Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend. I dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.
There aren’t many refrains more common for fantasy sports writers than describing a hitter who is performing well during the summer as one who is “heating up with the weather.”
And the thing is, more often than not, it is justified. Ballparks across the country become more hitter friendly as the weather heats up, and cold morning games and windswept, foggy night games become hot, humid oases for home runs.
In its base form, Wins are part of our game even as their frequency drops and annoyance with them continues to surge. I don’t mind them despite their variant nature. They do create a lot of outliers when judging fantasy value, though, and because they aren’t bankable as a skill, that can be misleading. This is why it can be dangerous to use Player Raters as value meters. Someone with a bucket of Wins can skyrocket up the Rater and look better than his actual skills. Conversely, a hard-luck loser with great skills gets overlooked if they have too few wins. Today we’re going to remove Wins from the equation and see if we can learn anything from who jumps into the Top 50.
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Below are the latest significant projected playing time swings for starting pitchers over the past week; we’re skipping relief pitchers this week with nothing of note to share there.
| Name | Team | Old % of Team’s Remaining GS | New % of Team’s Remaining GS | % Change | Old Remaining GS | New Remaining GS | GS Change | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Peterson | CHC | 6% | 15% | 9% | 5 | 12 | 7 | Will get starts for Cubs after being bullpen/bulk guy in Queens |
| Brandon Pfaadt | ARI | 8% | 14% | 6% | 6 | 11 | 5 | Nearing call-up as he gets fully stretched out in minors |
| Mike Paredes | MIN | 4% | 10% | 6% | 3 | 8 | 5 | Mick Abel injury creates longer leash |
| JP Sears | SDP | 1% | 6% | 5% | 1 | 5 | 4 | Pitched well in first start in Lucas Giolito’s stead |
| Ian Seymour | TBR | 7% | 12% | 5% | 6 | 10 | 4 | Being part of a near-no-no helps a lot! |
| Reynaldo López | ATL | 4% | 9% | 5% | 3 | 7 | 4 | Going three innings/60 pitches in return to rotation and will evaluate from there |
| Jack Leiter | TEX | 17% | 12% | -5% | 14 | 10 | -4 | Surgery for loose bodies in ankle |
| Lucas Giolito | SDP | 14% | 8% | -6% | 11 | 6 | -5 | Elbow inflammation |
| Adrian Houser | SFG | 15% | 8% | -7% | 12 | 6 | -6 | Moved to bullpen |
| Mick Abel | MIN | 12% | 5% | -7% | 10 | 4 | -6 | Arthroscopic elbow surgery, timeline unclear |
| Ryne Nelson | ARI | 16% | 6% | -10% | 13 | 5 | -8 | Moved to 60-day IL with elbow strain |
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.
Any fantasy prognosticators out there pencil in Curtis Mead for 14 homers before the All-Star break?
On the Agenda:
Stuff and location have become key parts of pitcher analysis in recent years. It is something I have used a lot in my writing, and I believe it can be a great indicator of success when applied correctly. This can be particularly useful in fantasy when looking to identify pick-ups or diagnose regression.
The relationship between stuff and location is symbiotic, but not exactly equal. To understand this correlation, we can look at how 2026 starting pitchers have performed across metrics and what we can learn through a macro lens when building our pitching staffs across formats. In this chart, we have Stuff+ on the y-axis and Location+ on the x-axis. The higher the pitcher, the more ‘Stuff’ they have, and the further to the right of the chart they are, the better they are at locating their pitches. If you hover over or tap a dot, you can also see how many innings they pitched and their xERA for 2026.
It looks like there’s no one at this game, though I think I saw a Meckler Heckler.
On the Agenda:
Ret of season projections are a great way to identify players likely to perform better moving forward. The table below shows all the starting pitchers whose rest of season OOPSY-projected ERA is 3.80 or better (as compared to a league average of 4.19) and at lest 0.20 better than what they have shown so far this year (through June 22).
We’ll likely follow this up with another version looking at potential fallers based on the OOPSY projections. Today, we’ll highlight four starting pitchers that should perform better based on their skills and stuff for the rest of the season.