Team Pitching Trends in 2026

In the playoffs, pitching identities become extra apparent as teams look to lean on strengths; the Rays, Brewers, and Red Sox led all of baseball in usage of certain single-pitch types, which helped guide them to playoff places. These trends are by no means a coincidence and make up the blueprint of team ideologies. But these ideologies shift and evolve season to season and can often be useful as a predictive measure of how teams visualize their pitching going into next season, whether that’s molding pitchers to fit their philosophy or bringing in arms that can better reinforce their vision than their current staff.

Going through every team’s pitch usage trends, there were certain teams that stuck to their tendencies. The Brewers’ cutter and the Mariners’ slider-and-sinker profile stayed true, but some notable new trends did occur.

Tampa Bay Rays

The Tampa pitching machine continues. Much has been made of their changeup usage this year, particularly to right-handed hitters. And it is safe to say the Yankees were not able to match up to it well during the ALDS. Over the course of the year, no one threw more changeups than the Rays. But this has not been the only change.

In the tables, the baseline is the average of each team’s 2024 and 2025 usage. Same Pitchers is the change from returning pitchers altering their own usage, and Roster Changes is the rest, including any new arms, rookies, free agents, or trade acquisitions.

The biggest change in 2026 was the changeup. This was not a shift that occurred just in 2026, but they moved from 8.2% in 2024 changeup usage, which would have placed them 23rd, to 11.8% in 2025, which ranked 9th, then to a league-leading 20.6% in 2026. This shift of 10.6 points was made up almost equally of new pitchers such as Freddy Peralta and existing pitchers throwing it more.

Starters went from 8.7% to 21.8%. Drew Rasmussen, with his three-fastball repertoire, also relied heavily on the changeup in his career year, going from 1.2% to 13.3% in 2026 with an xwOBA of .193. The Rays were able to locate it well, throwing 1.7 points fewer changeups in the zone than the league average and 4.1 points more below it, while hitters swung at changeups in the chase area 5.5 points more often.

In addition to the changeup, the residual effect of this is that the Rays increased their sinker usage considerably, by 8 points from a 2024-2025 baseline up to 20.4%. Given how well changeups and sinkers work in tandem with arm-side run, this should come as no surprise. Nick Martinez went from 16.9% to 31.7% sinker usage; the expected results on the pitch did regress, from an xwOBA of .282 in 2025 to .336 this year. But what interested me about Martinez’s sinker is that in 2026 he switched from locating it on the arm-side rail, so into the hands of a right-hander, to the glove-side rail. Arm-side rail location went from 13.6% in 2025 to 8.8% in 2026, while glove-side rail rose from 6.4% to 13%. This can be seen clearly with the location of his sinker in 2025 on the left, and the shift towards the outer half of the plate in 2026. There is probably too much red in the central zones, so he may look to push even further left in 2027.

Griffin Jax’s sinker also increased significantly from 11.7% to 22.7%, while its xwOBA fell from .382 to .321. The ability for any pitcher to locate the sinker is vital for the effectiveness of the changeup as well. Tampa leads baseball in called strikes on sinkers, at 24.5% of all sinkers thrown, and locate it well on the glove-side third of the zone, at 17.9% as a group. These two increases team-wide came mostly at the expense of the four-seam, slider, cutter, and splitter, which fell 5.4, 5.8, 3.8, and 4.5 points.

Fantasy Outlook 2027

The Rays will have a plethora of fantasy pitching options in 2027, with most coming off of career years. Almost all of their fantasy-relevant pitchers deploy a very good changeup, so this organizational trend indicates they should continue to be effective, relevant fantasy options in 2027 if they stay healthy and continue to throw these changeups effectively. Rasmussen should be considered as high as a top 10 starting pitcher in fantasy in 2027. Equally, Bryan Baker should be one of the earlier closers drafted in 2027, and he has increased his changeup usage from 14% in 2024, his last full season with the Orioles, to 44% in 2026, as he established himself as one of the best closers in the American League.

Martinez, I think, will be the most interesting pitcher for 2027 in terms of at what point he provides value in drafts. It felt at times he was riding his luck a little in 2025. While he has little to no value in strikeout categories, he offers enough in WHIP and run suppression. And with his shift from a cutter-predominant pitcher to a sinker-changeup pitcher, there is enough from purely an organizational pitching development standpoint to say Martinez can have success again next year, despite perhaps some good fortune this year given his expected numbers.

Washington Nationals

The Nats are an interesting team to watch at the moment from a development perspective; under a new regime, they are seemingly pushing all the right buttons behind the scenes as they rebuild not only their roster but organizational philosophy driven by a more analytical front office. So it was striking to see such a significant shift in their pitching identity this season.

Compared with 2024-2025, they cut their four-seam usage by 10 points in 2026. This has then been redistributed to sliders and sweepers. The sweeper increased by almost 8 percentage points, the biggest increase league-wide, and the slider by 3 percentage points. Particularly among starters, the four-seam dropped from 43.6% to 27.4%, and sweepers went from 3.2% to 10.0%, with the remaining 9% spread across various other pitch types.

