Fantasy baseball pitching has so many opportunities for sleepers and breakouts that it’s hard to keep them all straight sometimes. Below you’ll find some hot pitchers to snag off the waiver wire. For a player to qualify for this article, they’ll need to be available in at least 50% of Yahoo! fantasy baseball leagues. For deep league players, one of these starters sits on the wire in 90% of fantasy baseball leagues.
[Jeff]
Kendall Graveman, Oakland (45% owned)
Graveman’s numbers look rough over the last couple of weeks, but he had a complete meltdown in Minnesota before bouncing back against the Angels. For the season, he has a 3.67 ERA and a 1.12 WHIP. While his strikeouts are low, he walks about three batters per nine innings, which isn’t bad. An encouraging sign for Graveman is his fly ball rate. He’s generating fly balls at a 36% clip, and maintaining his HR/FB rate (which means he isn’t getting the balls tattooed). He’s doing very well outside of that one Minnesota blow up, going at least five innings and yielding two or fewer runs in every game this year but the Minnesota game.
Charlie Morton, Houston (38% owned)
Charlie Morton has been on an absolute tear lately after a rocky start. The righty has struck out 25 batters in his last three games and walked six. In that same timeframe, he’s rocking a 2.89 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP. His WHIP suggests BABIP regression, as hs sits at .336, which is higher than career average. Morton is inducing ground balls or strikeouts 57% of the time. Those are extremely good signs for continued success. Most grounders are outs, and nearly all strikeouts are outs.
Matt Garza, Milwaukee (8% owned)
The veteran Garza missed the first part of the season thanks to a DL stint, but has pitched exceptionally well in his four starts since his return. He has a 2.26 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and a 7.5 K/BB in that span. He’s doing better so far this year by cutting his walk rate significantly. Fewer free passes should mean fewer chances to blow up. Those in deep leagues should tag Garza at least for his streaming opportunity this week as the Brew Crew travel to San Diego to take on the offense-bereft Padres.