Fantasy baseball streaming starting pitchers: Andrew Painter is a new man, but is Grayson Rodriguez?

It's a little bit of rankings and a little bit of analysis, and hopefully a lot of help for your teams.

As far as which pitchers on this list you'll want to stream, your decisions will change based on your league type and settings. Since I'm listing starters for the whole week, I won't be able to provide a detailed analysis for each one; I'll highlight the matchup and offer some quick thoughts. As is usual with my articles, a streaming starter pitcher is rostered in less than 40% of Yahoo formats, so just keep that in mind as we’re going through because I won't be mentioning pitchers who are rostered in more leagues than that. I also won't be mentioning pitchers that I would not start in any format.

MondayFairly ConfidentPitcherRoster%OpponentLeague TypeJose Urquidy1%vs TEX15s and deeperGeorge Klassen29%vs CLE15s and deeperMerrill Kelly35%vs CHC15s and deeperSome HesitationPitcherRoster%OpponentLeague TypeZebby Matthews15%at ATH15s and deeperKumar Rocker11%at CWS15s and deeperCarson Whisenhunt2%vs CIN15s and deeperGeorge Klassen has had two really good starts in a row because he's thrown strikes for two starts in a row. Can you trust him to do it again? I dunno. Throwing strikes consistently has always been a problem for him. I understand if you want to roll the dice, but it's a risk. Jose Urquidy has a mildly interesting two-start week and looked pretty good in his last appearance for the White Sox. I think that could be a decent gamble.

In the middle of July, before raising his arm angle. Rodriguez's curve was 80.7 mph with about eight inches of vertical movement and 7.5 inches of horizontal movement. In his most recent outing, his curve was up to 82 mph with just 5.9 inches of drop and 3.8 inches of horizontal movement. That's a significantly tighter movement profile, which would make sense with the more over-the-top arm angle. He also threw 67 percent of his curves for strikes in this outing, which would be a major improvement from his 55% strike rate on the season. However, it was just three pitches, so we're not working with a large sample here. The curve has been tightening increasingly in recent starts, but this one feels a bit extreme, and he threw just 57% of them for strikes on August 14th, so the command hasn't clearly improved with the new arm angle.

As far as the slider goes, before the arm angle change, his slider averaged 84.6 mph with around zero inches of vertical movement and 5.5 inches of horizontal break. It was up to 87.2 mph in his last outing with 4.8 inches of rise and 3.8 inches of horizontal movement. He also had 3.8 inches of rise in the start before, so this is clearly a slider that is also getting harder and losing any vertical drop that it may have had. It's becoming far more of a cutter. He also threw 78 percent of them for strikes in this last outing, which is well up from his 60% rate on the season, so maybe the more cutter shape of the slider can help him command the pitch better.

The issue is that the harder/tighter shape of his two breaking pitches isn't getting him any more whiffs. Those two pitches combined for zero whiffs in his last start, five in the start before (four from the slider), and three in his start on the 9th. He is still relying primarily on his changeup for whiffs, which is tough for a right-handed pitcher. Especially one with a four-seamer that has below-average vertical movement.

All in all, none of these changes really excites me. I could see the cutter/slider being a decent pitch if he can locate it down and away from righties after elevating some four-seamers, but we're just not seeing that right now.