaaaybe a last 2-3 round Hail Mary in Draft Champions. Instead, he became arguably the fantasy pickup of the season (at least pitcher pickup; Nick Kurtz is really tough to beat for the overall best pickup). He had an elite season debut on the backend of a doubleheader against Boston in late-May but was sent back down for over three more weeks before settling in for the stretch run. Now he’s the de facto ace of the O’s and positioned to be a mid-rotation fantasy arm in 2026. The return of his velocity (+1.2 to 93.1 mph) and razor-sharp skills (18% K-BB) have me ready to buy back in at the draft table.

Looking at 2025, the group’s average output dropped to 107 IP but the collective FIP improved as only Cortes and Montas were bad — both for fewer than 40 innings, though, so not a lot of damage came from them.

85-99 IP SURGES

The seven pitchers featured here came with a lot of hype for 2025 thanks to a couple fantasy aces and several young arms on the rise. Their 164 IP average actually tops the first group, but they are coming from higher 2023 totals so only an average of +91 IP. They also clipped the first group in 2024 FIP with a 3.89 mark.

Max Fried was either your 2/3 if you were pitching-forward or the ace for a team waiting on starters and he delivered with an SP11 finish. His 195 innings mitigate the strikeout rate issues as his 189 total tied for 14th-most. The 19 Ws play a big role in that finish as well, but it’s not like his 2.86 ERA/1.10 WHIP combo is anything shy of fantastic meaning even if win volatility gets the best of him next year, there is still a firm skills floor here. He also now has at least 165 IP in 4 of the last five seasons. I’m still getting used to that being workhorse adjacent (18th in IP since 2021), but that’s where we are today.

Cole Ragans laid such strong groundwork in 12 starts with the Royals in 2023 that his breakout 2024 wasn’t a huge shock. In fact, paired together he had 258 IP of a 3.00 ERA/1.12 WHIP and ascended into a top 50 overall ADP for 2015. He showed flashes of greatness, including a 3-start, 31-strikeout run right out of the gate, but he sputtered in May and injuries limited his ability to ever recover leaving him with a 4.67 ERA/1.18 WHIP in 62 IP. He did finish strong in three abbreviated September starts (2.77 ERA/0.77 WHIP/22 Ks in 13 IP) and posted 38% K rate on the year, both of which have buying back in even at a continued high price. Nothing about his season has me less confident in his ability. He might not stay healthy in 2026, either, but I’ll bet on the talent.

Ryan Pepiot and Brandon Pfaadt were both big breakout picks with similar ADPs and a lot of crossover amongst their ardent supporters. Both were building on sharp small samples from the year before and played on teams capable of supporting a quality young arm (at least we thought so coming into the season, both clubs wound up sub-.500 and short of expectations). Results aside, it is encouraging that both managed big IP totals again this year. Pepiot added 38 IP up to a career-high 168 while Pfaadt’s 5 IP dip was more because of performance as he actually managed 1 more start than 2024 with 33 (Logan Webb stood alone with 34).

The “results aside” caveat was really just for Pfaadt as his excellent 5% BB rate (3rd in MLB) was essentially wasted by the 1.3 HR9 and .316 BABIP. There’s a case he’s just in the zone too much as neither problem is new (career 1.4, .315). Pepiot didn’t reach the lofty heights I had for him in my Bold Predictions, but he gave you what you paid for: SP46 ADP, SP45 season finish.

I’ve been using FIP as the easy catchall here but it does obscure the success of someone like Jose Quintana who posted a 3.96 ERA, nearly a run lower than his 4.81 FIP. And he was likely curated to an even better ERA by many of his fantasy managers as a streamer. He ended the season with a 7.40 ERA in his final four starts, but most managers likely avoided the bulk if not all of those starts given the matchups (ARI, PHI, TEX, STL). In short, a quality streamer who even found shallow league viability early on as he posted a sub-3.00 ERA through his first 10 starts.

The market was keen to what Sacramento’s park could do to Luis Severino after his rebirth with the Mets in 2024. His early-300s ADP was even too high for his SP161 finish, but his buyers went in eyes wide open to the potential trouble at that stadium. Sometimes playing a home/road split with a pitcher is dangerous, but Sevvy proved incredibly bankable depending on venue. He was completely unusable in Sacramento with a 6.01 ERA/1.53 WHIP and wasn’t shy about how he felt pitching there. Meanwhile, he was a ratios stud on the road with a 3.02 ERA/1.07 WHIP. If he is traded out and lands in the right spot, he could be a worthy bounce back bet for next season, but if he remains with Sacramento then he’ll stay a venue-focused streamer which is a scary player class to bet on.