The four-seam with an xwOBA of .365 in 2026 was their worst-performing pitch, so unsurprisingly it was cut. But the sweeper, from a team perspective, has not improved in 2026, even as they threw it more; the slider’s and sweeper’s xwOBA and whiff rates both mostly declined. Hitters whiffed on 40.4% of their chase swings against Washington’s sweeper, 6.8 points below the league average 47.2% chase whiff rate. The slider is thrown higher, location-wise, than the league average, 8.1% above the zone against 4.1%, and 26.3% below it against 30.7%. It gets a 46.0% chase whiff against the league’s 52.9%, a gap of 6.9 points, meaning they are just not getting it down and out of the zone enough.

Despite the underwhelming outcome numbers and struggles to command the pitches effectively, there is vision behind the change that could have fantasy impacts on certain starters in 2027.

Fantasy Outlook 2027

The main beneficiary of the increased sweeper usage was Cade Cavalli in his breakout season; having not thrown it at all in 2025, Cavalli threw the sweeper 14% of the time, and it was his best pitch in terms of run value. With the pitch getting 7.3 inches of vertical movement above average, he already has great feel and ability to move it down and away, even after only one season. So this sweeper certainly helps elevate his ceiling to go along with his fastball and curve, giving him three-plus pitches that diversify the looks he can give a hitter.

I think we have a good idea of what Cavalli can offer in 2027 (he projects as a top 20-30 fantasy starter), but a bit more of a wildcard to watch out for as they lean into more sweepers and sliders is Connelly Early. Following his trade from Boston and the immediate injury, he gave only three innings in 2026 with the Nationals, so we don’t have much to go on. But despite his sweeper accounting for only 8% of his arsenal in 2026, it was his best pitch with an RV/100 of 3.1. It has good downward movement, with a whiff rate of 41% and an xBA of .098, and a Stuff+ of 121, putting him in the 84th percentile for that pitch according to PitcherList. In his one start with Washington, this usage increased to 14% despite the start lasting only 3 innings; I would expect this usage% to increase in 2027, replacing his curveball, one of his worse pitches, and making him a pitcher to keep an eye on in deeper formats.

San Diego Padres

Maybe taking a page out of the Rays’ textbook, the Padres have also shifted to lean on the changeup more in 2026. The increase is not as severe as the Rays’, 6.6 points over the 2024-2025 baseline, but I think it opens up a real question about their pitching going into 2027.

The Padres’ changeup went from 9.9% in 2024 and 9.5% in 2025 to 16.3% in 2026, moving from 17th and 19th in MLB to 2nd. The +6.6 increase against the 2024-25 baseline was the second largest in MLB behind the Rays. Starters went from 5.5% to 14.5% and relievers from 14.7% to 18.0%. Michael King threw 45% of the starters’ changeups, and Lucas Giolito (22.6% to 34.7%), Robbie Ray (13.0% to 22.2%), and JP Sears (15.0% to 20.8%) combined for 477 changeups across 7 to 13 games each with San Diego. Given that most of these arms outside of King likely won’t be with the organization in 2027, it raises the question of whether this will hold into next year.

Like the Rays, the sinker usage coincided with the changeup increase. The sinker went from 15.8% and 14.5% to 18.6%, and the four-seam fell from 30.3% and 34.1% to 27.5%, the fifth-largest cut in MLB against the baseline. I think the best sign that this changeup usage might hold is that it also translates into the bullpen. Adrian Morejon went from 6.6% to 23.1% changeups with an xwOBA of .127 and a 55.5% whiff rate, and Bradgley Rodriguez went from 23.6% (127 pitches in 2025) to 42.5% with an xwOBA of .179. While Morejon will be a free agent, a return is certainly possible, and Rodriguez has one of the nastiest changeups in the game.

One point of note (which is perhaps nothing or perhaps a very intentional area of exploitation), is that Dodgers hitters have sinkers (-0.05 and changeups (+0.04) among their lowest run values per 100 pitches. Compare that with +0.23 against four-seams and +0.80 against cutters. While it is ridiculous to suggest the driver of this trend toward more arm-side movement is solely to beat the Dodgers, it certainly may be a factor.

Fantasy Outlook 2027

What matters about the Padres and the use of their changeup for fantasy purposes is how this will apply to the pitchers they have in 2027 with fantasy value. Of course, Michael King and Mason Miller will be coveted fantasy assets, but what impact will this philosophy have on new arms in 2027? Will the Padres acquire pitchers to fit the mold, like a Freddy Peralta, or will they adapt again? With new ownership, I would expect some investment in both the starting pitching and the bullpen, so it’s wait-and-see until then. Depending on what arms they acquire, though, we can project somewhat based on their pitch-type trends from 2026.