2026 Fantasy Baseball Season in Review – Starting Pitcher Surprises

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  • By Nathan Baker

    Outside of relievers, it’s starting pitchers who produce the most year-to-year volatility in fantasy value, leading to numerous nightmarish picks at the top of last year’s ADP rankings, but with that comes a series of under-the-radar surprises that rewarded fantasy owners for digging under the hood.

    Thankfully for you, you’ve got the SportsEthos team to do that digging for you, and while we will have comprehensive coverage of next year’s value picks, first it’s time to get into the biggest surprises from 2026: starting pitcher edition.

    Christian Scott – New York Mets

    The first full major league season for Christian Scott after his recovery from Tommy John surgery was a resounding success, even if his team didn’t match his excellence, with the 27-year-old righty showcasing notably improved stuff from his first stint in the majors. After starting the year in the minor leagues, Scott was very quickly promoted to join the starting rotation, pitching to a 3.17 ERA over 12 starts before the All-Star break.

    His luck soured a bit as the season wore on, partially due to fatigue, and partially due to poor batted ball luck, but his improvements in command late in the year offset some concerns about his elevated walk rate, especially given how good his pre-injury command was.

    The formula for Scott was similar to the first time around, living with fastballs at the top of the strike zone while mixing in plenty of offspeed pitches out of the zone, most notably his sweeper and cutter, both of which he used to induce plenty of chase.

    The consistency of the secondary stuff was a problem, especially given the quantity of deep counts that Scott ran, limiting his ability to get deep into starts. Regularly limited pitch counts in his first year back from Tommy John surgery were definitely a factor but given the track record of pitchers having command improvements in year two of recovery, there’s every reason to believe Scott will continue to take steps forward, especially if he can harness that splitter.

    Eduardo Rodriguez – Arizona Diamondbacks

    Nine times out of 10, great World Baseball Classic performances have no impact on the regular season, with an extensive track record of breakout stars over that tournament’s small sample; most of them perform to their career norms when the season starts.

    In Eduardo Rodriguez’s case, his career norms had shifted over the prior couple seasons, where he sported ERAs over five while struggling with poor peripherals across the board. His performance in March could’ve easily been written off as an aberration, but he started the year pitching extremely well, and it ended up continuing throughout the entire season.

    As I wrote about a couple of months ago, Rodriguez took enormous under-the-hood strides in the second half after utilizing some radical RISP pitch usage and a little bit of luck to grossly outperform his early season peripherals, parlaying the confidence from early great fortune into later great performance.

    In the second half, his ERA predictive numbers would suggest he was actually slightly unlucky, offering more fuel to the belief that he’s truly revived his career to the pitcher he was three seasons ago. That second half FIP and xERA around three is reflective of the stuff and command improvements that came around in the second half, solidifying his chances to receive Cy Young votes, blowing his 2026 ADP out of the water and rewarding fantasy owners who picked him up and stuck with him from the waiver wire.

    Payton Tolle – Boston Red Sox

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    October 31, 2026, 8:00 am