Kyle Harrison had a whirlwind first half with the Giants. He started in the minors and then spent time in the bullpen after a promotion back to SF, capped off by a brief stint in the Giants rotation before his inclusion in the huge Rafael Devers trade that put him on the Red Sox. They sent him back to the minors until September when they gave him a relief appearance and two starts. He was a bit different with the Red Sox, but not really in obvious standout ways. His velo was down nearly 2 mph to 93.4 but he threw a lot fewer fastballs (-13 pts to 52% usage), funneling most of that into his 87 mph cutter (11% usage) while also amplifying his curve usage 7 pts to 32%. For more on his changes with Boston, check out this David Laurila piece. He did enough to get back on my radar. A former big time prospect who will be just 24 years old in an organization that has done some intriguing things with starting pitchers is a winning formula for a quality late-round pick.

75-84 IP JUMPS

Our final group features three studs (Sánchez, Lodolo, Sale) and two duds (Paddack, Fulmer). It was the only group who saw their 2025 output go up as the gains of Paddack, Sánchez, and Lodolo cancelled out the 50+ inning dips of Sale and Fulmer. Paddack keeps them from improving their FIP as a whole, but no one felt bad about investing in the three studs even with Sale dropping his IP count so much.

Cristopher Sánchez showed that 2024 was just the beginning for him, pitching quite a bit better in 2025 with a 2.50 ERA/1.06 WHIP combo in a career-high 202 innings, up 20 from his 2024 total. His SP6 finish might perfectly portend his 2026 ADP. He could even secure the 5-spot after Skubal, Yamamoto, Skenes, and Crochet.

At age-36 and litany of injuries on his ledger, it was hard to expect another 170+ innings from Chris Sale but I was confident that the innings we did get would be good. And that’s how it all played out: he pitched 126 innings with a sparkling 2.58 ERA/1.07 WHIP combo with a near-identical 26% K-BB rate (-0.4 from 2024). Where do we go from here, though? He can be a top 25-30 SP with even just 100 innings if they’re good enough, but what price are you willing to pay for the 37-year-old southpaw? I know he’s not coming off a Cy Young win again, but I’m not sure he drops all that far off his 36 ADP from 2025.

Nick Lodolo missed most of August and some of September, but otherwise had a great season. He took the compelling skills we saw in 2024 and turned ‘em into results in 2025. Like teammate Hunter Greene, his HR rate jumped back up in 2025 but his control improvements mitigated any damage from the added homers. He will likely be a big fantasy target for his believers next season and even drum up some longshot Cy Young chatter.

Chris Paddack was a passable backend innings eater for the Twins but a gigantic surge in homers (+1.3 to 2.7 HR9) tanked his time with the Tigers and snuffed out the last remnants of fantasy value that might’ve been lurking.

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The ultimate takeaway here is that I don’t think an innings surge alone should change how you feel about a pitcher. You should probably expect fewer innings (-31 on average among the 21 pitchers studied here), but outside of Cortes’s 35 IP meltdown the performance of the collective group didn’t really fall off. There will be some tricky cases to investigate such Matthew Boyd and Drew Rasmussen and again, I’ll take a deeper look at the 2025 gainers later into the offseason.

During the All-Star break, I polled you fine readers about starting pitchers and your expectations in the second half. Specifically, the poll pitted the 10 greatest SIERA overperformers against the 10 most significant underperformers. I asked you which group would post a lower second half ERA and which range each group’s ERA would fall into. Let’s now review what happened.

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In early June, Alex Chamberlain graced us with a FanGraphs article about Brendon Little and a new concept called, “Implied Miss Distance”. Chamberlain, along with Baseball Prospectus writer/researcher Stephen Sutton-Brown, have done some great work utilizing Statcast bat tracking data, giving readers a new perspective on something like a swing and miss. But, back in early July, nearly a month after Chamberlain wrote about Little’s amazing knuckle-curve and it’s ability to make hitters whiff so hard that the outfield flag flutters, hitters stopped chasing the pitch. They were tired of looking silly and would no longer budge, allowing us to imply nothing:

If it wasn’t for Chamberlain’s article, I wouldn’t have known about Little or his knuckle-curve. But that’s why FanGraphs is the best, and when I recently watched the Blue Jays and their relievers’ deteriorating August WHIP, I heard the broadcasters mention Little’s falling O-Swing, or chase, rate.

