Streaming options can play a crucial role at just about any time of year for fantasy managers.
Whether it’s a pitcher with a decidedly fantasy-friendly upcoming slate of starts or a reliever thrust into a ninth-inning role for a short spell, short-term additions can make all the difference in a weekly fantasy matchup, or be the deciding factor in season-long Roto totals.
In some cases, longer-term streaming options might be added for a multi-week stretch under the right circumstances.
This time of year, streaming options perhaps have even more fantasy importance, with the finer margins magnified even more with the rest-of-season schedule quickly shrinking ahead of us.
Specifically with the longer-term streaming options, this late in the season (and with the fantasy playoffs approaching) they graduate from players to add simply for streaming purposes to rest-of-season additions.
These are a few of those players, players who could also be crucial in helping fantasy managers to fantasy championships and titles in the coming weeks.
(All rostered rate numbers via FantasyPros data as of the beginning of play on Wednesday.)
Kerry Carpenter – 34%
Carpenter hasn’t hit much against left-handed pitching. And while that’s not ideal at times purely for fantasy purposes, the slugger has been so impactful at the plate that it’s almost a non-issue for fantasy managers.
The 26-year-old entered play Wednesday batting .286 with a .352 on-base percentage, an even .300 ISO and 14 home runs in 230 plate appearances this season.
Hitting near the top of (or in the heart of) a suddenly thriving Tigers lineup that has the league’s seventh-highest wRC+ and eighth-best ISO since August 11 (a stretch in which the team has won 15 of 21 games), the outfielder should continue to see plenty of RBI chances moving forward.
He has 16 during that stretch, a stretch that he’s unsurprisingly been key in, what with a .379 xwOBA, a .263 xBA, a 17.2% barrel rate, and a 46.9% hard-hit rate on the season.
Circling back to Carpenter’s quality of contact numbers, they come in a smaller sample size due to the outfielder missing time due to a lumbar spine stress fracture, but they closely resemble those of Brent Rooker’s in a vacuum. Rooker has been a top-25 or better fantasy player in many formats this year.
It’s not unreasonable to expect Carpenter to be similarly impactful when he is in the lineup for the remainder of the season, especially considering the Tigers’ remaining schedule.
It’s a schedule that doubles both as potentially significant for the Tigers’ playoff hopes, but also for fantasy managers.
After finishing a three-game series in San Diego, Detroit will play 12 of their remaining 21 games against the A’s, Rockies (in Detroit), Rays, and White Sox.
All four teams rank in the bottom 10 in the league in FIP, with the White Sox and Rockies respectively with the two lowest worst collective FIP numbers.
Three of their other nine games will come against the Kansas City Royals, a team that is sporting the fifth-highest barrel rate (8.1%) in the league.
Add Carpenter now before his rostered rate inevitably jumps considerably.
David Festa (12%) and Nick Pivetta (67%)
There are a few things that stand out when seeking out starting pitching streaming options.
Perhaps among the most notable, in no particular order, are: a good matchup on paper, strikeout upside and pitcher win potential.
Tick all those boxes and you have a starting pitcher worth adding for the short term.
Tick all those boxes for a pitcher’s schedule for most of the next month and you have what amounts to a must-add fantasy pitcher.
In this case, there are two pitchers who fit that specific bill.
David Festa and Nick Pivetta.
Let’s start with the strikeout potential.
Festa has accumulated 58 strikeouts in 47.1 innings this season. Pivetta is at 141 in 117.1 frames.
Both, as it happens, rank in the 89th percentile league-wide in strikeout rate, with Festa sporting a 29.1% metric and Pivetta at 29.3%. Both have also been fairly effective at limiting walks as well. Festa is sporting just a 6.5% walk rate (which ranks in the 72nd percentile) while Pivetta’s 5.8% walk rate sits in the 83rd percentile.
(As an added bonus, Pivetta leads all pitchers with at least 115 innings in both Stuff+ and Pitching+, per FanGraphs, with respective metrics of 134 and 108).
In fact, the duo are two of just nine pitchers league-wide to rank in the 80th percentile or better in strikeout rate and the 70th percentile or better in walk rate.
The others?
Chris Sale, Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Sonny Gray, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Yusei Kikuchi and Spencer Schwellenbach.
Now let’s switch to the other two pillars of what makes a quality streaming option for fantasy managers.
The (in layman’s terms) good matchup on paper, plus the pitcher win potential.
They really go hand in hand, and Festa and Pivetta (both armed with decidedly above-average bat-missing ability) have ideal remaining schedules.
Sure, there’s a start for both where you’re probably better off leaving them on the bench (for Festa it’s at Boston, for Pivetta it’s at home versus Baltimore). but really, outside of that, they’re borderline must-starts in each of their other outings, making them must-adds now to ensure you have that production for the rest of the season.
Assuming the respective rotations for the Twins and Red Sox continue as is without any interruptions, here’s what Festa and Pivetta have coming up to close the year (and the fantasy playoffs).
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*Assuming no interruptions or changes to the team’s rotation.