More Than a Hot Hand?

They make us feel like gods. Those pitchers who begin the season on the fringe of being rostered who you stream against a weak offense to begin the season, who then go on to give you five innings with a handful of strikeouts and a win. 

In this throw away culture where newer is always better, it’s easy to lose sight of the essentials. And that’s especially true when “newer” means throwing three different fastballs over 97 mph or uncorking splitters that are hurled so fast they necessitate a new name.

That presents an opportunity. To zig where the market is zagging today is to not cast aside the command artists as flukes, but instead to let results come before the flashiest of underlying numbers. If the K-BB% isn’t convincing and the Stuff+ is lacking, there is still a path to success, and to surplus value via waiver wire adds and trades.

You know this story already. 

Remember Rick Porcello?

As recounted by Jay Jaffe this offseason, Porcello’s story was not just one win-fueled Cy Young Award in 2016, but a career filled with stretches of prolonged struggles and bright successes. He had only two seasons with an ERA below 4.00. In those two seasons, 2014 and 2016, Ricky Raindrops benefitted from all the things that we’d now point to as being lucky. He easily bested his career BABIP, LOB%, and HR/FB marks. Look out! The regression monster was surely nipping at his heels!

It absolutely was. He never really came close to repeating those seasons. He wasn’t expected to. 

But during those two seasons, the dreaded regression monster never caught up with him. In 2016, he suppressed quality contact at rates consistent with prime Corey Kluber and Justin Verlander. 

And this was not just luck. Not entirely anyways. BABIP, LOB%, HR/FB, and the quality of contact metrics all describe results. Porcello, and others like him, are not just stumbling into these elite outcomes, but are executing locations that suppress home runs, limit walks, and allow for the innings totals that can lead to wins and quality starts. 

The attrition at starting pitcher means that you will want to capitalize on these seasons while they’re happening, rather than pay for them in drafts the following season, when they may not even be able to repeat the tightrope walk that is pitching without elite stuff. 

But which ones are worth holding onto? Or even buying while the price is high?

Let’s think back to Porcello.

In a given season, results can dramatically change, even when the types of pitches you throw and how hard you throw them really doesn’t. For Porcello in 2016, this meant a change in sequencing, with more fastballs in two-strike counts. August Fagerstrom noticed this trend before the end of May that season, a change that, coupled with an ungodly 3.6% walk rate, precipitated an eventual Cy Young season. 

We won’t all get that lucky. Not every pitch mix change leads to a Cinderella story. 

But some of them will just get a bit lucky. Maybe they will strand more than 80% of baserunners. Perhaps Lady Luck will keep them below a 0.5 HR/9. Or even gift them with more than 14% of their batted balls being infield popups. Throw in a sub-.230 BABIP and you have 2025 Trevor Rogers!

We won’t be able to predict that combination. But we can put ourselves in a position to get lucky. 

Let’s start with Location+ leaders. We want to find pitchers who are suppressing runs and locating, but who may be considered unsustainable due to underlying metrics, specifically around the GIF making Stuff+ and K-BB%. To capture this, we’ll focus on pitchers with Stuff+ below 100, a Location+ above 100, a K-BB% of 17% or less, and an ERA below 3.00. Before we look at potential 2026 targets, let’s dig into what happened in 2025.

The Boring Veterans

The thousands of combined innings that Rodriguez and Wacha have thrown makes them a bit less enticing. How could there be something here that we haven’t already seen?

For EdRod, there’s a chance his WBC domination was a coming out party of sorts. 

The same mix of fastballs, cutters, and changeups that fooled countless Team USA stars has largely continued to work into the season. He’s throwing the fastball less and the changeup more, and both pitches are doing better than at any point during his Diamondbacks tenure, each with pitch values above 4.0. Walks will likely do him in at some point, as his 4.13 BB/9 is the highest of this group. A 1.21 WHIP paired with a .227 BABIP feels like a disaster waiting to happen, though a 35.2% hard hit rate has helped him avoid a reckoning so far.

For Wacha, a much healthier .99 WHIP is paired with his own minuscule .215 BABIP. His fastball velo, K%, and BB% are all in line with career norms, and frankly, he’s had solid control for a long time now. One of the best examples of the benefits of a deep arsenal, Wacha’s six pitch mix has been as effective as ever. In fact, his changeup has actually been less effective than the double digit pitch values it garnered in each of the last two seasons. As has been the case since moving to Kansas City, the veteran righty seems to simply be enjoying another solid season. Go ahead and buy if anyone is looking to get out early on what they may think is a last gasp of effectiveness for Wacha.

He seems to have solved for that by throwing three different fastballs. For righties, he eschews the cutter and four-seam, going with his sinker and sweeper. He keeps both pitches down and away to same-handed hitters with deadly accuracy. Righties have just a .212 wOBA against McGreevy thus far.

Lefties haven’t fared much better.

For them, he mixes a fastball and cutter at the top of the zone with a curveball and changeup down in the zone. Sounds simple enough? Opposing left-handed hitters have yet to figure it out, as he’s allowed a solid .260 wOBA to them so far.

The fact that he had all of those minor league innings between time in the majors points primarily to his lack of consistency. You may recall that in 2023, Elder actually had a strong first half, completing 106 innings with a 2.97 ERA and a 7.8% walk rate. He put up a 5.11 ERA in the second half, with his walk rate jumping to 9.7%.

Since then, he’s ditched the sinker to lefties and is having career-best results with both the sinker and his primary pitch, the slider. And unlike many of the aforementioned hurlers, Elder’s 1.81 ERA is backed up by a solid 2.91 xERA. If you were lucky enough to snag him in the early going, continue to ride the wave. And if anyone is having flashbacks to 2023, rest assured that this is an elder Elder.

Much like Elder, we have all had a glimpse of what could be with Keller. The difference here may just be that the latter, despite slight pitch mix tweaks over the years, has almost always run hot in the first half. While his walk rates don’t vary much between the first and second half for his career, his 4.02 ERA is a full run better in the early going than his 5.04 ERA after the All Star break. While this may suggest a blowup is certain in the summer, why couldn’t this be the year that Keller puts it all together? May as well hang on until then to find out. Just cut bait at the first sign of trouble, lest you wreck your ratios.

And last but not least, there is Meyer. The best of the group in terms of K% at 25.6%, but by far the least proven in terms of health. Meyer has yet to reach 70 innings in a single season. Last year, he flashed similar promise, rolling through April with a 3.18 ERA and 33.1% strikeout rate.

This season, he’s muted the punch outs a bit, but is avoiding the home runs that plagued him throughout his career. He’s still throwing strikes, with a 63.1% first pitch strike rate, and is generating ground balls at a 42.0% clip.

A pitch mix change that could help explain it.

In 2025, Meyer struggled to get righties out, allowing a .315/.373/.531 slash against them. And hitters from both sides of the plate got to him for home runs. This season, right handed hitters are mustering up a .197/.279/.263 slash, and he’s allowed them just one home run.

The difference?

He is more balanced against hitters on both sides. His changeups are generating swinging strikes at a 16.3% clip, compared to 9.4% last season. Batters are not slugging fastballs like they did last year, when they had a 1.023 OPS. This year, Meyer’s fastball has allowed a .694 OPS. And he is mixing in more distinct sweepers and sliders, which seems to be confounding some pitch tracking measures.

Here’s the sweeper, which Savant gives 42.5 inches of drop and 10.1 inches of glove side break.

And now the slider, which is thrown nearly 2mph harder, with virtually no horizontal run and 34.8 inches of drop.