If you only focused on Little’s knuckle-curve and the damage hitters have done to it in each month of the season, as you see in the table below, you wouldn’t think twice about the pitch’s performance:

Among pitchers who have thrown at least 100 knuckle curves in any of the last five seasons, Little’s 2025 wOBA of .188 is a fringe top 20 (25th) out of nearly 200 pitchers. Last season, Little got even closer to the top 20 mark (23rd) with a .186 wOBA on the pitch. But the broadcast never said anything about Little getting hit; they were focused on the lack of chase and, therefore, an increased BB%:

The chart above includes all of Little’s pitches. By isolating the O-Swing% to only his knuckle-curve, we can see that this overall drop in hitters’ chasing after Little’s offerings wasn’t solely because of them spitting at that specific pitch:

Thanks to the incredible addition of the Pitch-Type Split Leaderboard by the FanGraphs web team, we can now view the averages of individual pitches with ease. In 2025, among all pitchers who have thrown at least 10 knuckle curves, the league average O-Swing% currently sits at 35.5%. Little’s mark on the season is 36.5%. Rolling averages are different from season averages, and when Little’s chase rate rolling average dipped, so did the chase rolling average of his two other pitches:

Chart 4 – Rolling KC, FC, SI Chase% Comps

The straight red line indicates times when Little stopped throwing his cutter. It’s interesting to see how the line stopped running horizontally around the same time his knuckle-curve was at its worst. Unfortunately, it didn’t fill the chased pitch gap, and that 40-50 game mark fell around early to mid-July when Little’s WHIP went upwards:

Hitters weren’t getting boosted wOBA’s from Little’s lack of chase, but the 1.65 WHIP  (5.97 eqiuv. ERA) meant they were hitting his other pitches and walking more. I’ve been rambling on about Little for more than a few paragraphs now, and you’re probably waiting for the point. The point? The point is, pitchers need to adjust when a pitch that used to be chased no longer gets chased. They know that. We know that. Yet, it’s difficult to keep track of on the fan side of things. Pitchers will go about adjusting in all sorts of ways.

In Little’s case, it was really just a blip. If you go back up to the graph showing individual pitch chase rates, you may notice that Little’s usage of the cutter, even if it wasn’t chased, allowed the chase rate on his knuckle-curve to jump back up. Hitters did a great job of laying off Little’s knuckle-curve from around games 30 to 70, but excellence is when a pitcher can adjust in the moment to hitters. That’s robotic. So, let’s!…get!…robotic! For the remainder of this article, I’ll present a detection system that can run daily to capture when a pitcher’s most used fastball and most used secondary are in good or bad rhythm using individual pitch plate discipline metrics. Here’s an example from Little’s 40 to 80 game span:

The table is just a summary of what you see in Chart 4 above, but it’s designed to be placed in an automated system. If chase is up on one pitch and called strike is up on another, that’s good. If both pitches are falling to generate either chase or called strikes, well, that’s bad. Categorizing the balance between his sinker’s called strike rate and his knuckle-curve’s chase rate is as simple as creating rule-based logic:

conditions = [
(final_df['Rolling_Chase%']-3 > final_df['smart_median_chase']) & (final_df['Rolling_CStr%']-3 > final_df['smart_median_cstr']),
(final_df['Rolling_Chase%'] <= final_df['smart_median_chase']) & (final_df['Rolling_CStr%'] >= final_df['smart_median_cstr']),
(final_df['Rolling_Chase%']+3 < final_df['smart_median_chase']) & (final_df['Rolling_CStr%']+3 < final_df['smart_median_cstr']), (final_df['Rolling_Chase%'] >= final_df['smart_median_chase']) & (final_df['Rolling_CStr%'] <= final_df['smart_median_cstr'])
]
# Define the corresponding categories
categories = [
'Excellent',
'Ok (Adjusting)',
'Bad',
'Ok (Adjusting)'
]


Using the pitcher’s median values allows the categorization to detect improvements by each individual. I’m using “smart” medians to call the league median if a player has a zero value. That happens when they haven’t generated any chase or called strikes. If we use Brendon Little’s game logs to isolate his performance during those game periods from the table above, we see some pattern in a very small sample:

Little was at his best when he was in decent balance. This is the type of tracking that could be useful when streaming pitchers or looking for hot relievers. To test this out on a grander scale, I built a dataset that includes data from the last two months. This keeps the sample limited to more recent performance. Furthermore, I limited the data to only pitchers with more than 60 total pitches thrown in that time. Then, I took each pitcher’s most utilized fastball by pitch percentage and used it to calculate their called strike rate. I did the same with each pitcher’s most utilized offspeed, or non-fastball, pitch and used it to calculate their chase rate. I then calculated each pitch’s 15-game rolling rate, called strike for fastballs and chase for non-fastballs, and labelled their performance balance. Finally, I counted the number of days in which a player has been either good (balanced) or bad (unbalanced) and found the current status of players in both groups:

–

The results focus on a pitcher’s most recent stretch. For example, Emilio Pagán has had one of his best K-BB% (22.4%) marks of his career this season, and in his last five games, it’s been even better (26.3%). He’s had recent success thanks to his four-seam and splitter working in unison.

