About two months ago I was putting my Risers & Fallers article together and it ended up coming out to all hitters on the rise and all hitters on the fall, so I thought that it was about time the pitcher received the same treatment.

On the rising side, we feature Jameson Taillon, who hasn’t pitched as well as he is now since he was still in Pittsburgh, Nathan Eovaldi, who is pitching extremely well as he enters his mid-30’s, and Taj Bradley, whose improving command has resulted in elite strikeout numbers and dominant performances. On the fallers side, we have the once trustworthy Kevin Gausman, whose four seam-splitter pitch combo has not been as effective as in the past, and Brayan Bello, whose struggle with his control has seen his walks, ERA, WHIP and home run rate all rise in his third big league season.

RISERS

Jameson Taillon was good, not great last season, but has definitely taken a step in year two in the northside of Chicago. Though his strikeout rate has dropped, so has his walk and home run rates. He has limited hard hit, as his rate this year (35.5%) is the best it has been since 2018, back in Pittsburgh, and limited the damage those hard hits has done by limiting solid contact, as he has a 7.4% barrel rate this year, down from 10.7% in 2023, and his lowest since 2019. His walk rate is elite, inside the top 11% of all starters, so even when someone does make good contact and hit the ball hard, the damage is limited. His 9.1% home run to fly-ball ratio is the lowest of his career, but limiting hard hits, barrels and inducing weak contact all help limit the opportunities for batters to smack the ball out of the ballpark. On top of the improved pitching, he is also going the deepest he’s gone in his starts, on average, since that career year he had in 2018. In that season, he averaged 5.97 innings pitched per start and, this season, he’s averaging 5.88 innings pitcher per start. So on top of performing well, he’s performing well deeper into games, which helps out the Cubs bullpen, making them use less resources during his starts, saving them for worse starters or to have a fresh bullpen day when needed. Neither his BABIP (0.275) nor his strand rate (76.4%) are too far outside of the league average to think that he has been that lucky, so I believe he will continue to pitch very well in the second half and will be a very valuable #4 or #5 starter for many fantasy managers.

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