As analysis in fantasy sports has expanded, factors beyond just player analyzing have been explored more regularly. One way has been through the use of psychology or the biases of fantasy managers. For those unfamiliar, that bias is the brain's way of making a shortcut and overemphasizing the first piece of information it receives. Translated to fantasy baseball terms, it's easy to fall into the trap of making an assumption that a player's stats in the first month or several weeks of the regular season will remain stable for the rest of the season. Even if the bias isn't quite that strong, it may cause fantasy mangers to overlook a change in a player's performance after either a particularly hot or cold start.
The aim of this article is to combat that by highlighting and analyzing some of the biggest standouts across the last month to six weeks among starting pitchers. The primary method of sorting through the player pool is K-BB percentage, one of the older, yet more reliable, metrics for evaluating pitchers, though the pitcher's entire profile will be discussed.
Risers
May's stuff has never been in question, but he's had an inability to convert it into a high strikeout rate for most of his career. That's reflected in his career 22.1 percent strikeout rate, so it was easy to believe that nothing had changed when he managed only a 16.9 percent strikeout rate in March and April. However, he's posted a 26.6 percent strikeout rate
As analysis in fantasy sports has expanded, factors beyond just player analyzing have been explored more regularly. One way has been through the use of psychology or the biases of fantasy managers. For those unfamiliar, that bias is the brain's way of making a shortcut and overemphasizing the first piece of information it receives. Translated to fantasy baseball terms, it's easy to fall into the trap of making an assumption that a player's stats in the first month or several weeks of the regular season will remain stable for the rest of the season. Even if the bias isn't quite that strong, it may cause fantasy mangers to overlook a change in a player's performance after either a particularly hot or cold start.
The aim of this article is to combat that by highlighting and analyzing some of the biggest standouts across the last month to six weeks among starting pitchers. The primary method of sorting through the player pool is K-BB percentage, one of the older, yet more reliable, metrics for evaluating pitchers, though the pitcher's entire profile will be discussed.
Risers
May's stuff has never been in question, but he's had an inability to convert it into a high strikeout rate for most of his career. That's reflected in his career 22.1 percent strikeout rate, so it was easy to believe that nothing had changed when he managed only a 16.9 percent strikeout rate in March and April. However, he's posted a 26.6 percent strikeout rate and 19.6 K-BB percentage in eight starts since the beginning of May. That has been backed by a 12.4 percent swinging-strike rate, nearly double his 6.4 percent clip in the first month of the season.
Perhaps the slow start was due to May adjusting to a change in his repertoire. In short, he's thrown his fastballs (four-seam, sinker and cutter) more often, while decreasing his sweeper usage and reintroducing a change-up. More important has arguably been how he's deployed his arsenal. After having a relatively even distribution of his pitches between right-handed and left-handed hitters in 2025, May has been far more intentional in 2026. He's thrown his sinker nearly exclusively against right-handed hitters (40 percent vs. RHH, five percent to LHH), helping him lower an already solid HR/9 from last season. The most significant progress has come against lefties, who hit 1.82 HR/9 against him last season. May has reintroduced his change-up to help him improve those results, which seems to have made his pitch mix more effective despite the pitch itself grading out poorly both in terms of results and the Stuff + model.
Cameron has illustrated the danger of trying to evaluate pitchers in a small sample. He had a mediocre 12.8 K-BB percentage in his rookie season, yet he posted a 2.99 ERA thanks to an inflated 84.0 percent left on base rate. That regression seemed to hit in March and April of this year, as Cameron posted a comparable K-BB percentage but an ERA of 5.40. In contrast, his performance in June has been particularly outstanding. Cameron hasn't issued a walk across 17.1 innings and has maintained a 2.60 ERA even after a disappointing performance in his last outing Saturday.
The reason looks to be fairly straightforward. Cameron is throwing his more effective pitches more often. There haven't been drastic changes to his pitch mix, but Cameron has tweaked his offerings to throw his change most frequently while also increasing his rate of curve balls. In turn, he's decreased his fastball and cutter usage, the two pitches that have led to the most damage against him throughout his big-league career.
Cameron's profile still has flaws and it's unclear if his tweaks will lead to sustainable results. However, he has done more to earn his results relative to last season, which should at least do enough to have him in consideration more as a reliable starter rather than a streaming option.