Is there more to do? Always. I’ve only compared fastball called strike rates with offspeed chase rates, but all of these plate discipline metrics could be compared for balance. For example, it may be better to have a balanced swinging strike rate and chase rate. But, fundamental to this analysis is the assumption that it’s hard to get anywhere without a fastball and offspeed pitch that work well together. Does it mean anything? Is the balance even predictive of future success? Maybe, maybe not. What it certainly can do, as I believe I’ve exemplified here, is explain a pitcher’s success or lack thereof. If you are interested in doing this analysis on your own without spending hours calling and pinging pybaseball’s API, you can view pitch-specific plate discipline metrics on our new and totally awesome Pitch-Type Splits Leaderboards. Stay balanced, stay cool.

The search for pitching help is never ending. Between injuries and ineffectiveness, fantasy players are always on the lookout for pitchers who are performing well who can provide some reinforcements. The final week of the season is upon us. Hitting your innings pitched cap in Ottoneu leagues is one of the most important ways you can maximize your roster to its fullest extent. And because it’s a soft cap, you can stack as many starters as you can on the day you’ll hit the cap, and you’ll receive all the points from those pitchers.

If you’re planning ahead, you might want to think about adding one or two of the following under-rostered pitchers for their start during the final weekend of the season if you can line everything up correctly. Here are 12 starters who are rostered in less than 60% of all Ottoneu leagues who have a good matchup this weekend.

Atlanta might have one of the easiest matchups this weekend as they host the punchless Pirates. Joey Wentz has been serviceable while eating up innings on Atlanta’s injury depleted pitching staff. He isn’t pitching deep into games but over his last two starts, he’s run a 4.0 strikeout-to-walk ratio with 12 Ks in nine innings.

Now that Payton Tolle has been shifted to the bullpen for the remainder of the season, Kyle Harrison has taken his place in the starting rotation. He looked excellent in his first start with Boston on Saturday, pitching six innings of one-run ball against the Rays while striking out five. His scheduled start this weekend comes against a struggling and desperate Tigers ballclub.

The Cardinals have posted a .289 wOBA over the last 14 days, 22nd in baseball. They’re pretty punchless with both Willson Contreras and Masyn Winn sidelined for the rest of the season. Colin Rea and Jameson Taillon have had their ups and downs this year but the matchup looks good enough to think about streaming them for their final starts of the season.

Like the rest of the Guardians pitching staff, Slade Cecconi has been excellent over the last few weeks. He’s allowed just two runs in 20.2 innings across his previous three starts with a 3.0 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Cleveland will be fighting for a chance to sneak into the playoffs this weekend and the Rangers offense hasn’t been very good in September.

The Giants-Rockies series in San Francisco this weekend looks like it’s ripe for plenty of pitching points. Neither team has been very good offensively and the ballpark is a haven for pitchers. For Colorado, Kyle Freeland is probably the one starter worth looking at unless you want to risk starting Germán Márquez. For San Francisco, the options are two rookies in Kai-Wei Teng and Trevor McDonald. Neither has an impressive track record, but the matchup might be too juicy to pass up.

AJ Blubaugh has bounced between the rotation and the bullpen for the Astros down the stretch but he’ll likely get an opportunity to start against the Angels this weekend. He hasn’t allowed a run since a four inning bulk relief appearance back on August 23, a stretch of 17 scoreless innings. During this scoreless streak, he’s posted a very impressive 7.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio and has allowed just five hits.

Chad Patrick was a critical piece of the Brewers starting rotation earlier this year while they dealt with numerous injuries on their pitching staff. Once the team got healthy, Patrick was relegated to the minor leagues, but the injury bug has struck again and he’s now back with the team providing solid innings out of the rotation and the bullpen. Since being recalled in mid-August, he’s provided a 3.72 FIP in 21 innings while posting a very good 3.4 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Walker Buehler’s season has been a disaster but he’s at least looked serviceable with the Phillies since joining the club in September. You’ve really got to trust that Philadelphia identified and fixed whatever issues were plaguing him in Boston. At least the matchup against the Twins doesn’t look too bad.

Mike Burrows has been a frequent recommendation in this column this year. After some struggles in July and early August, he’s been absolutely fantastic down the stretch. Across his last six outings — two four starts and two bulk relief outings — he’s posted a 1.60 FIP and allowed five runs in 21.1 innings. His strikeout-to-walk ratio during this stretch has been an absolutely fantastic 6.0. He’s been piggybacked with another one of Pittsburgh’s young pitchers in each of his last three starts so he’s not getting very deep into games, but the high quality of his innings means he’s racking up the points in September.