Fantasy baseball streaming starters: Have Jake Bennett, Andrew Alvarez earned rotation spots?

Welcome to your fantasy baseball starting pitcher happy place. This is a new column for me this year that will combine a few things I've done in the past. In this article, every Monday, you'll not only get a list of my favorite streaming starting pitchers for the whole week, but underneath that, you'll get a breakdown of a few pitchers who are making interesting changes to their pitch mix. Today I covered Jake Bennett, Connor Prielipp, Andrew Alvarez, and Robert Gasser.

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.

Check out this week’s MLB Power Rankings!

Starting Pitcher Streamers of the Week

Both Dustin May and Landen Roupp have struggled enough lately that their roster rates have fallen into streamer territory. I trust May a little more as a pitcher right now; I think he's had some bad luck. I trust Roupp to figure things out long-term, but I don't love this matchup. I do love the matchup for Eric Lauer, who looks to be in a good spot to get a win this week. Reynaldo Lopez is also back in the rotation and pitching deep enough into games to be a solid streamer.

No options I truly love on Tuesday. I like Ian Seymour as a starting option, but I don't fully trust him against the Yankees. J.T. Ginn is on the road, so that makes him a solid bet, and Noah Schultz gets a Red Sox team that's a top 10 offense against lefties. Schultz is also not a lock to go five innings, which is what also hurts Spencer Miles and Andrew Alvarez.

A lot of options I like on Wednesday. Jake Bennett and Connor Prielipp are both covered below, so check out those write-ups. Jared Jones is still a pitcher I trust. It's going to take a bit of time to get the command back on track after Tommy John, and I'm not sure I can start him this week, but Atlanta's offense had been struggling before facing the Mets this weekend.

Not a lot of great options today. I still believe in the potential of Jack Perkins, but I'm not sure you can trust him in shallow formats right now. Anthony Kay gets a Red Sox offense that's good against lefties, and Logan Henderson is just coming off the injured list, and I usually try to avoid those starts.

Another rough day for streamers. I would add Brandon Sproat, but the Pirates are a top-five offense in baseball this season, so that makes this start risky. I'm not a Brandon Young believer, but I can roll the dice here against the Royals. In deeper formats, you could take the gamble with Tyler Mahle facing the Rockies in San Francisco, but he's been pitching pretty poorly of late.

I think this is where we see Landen Roupp and Gage Jump both get back on track. Peter Lambert has been solid all season for the Astros, and this is the second start in a pretty solid two-start week for Reynaldo Lopez.

This is a better matchup for both Ian Seymour and Noah Schultz. I think you could also argue that Trevor McDonald could be in the strong preference category since he's getting to face the Rockies in his home park.

Starting Pitcher Pitch Mix Changes

Jake Bennett - Red Sox (Pitch Mix Breakdown)

I covered Jake Bennett in my starting pitchers to buy/sell article this week after he was coming off two outings against the Rockies in Coors and the Yankees at Fenway. Since then, he had another strong start against the Angels, and Bennett now has a 2.67 ERA, 0.82 WHIP, and 15.1% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) in five starts since being called from Triple-A in June.

His success is almost all thanks to location. Since coming back, he has been locating his changeup down and away from righties really well and also peppered the top of the strike zone with four-seamers. He doesn’t throw hard, but he has a five-pitch mix that, if commanded well, can be successful from the big left-hander who has elite extension. His four-seamer has been thrown in the top of the zone 75% of the time in his last five starts, and FanGraph's Location+ has it as one of the best-located fastballs in baseball over that stretch. He has a 25% PutAway Rate (how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout) over the last five games because he gets 7.1 feet of extension on his release, so a 93 mph fastball looks more like 96 at the top of the zone.

That's hard for righties to handle because he also has a changeup that he has pristine command of, with a 92nd percentile strike rate. He keeps it low and away from righties really well, and gets similar spin on the changeup to the four-seamer (just a 142 rm difference, according to Pitcher List), which likely makes it hard for a hitter to differentiate between the two. That's why the swinging strike rate and chase rate against righties is so high.

Oftentimes, pitchers with elite command can get away with just that one-two punch, and Bennett kind of does because the only other pitch he has been throwing more than 7% of the time is his sinker, which he is throwing to both righties and lefties. It's almost exclusively an early-count pitch to both, and he jams lefties inside while keeping it away from righties. There's no swing and miss on the pitch, but he can get ahead to set up the four-seamer and changeup. I'd love either his sweeper or curve to take a step forward as a whiff pitch to lefties, and there remains a world where the cutter can be an additional fastball offering to lefties, so I think there is room for Bennett to improve. For now, I think we treat this like we did Noah Cameron last year; as long as the location is there for Bennett, he should continue to be a solid streamer.

Robert Gasser - Brewers (Cutter Usage, Sweeper Shape, Four-Seam Attack Location)

Back at the beginning of the season, I covered Gasser as a post-hype starting pitching target.In that article, I mentioned that Gasser was a top performer in the minors before Tommy John surgery and looked good in his Triple-A innings last year. I believe that Gasser's sinker/sweeper combination would work even versus righties because "his sinker has aggressive horizontal movement away from righties, while the sweeper has the mirror opposite type of movement down and in on righties. The two pitches that tunnel well together to create some deception. That’s how he got plenty of strikeouts in the minors, but it didn’t immediately carry over to the big leagues...I believe he can get that combination to work better in the big leagues, but aside from that, his 93 mph four-seamer has good extension and a flat height-adjusted attack angle, so it works well upstairs, which is where he throws it. He also has a changeup that grades out well, and he commands it well in the zone. I think that could become a bigger part of his arsenal against MLB hitters."

