Crossed Up: Trending Players into August (8/7)

As the calendar turns to August, we’re officially in the stretch run of the 2024 fantasy baseball season. Whether you play in roto or head-to-head, redraft or dynasty, now is the time to keep your foot on the pedal to try and secure that championship or money spot.

We have plenty of great content here at FTN to help with that, and I try to play my part each week with this Crossed Up column that dives into trending players. This week, I’m looking at four pitchers, two running hot, and two not so much.

Spencer Schwellenbach, Atlanta Braves

What if I told you that Spencer Schwellenbach currently leads MLB in K-BB rate over the last 30 days? Would you believe me? Probably not, but it’s the truth. Over his last five starts, Schwellenbach has posted a stellar 2.45 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 0.8% walk rate and a 30.6% strikeout rate. Yes, that walk rate is correct. Schwellenbach has walked just one opposing batter in his last five starts and 10 overall in 64.2 innings this season. This hasn’t been fluky either as Schwellenbach has a 2.53 xFIP and 2.45 SIERA over this span.

What sticks out about Schwellenbach is that he uses his deep six-pitch arsenal to both right-handers and left-handed hitters. This season, Schwellenbach has used a four-seam fastball, slider, cutter, curveball, splitter and sinker between 9.1% and 24.6% of the time with five of those six offerings having an AVG EV under 89 mph. Both the splitter and curveball have whiff rates above 30% with the splitter leading the way at 48.7% to pair with a .133 BAA.

Moving forward, I’m buying Schwellenbach. Maybe not to this level, but there’s a lot to get excited about in this profile. You have the deep arsenal, the ability to miss bats and limit hard contact, a solid groundball rate, and of course, the microscopic walk rate. I’d value Schwellenbach as a safe, high-floor top-50 starting pitcher for fantasy moving forward. And an added bonus is that Schwellenbach won’t have the pressure of being a front of the rotation option given the presence of Chris Sale, Max Fried and eventually, Spencer Strider.

Spencer Arrighetti, Houston Astros

Let’s transition from one Spencer to another with Spencer Arrighetti, who ranks 13^th in K-BB% over the last 30 days at 22.7%. Arrighetti has been a nice addition to this Astros rotation this season that has been dealing with injuries and inconsistent performance from several starters. He’s been especially effective over the last 30 days with a 3.38 ERA, 3.42 xFIP, 3.30 SIERA, 1.08 WHIO, .205 BAA and a 22.7% K-BB rate. However, I’m not quite as enamored with this Spencer as I am with Schwellenbach moving forward.

On the plus side, this Spencer can also miss bats at a solid clip, currently sitting with a 26.4% strikeout rate and 27.1% whiff rate in 20 starts this season. Three of Arrighetti’s five pitches have a whiff rate north of 30% including a 42.1% whiff rate on his curveball. However, Arrighetti also walks batters at a high 11.2% clip, gives up too much hard contact, and allows too many fly balls and line drives. The league average fly ball and line drive rates are 23.7% and 24.8% respectively with Arrighetti sitting at 28.4% and 28.7% respectively right now, meaning his groundball rate is 8.7% below MLB average.

With that said, I do believe that Arrighetti can be a fantasy viable pitcher moving forward, but more in the top 75-100 SP range.

Tanner Houck, Boston Red Sox

As a Red Sox fan, I would like to ask that whoever stole the Cy Young-caliber Tanner Houck from the first half of the season to politely return him before us Red Sox fans start getting angry. After posting a 2.18 ERA through his first 16 starts, Houck has recorded a 6.16 ERA, 1.73 WHIP and 3.5% K-BB mark over his last six outings. What gives?

Over the offseason, The Red Sox revamped Houck’s arsenal, ditching his four-seamer and almost ditching the cutter, leaving him with his sinker, sweeper and splitter. Houck also started throwing more sweepers and splitters than in previous seasons with the sweeper leading the way so far with a 42.8% usage rate compared to 30.2% for his sinker and 25% for his splitter.

In April, May and most of June, everything was clicking and Houck could do no wrong. But as I showed above, this ball of yarn has been unraveling over the last several weeks. Is Houck relying too heavily on his sweeper now? After using the pitch 42.3% of the time in April, 41.7% in May and 41.2% in June, that rate jumped to 45.6% in July and 50.6% in his first start in August. The old throw your best pitch the most mantra usually translates well, but there’s a limit to everything. This is just me speculating, but as the slider usage has risen over the last month and a half, so has the ERA and WHIP. It doesn’t help that Houck’s splitter has gone from missing bats at a near 30% clip in both April and May to 13.8% in June and 17.5% in July.

Houck is missing fewer bats, allowing too much hard contact, and has nearly walked as many batters in his last six starts (17) as he did in his first 16 starts (18). We also need to keep in mind that Houck is at 134 innings this season which is 28 innings above his previous career-high of 106 innings last season. This could simply be a fatigue issue as well.

Many ERA indicators signal that maybe we pushed Houck too highly in rankings earlier this season and that he was pitching a bit over his head. But at the same time, I also do not believe that Houck’s first three months were a fluke. This is a talented arm and someone I’d value as a top-40 SP moving forward. If you can buy low right now, I’d look to do so, but at the same time, remembering that he might not fully turn things around until 2025.

José Berríos, Toronto Blue Jays

For those who drafted José Berríos this season, it’s been very underwhelming, to say the least. Berríos hasn’t been terrible or a detriment to fantasy teams by any means, but he currently sports a 4.11 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 7.4% walk rate and a well below-average 18.2% strikeout rate that is the lowest mark since his rookie season way back in 2016. At least his ERA hasn’t ticked over five as it did in 2022, but Berríos has the worst xERA of his career at 5.26 and apparently forgot how to strike out opposing hitters.

It’s not like Berríos was ever a notable source of strikeouts. But we could usually count on a mid-3 ERA and around a league-average strikeout rate from him while providing solid volume most seasons. Berrios has made at least 30 starts in each of his last six full seasons dating back to 2018 and has the second most innings pitched since the start of 2018, trailing only Aaron Nola.

But while Berríos is still providing innings, that’s about all he’s been providing lately. Since the start of July, Berríos has posted a 6.54 ERA, 1.61 WHIP, 10.7% walk rate and an 18% strikeout rate. He did have one 10-strikeout outing in there, but that was sandwiched in between a start with one strikeout and another with a goose egg in the strikeout column.

Overall this season, Berríos hasn’t had any notable alterations to his pitch usage, but three of his four offerings have seen notable drops in whiff rate.

On top of that, Berríos’ AVG EV allowed has jumped from 88.2 mph to 90.2 mph while his hard-hit rate allowed has risen from 35.8% to a whopping 44% which is in the bottom-12% of pitchers this season. He’ll still have his nice outings here and there, but all in all, Berríos is simply a back-end starter if the strikeout rate is going to stick below 20% moving forward.