Detmers 28.2 K-BB percentage across 38.2 innings ranks sixth among qualified pitchers in the last 30 days (through Tuesday), and his underlying skills have been remarkably consistent from month to month this year, as he's posted a K-BB percentage of at least 19.1 percent in every month. His results have started to reflect it. After posting a 4.63 ERA through the end of May, Detmers has allowed only one earned run across his last 20 innings.
While it's often a shortcut and can be lazy analysis to just say that a pitcher has suffered from bad luck, that looks to be the case for Detmers. After largely curtailing his home run problem in 2025, he's maintained that in 2026 (0.72 HR/9), yet he still has just a 64.5 percent left on-base rate for the season. Put another way, his 3.33 SIERA has been reflective of the results he deserves. Those who have played fantasy baseball for multiple seasons have long been burned by Detmers at some point, which can make it difficult to buy in now. Nevertheless, his skills suggest it's time.
Find out who to target the rest of the way with RotoWire's MLB Rest of Season Projections!
Webb has the longest track record of success on this list, but his start to the season was bumpy. He was uncharacteristically wild, walking 7.2 percent of hitters until the time he landed on the injured list in early May. Since returning, Webb has a far more palatable 4.0 BB percentage and just a 0.73 WHIP. It was unlikely that Webb was as bad as his results suggested early in the season, but it's still reassuring to see that things have turned around. There isn't much actionable to go along with simply pointing out that Webb's fortunes have turned around, but Webb's fantasy managers should have relatively high expectations for the second half of the season.
Fallers
Lodolo took a legitimate step forward in 2025, finally delivering on the potential that many have believed he possessed since his time as a prospect. That context makes his 2026 season an even bigger disappointment than his 6.12 ERA already suggests. Lodolo started the season on the injured list due to a blister and has never really gotten on track. The number that jumps off his stat sheet is the 1.69 HR/9 that Lodolo has surrendered, but the even more alarming realization is that Lodolo hasn't been deceptive or otherwise able to generate swings and misses, and that looks to be the primary reason for the inflated home run mark.
Lodolo has been in the zone less, leading to an 8.8 percent walk rate. Yet, he still has given up a career-high 80.2 percent contact rate and a 91.1 percent in-zone contact rate – both of which are career-high marks by at least five percentage points. The underlying reason for those slips is unclear, as his velocity and pitch mix have remained very similar to last season. That provides some hope that Lodolo will improve as the season progresses, but he's extremely difficult to trust right now.
A lot of the risers we've seen throughout the year on the pitching side have been explained by increased sinker usage, but King's is causing him trouble. Among 78 qualified pitchers in the last 30 days, King has the 13th-lowest strikeout rate. That seems to be a direct correlation to his increased sinker usage, which he has suddenly spiked to a 37.0 percent clip in June. The even bigger problem is that he hasn't gotten the benefit of the sinker – a higher groundball rate and less trouble with the long ball – to balance out his loss in swing and miss. Of the four home runs he has allowed in June, two have come against the pitch, while he's also given up a .524 slugging percentage against in that span.
The exact numbers behind the struggles could be a small-sample fluke, but the bigger question is why King suddenly feels compelled to forego his fastball usage in favor of his sinker. King's 3.60 ERA and 1.19 WHIP are fine, but his 5.29 ERA in June and the change in pitch mix suggests there are some bigger issues going on.
The start of the discussion around Yesavage can likely begin in the same place that it did for Lodolo. He was eased into spring training to manage his innings, only to suffer a shoulder impingement that sidelined him until late April. The rust or building up explanation could work, except that Yesavage was excellent across the first five starts of his season, maintaining a 1.07 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and a 29:8 K:BB across 25.1 innings. Since then, things have taken a turn for the worse. In his last four starts (not including his outing Thursday), those marks have jumped to a 6.85 ERA, 1.48 WHIP and an 18:17 K:BB across 22.1 innings. There's no obvious explanation for the falloff in results. Yesavage's velocity and pitch mix have remained largely stable.
One theory combined from the hypotheses of Nick Ashbourne of Sportsnet Canada and research from the combination of Rates & Barrels' Eno Sarris and Derek Van Riper is that Yesavage is getting hurt by trying to pitch up in the zone more frequently. After his fastball often sat in the middle of the zone in his brief 2025 sample, Yesavage has shifted the pitch upward in the zone. While that would typically be a positive, the Rates & Barrels crew has suggested that is the area where pitchers are most frequently losing strikes. If that is the case, it's very likely that Yesavage will adjust and improve his results moving forward, but the combination of his injury to begin the season and his recent struggles is at least worth flagging for the short term.