This season, Gasser has actually cut his changeup usage in half from 2024 (whoops), but he is leaning on his cutter more often. He throws his cutter to both righties and lefties, and it's an early-count pitch to both. He uses it low-and-away to lefties, and it pairs well with his sweeper, since he attacks with both pitches in the same area, but the cutter is 7.5 mph faster and has a tighter movement profile. Against righties, Gasser has a really strong 37.5% early called strike rate on the cutter (94th percentile) because he attacks them inside with it while also using a four-seamer and sinker. The increased use of the cutter overall works for him because it doesn't allow hard contact and enables Gasser to get ahead in the count.

Once he gets ahead in the count, he can go to the sweeper versus lefties, but he has been using the four-seamer more to righties, which he can do because the cutter is now more of a focus early in counts. In 2026, Gasser is using his four-seamer 62.6% of the time in two-strike counts to righties, which is up from 46.4% in 2024. He also has two inches more extension on the pitch and is using it up in the zone 77% of the time to righties, after doing so 48% in 2024. That's why the four-seamer has seen its SwStr% against righties jump from 10.1% to 18.2% while also doubling its success in two-strike counts. I wish he had a breaking ball or swing-and-miss changeup for righties, but this isn't a bad trade-off.

This season, Gasser has seemingly tweaked his sweeper a bit compared to 2024, taking off two inches of horizontal run. Perhaps that's because his extension is up 0.2 feet, so the pitch has less distance to travel to home plate. However, what we do know is that the pitch is getting inside less often to righties. Instead, Gasser has been able to attack low and middle more often, which is working. The sweeper overall has a 13.1% SwStr% to righties (up from 10.5% in 2024), and Gasser is using it in two-strike counts to righties 44.3% of the time this season, up from 27.4% in 2024. It has a below-average success rate in those two-strike counts, but you can see that he has more confidence in the pitch to righties, and it continues to allow weak contact.

Connor Prielipp - Twins (Curveball Usage)

Prielipp is somebody I was really into when he debuted because I think his slider is a legit elite pitch. The issue is that his four-seam fastball is just average, and his changeup wasn’t taking the step forward I wanted. However, he has seemingly taken a step forward lately, and a big part of that has been that his curveball has improved in command and execution of late, which has done the job I wanted the changeup to do.

Prielipp starts going to the curveball more at the end of May, and the first few starts weren't great, but he seems to have found something over his last four outings, with a 4.43 ERA and 23% strikeout rate, but we really saw it take flight in his last outing, where he had 10 strikeouts and a 21.5% SwStr% in six innings. Now, that was partially because it was the Rockies, but I also think it was because Prielipp used his curve 26% of the time and dropped the four-seam usage down to 27%. On the year, he's been just 18% curve usage and 31% four-seamer.

Lefties didn't see a single four-seam fastball in that Rockies' start. He was exclusively sinker, slider, and curve. For the season, lefties have a 28.6% barrel rate and 71.4% hard-hit rate on his four-seamer, which he has used 23.4% of the time to them, so getting that pitch out of the mix could be a big win. Preilipp has been using the curve early in the count to lefties over his last four starts, which has set up the slider for two-strike counts. Now, that has not led to many strikeouts against lefties so far, but simply removing the four-seam usage to lefties would be a big win.

Against righties, the curve has an above-average 15.3% SwStr% on the season and has a 28% PutAway Rate over the last five games. That has allowed Prielipp to use his slider more often early in counts, and since he has such good command of that pitch, it steals strikes early in counts to righties and gets him into advantageous situations. My podcast partner Nick Pollack comped Preilipp to Reid Detmers, and I think that's a great call. Two breakers, one more consistent than the other, are being used to hide mediocre fastballs. We've seen it work in stretches for Detmers, and it could work for the Twins lefty as well.

Andrew Alvarez - Nationals (Sinker Usage)

It's hard to have much faith in Andrew Alvarez since he has not gone five innings once this season. The Nationals have also let him hit 90 pitches only one time. However, since officially moving into the rotation in June, he has a 2.45 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, and 28% strikeout rate. Obviously, the walks are a bit of an issue, and part of the reason for the high WHIP, but he also allows a fair amount of hits because his four-seamer is a pretty average offering that is just 92.5 mph with well below average extension and poor shape.

Last season, lefties crushed his four-seamer, so Alvarez has gone to a sinker as his primary fastball to lefties. The sinker is also not a great pitch and is also allowing hits, but it doesn't allow as much damaging contact and is located better than his four-seamer. The issue is that he doesn't have another fastball option for righties. I'd love it if he could go to his changeup as an early-strike pitch to righties, but he doesn't have great feel for the pitch. It does miss bats, so there is some potential there for it to improve, but it's not a real weapon for him right now. Instead, he has been using his curveball as his primary pitch to righties and trying to steal more strikes with it. The issue is that his curve is also his main strikeout weapon against righties, so he may need to start relying on the slider a bit more for whiffs if his curve is going to be his strike pitch.

At the end of the day, like Detmers and Prielipp, Alvarez has two good breaking balls. He also has two bad fastballs and a changeup that he can't trust. I'm not sure I believe in the fastballs getting better, but he just needs to find a way to consistently get ahead and let his breakers do their job. Maybe that changeup could be a key for him going forward?