The pitching landscape has been robust so far, and you're entitled to be finicky as a result.
But as the weather heats up and attrition picks up, the ranks are sure to dwindle. It's good to take stock of which pitchers are making substantive changes as opposed to just taking advantage of what's been a pitcher-friendly environment so far.
The pitchers featured here have a wide range of Fantasy values. Some are obvious aces. Some are barely rostered. All are showing positive signs that I think are worth sharing here.
Manager Dave Roberts summed up Walker Buehler's first successful start back from Tommy John surgery this way: "He wasn't overthrowing." Indeed, Buehler's average fastball velocity was down about 1 mph from his first two unsuccessful starts back from Tommy John surgery, but at 94.9 mph, it was basically in line with his last two healthy seasons. And whatever he lost in power, he gained several times over in command, going from throwing 61 percent of his pitches for strikes in his first two starts to 71 percent in this one. Buehler made another change in the interest of improving his command, according to MLB.com, going "from having just his toes on the rubber to his entire foot." Between that level of intention and Saturday's level of success, you have to believe Buehler will stick with this new approach.
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Corbin Burnes might seem out of place on this list given that by most real-world standards, he's been pitching like an ace. But something just seemed off to me. He wasn't missing nearly as many bats as in years past, and he entered Sunday's start with less than a strikeout per inning. It wasn't enough for me to bail on him, but it was enough for me to drop him behind Zack Wheeler and Tarik Skubal in my rest-of-season rankings, with perhaps others to come. But it turns out Burnes had some interesting things to say about his lack of strikeouts prior to Sunday's start, telling MASN that hitters have changed their approach to him and that he may try sequencing differently to get more strikeouts. He then followed up with his best swing-and-miss game of the year, collecting 19 whiffs and 11 strikeouts. I can't speak to the sequencing, but Burnes took a mile per hour off his slider and got seven whiffs on eight swings against it. Perhaps the guy knows what he's doing.
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Of the three 14-strikeout efforts around the league this season, Luis Gil's was the most surprising. What made it surprising, though, wasn't the missed bats -- his 11.4 K/9 rate ranks fifth among starting pitchers, after all -- but that he lasted long enough to get 14 strikeouts. It wouldn't have seemed possible earlier in the year, when he was needing 99 pitches to make it through five innings because the walks were just as plentiful as the strikeouts. But suddenly, he has four straight starts with six innings or more and four of five with two walks or fewer. It clearly hasn't compromised his bat-missing ability, and that's not even accounting for his best skill of all: hit prevention, the product of a fly-ball profile and penchant for weak contact. Gil isn't about to become a model of efficiency, but he's making sure he's not just a footnote either.
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Of all the pitchers on this list, Cristian Javier is the one who I've come closest to writing off completely, and I'm only hitting the brakes now because of one start. But in that one start, he addressed my two biggest concerns. He had eight strikeouts in six innings. He had 15 swinging strikes on 80 pitches. At his best, Javier was good for 11.7 K/9 and a 13.8 percent swinging-strike rate, but he was down to 6.6 K/9 and an 8.8 percent swinging-strike rate prior to that one start. Was it just a really good day against a suspect Athletics lineup? Maybe, but I noticed that the velocity was down and the vertical break was up on both his slider and changeup. It seemed like it may have been by design rather than just random variation and is reason to hold on for at least one more start.
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Mitch Keller is a relentless tinkerer who likes to vary his pitch selection and velocities, so you can never be too confident in anything he's doing during any particular stretch of the season, good or bad. It's been mostly bad to this point, in which case you had to figure he wouldn't sit idly by. So is there a change undergirding his three-game winning streak to kick off May, during which he's put together a 1.29 ERA and 0.90 WHIP? In fact, there is, albeit a subtle one. He's throwing his cutter 1.5 mph harder, on average. The effectiveness of that pitch doesn't appear to have changed, but it may be helping to disguise the other two variations of his fastball, the four-seamer and two-seamer, which have allowed a combined .125 (4 for 32) batting average for the month. It's further evidence that Keller isn't one to rest on his laurels, and while he may not be an ace, he's worth keeping around.
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It's not just that Alek Manoah has had back-to-back starts allowing no earned runs in seven innings. It's not just that those two starts have seen him looking more like the guy who put together a 2.60 ERA and 1.01 WHIP over his first 51 starts than the guy who put together a 6.21 ERA and 1.77 WHIP over his next 20. It's what's changed in his attitude and approach. Manoah has said that his goal is to attack and let his defense make plays behind him, and fittingly, he's thrown strikes at a 69 percent rate in his last two starts. That's compared to a 61 percent last year. If you don't have a frame of reference for those numbers, it's a night-and-day difference, and seeing as walks were the first sign of trouble for Manoah last year, it may be the key to unlocking his old self.
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If Chris Paddack's four starts this month have shown us anything, it's that the more he throws his slider, the better off he is. He threw it only 13.4 percent of the time in April and had a 5.88 ERA. He's thrown it 21.2 percent of the time in May and has a 2.96 ERA. If not for his May 14 start, when he threw the slider just 10.5 percent of the time, he'd have a 1.40 ERA for the month. To be fair, the slider wasn't nearly as effective for him in April. It's a new pitch for him this year, and it may have only recently clicked. If he continues to show this level of trust in it, though, it could be a game-changer.
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As Carlos Rodon's slider goes, so goes Carlos Rodon. In six starts since he's regained a feel for that pitch, upping its usage and effectiveness, he has a 3.06 ERA, 0.93 WHIP and 9.4 K/9. That's encouraging in its own right, but the real reason Rodon is here is because his latest start Sunday saw him pile up a season-high 23 swinging strikes. Of them, seven came on the slider, which is great, but seven came on the changeup, a pitch he unfurled 18 percent of the time rather than the usual 6 percent. It created a clearer contrast for his fastball, which itself generated nine swinging strikes. Rodon was already looking like a quality Fantasy asset, but if this new development with the changeup becomes a trend, he could regain ace standing.
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Maybe the six no-hit innings and 11 strikeouts last time out are all the positive signs you need, but then, performance was never the questions for Paul Skenes, was it? The bigger development in his second start Friday is that he reached 100 pitches for the first time as a professional, topping his previous high of 84 in his major-league debut. In fact, his pitch count by game so far, minors and majors included, is 46, 44, 55, 65, 71, 75, 66, 84, and 100. That's a clear and steady progression that suggests Friday's start won't be a one-off workload-wise. If the Pirates intend to use Skenes like a conventional starter and not have the same quick hook that they did in the minors, then his biggest concern is off the table, making him no less than a top-25 starting pitcher in Fantasy.
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The least rostered of these pitchers by far (which is fine given the number of pitchers who need to be rostered), Ryan Weathers has delivered a 3.49 ERA and 1.11 WHIP to this point. But it's totally fake, right, given that his xERA, FIP and xFIP are all in the mid-fours? Yes and no. While his 7.3 K/9 and 10.1 percent swinging-strike rate would both suggest he's light on talent, his changeup has a 36 percent whiff rate, which is quite good, and his sweeper has a 55 percent whiff rate, which is unbelievably good. He throws them a combined 45 percent of the time, too, so it's not like he doesn't know what he has. He may still be learning the finer points of sequencing -- i.e., putting hitters away -- and in that regard, Monday's start in which he struck out eight and registered 15 swinging strikes was a possible step forward.
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