4 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Breakouts to Target in Drafts (2026)

February 28, 2026

Thunder Dan's 4 fantasy baseball starting pitcher breakouts and draft sleepers. Target these pitchers in 2026 fantasy baseball drafts, given their recent breakouts: Zebby Matthews, Eury Perez, Emmett Sheehan, and Tatsuya Imai.

The term "breakout" gets thrown around a lot, I know. And it's always important to put it in context. For the sake of this article, it's going to refer to pitchers with relatively little MLB experience who could be ready to make a big impact for fantasy teams in 2026. These pitchers check as many of the proverbial boxes as possible (stuff, command, out pitches, etc) and project as high-end MLB starters this season if they pitch up to their potential.

If you're expecting to see Chase Burns, Bubba Chandler, or Jacob Misiorowski in this article, don't worry - you won't! That doesn't mean I don't like those young fireballers (certainly, I do); it simply means I chose to feature a pitcher from four distinct ADP areas. I have a few trendy pitchers in my picks, but also a few more that others in the industry might be sleeping on, too!

Let's take a look at four pitchers who I think could be tremendous values at their current NFBC ADP (from February 15), which I like using because it tends to be more responsive to who the sharpest players are on this preseason.

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Eury Perez, Miami Marlins

NFBC ADP: 92

The Perez hype entering this season is starting to reach a fever pitch, but I think that it's warranted and that I'd rather be in on him than out, even as his ADP begins to climb a bit.

He checks every box we look for when identifying a breakout. His fastball sits in the high 90s with excellent movement, with 18 inches of iVB and another 10 inches of arm-side run.

The Sound of Eury Pérez's 99mph Heater. 🔊 pic.twitter.com/YUF2bZlbvs

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) February 23, 2026

His slider was filthy last season with a 40% Whiff% and a .254 XSLG, but also has three other offspeed pitches - a sweeper, curveball, and changeup. He mainly deployed the sweeper against righties (46% Whiff%) and the changeup to lefties (61% Whiff%). The curveball got hit pretty hard, but the overall arsenal is impressive and diverse, proving that he's much more than just a two-pitch fastball/slider guy, and there's a reason why he finished with the third-best Stuff+ rating of any starter last season (behind only Misiorowski and Hunter Greene).

When I did my initial stat dives of the offseason, I was trying to isolate pitchers with elite plate discipline across the board, and Perez was one of only four who met the following thresholds.

• SwStr% higher than 12%
• Z-Contact% lower than 85%
• O-Contact% lower than 60%
• O-Swing% greater than 30%

Additionally, (because I really want dominant stuff AND control), I added the layer of Ball% less than 35%. The list ended up being Tarik Skubal, Cristopher Sanchez, Kris Bubic, and Perez.

I don't really see any reason why he can't dominate this year. Sure, we are paying a pretty sizeable price tag for a pitcher with a limited sample size of dominance, but the upside here is a top-10 pitcher in all of baseball. The hype is for real, and I'm entirely onboard with being overweight on Perez this season.

Emmet Sheehan, Los Angeles Dodgers

NFBC ADP: 135

Are you sick of reading Sheehan touts yet from fantasy baseball writers across the industry? Too bad! The numbers leap off the page when you look at what Sheehan did last season in 73 innings with the Dodgers. The surface stats were great (2.82 ERA, 0.97 WHIP), but there underylying metrics were all phenomenal, too.

Sheehan's 31.2% K% was backed by a 16% SwStr% that trailed only Skubal among starters who logged 50+ innings. His 5.5% BB% was perfectly legit with a a 34.7% Ball% behind it.

His 39.3% chase rate was the best in baseball. He had hitters chasing the fastball up and out of the zone, but could also bury his breaking balls or changeups in the dirt.

Emmet Sheehan, Filthy 87mph Changeup. 😷 pic.twitter.com/bu4TWpAICm

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 20, 2025

He can attack lefties in on their hands with the slider or get righties to chase it well off the plate.

Emmet Sheehan, Vicious 88mph Back Foot Slider. 😤 pic.twitter.com/XyIKvjoQWC

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 26, 2025

Despite not having elite movement on the slider, the pitch still had a 43.6% Whiff%. The changeup also missed bats at a high rate, while having excellent batted ball results.

If there's one pitch that got hit hard at times, it was the curveball. But he also only threw it 6% of the time, and it has above-average horizontal and vertical movement. So it might still be a really good pitch, despite a fairly small sample size of batted-ball data suggesting otherwise.

The only real question that has been raised is what Sheehan's workload might be with the Dodgers going with a six-man rotation. Most projection systems have him pegged for around 120 innings. If he can beat that by even 10-15 innings with the type of ratios and strikeouts we saw last season, he'll still be an excellent value at this ADP.

Tatsuya Imai, Houston Astros

NFBC ADP: 175

This is where I'll get quite a bit different from the pack. I have yet to see anyone really dig in on the latest Japanese pitcher to come over from the NPB to the majors, but I think Imai has an opportunity to make a big impact for the Astros (and fantasy teams) in 2026.

I know we have to take the stats posted by players in the NPB with a grain of salt, but Imai was dominant in Japan. He posted an ERA in the mid-twos from 2022-2024 before finishing with an ERA of 1.92 last season. His WHIP was 0.89, and he struck out 27.8% of opposing hitters while walking just 7.8% of them.

I know they play with a dead ball in Japan, but Imai allowed only 14 home runs over the last two seasons (337 innings) - that's some elite HR suppression.

We don't have Statcast data from the NPB, but we do have some advanced statistics, and Imai finished with a 15.4% SwStr% last season, suggesting that his strikeout numbers were pretty legit.

He doesn't have elite velocity on his fastball, but reports indicate he averaged around 95 mph and can dial it up higher when he needs to. He complements the heater with a mid-80s slider, changeup, and splitter.

Taylor Trammell on Tatsuya Imai's splitter:

“I've never seen a pitch like that before in my life.”#MLBNHotStove pic.twitter.com/xEvmiLPcb1

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) February 26, 2026

Despite spending eight seasons in the NPB, Imai is still just 27 years old. We saw a 30-year old Shota Imanaga debut with the Cubs two years ago and dominate MLB hitters, and you could argue that Imai may have better stuff.

Instead of taking a shot here at a young, unproven American-born pitcher at this stage of the draft, why not draft an already polished, veteran pitcher with eight years of professional experience?

Even if you want to view the NPB as a step above Triple-A, but below the majors, that's fine. You can shave off 3-5% of his strikeouts and add another 1-2% to his walk rate and still end up with a pretty good MLB starting pitcher, as long as he can continue to suppress hard contact the way he did overseas.

I am intrigued by his profile, and I think he's being overlooked simply because there isn't much buzz around him this preseason.

Zebby Matthews, Minnesota Twins

NFBC ADP: 305

We are dipping all the way down into the 300+ ADP range here for my last upside arm, Zebby Matthews. The Twins' young righty showed off some solid strikeout stuff last season, whiffing 25% of the hitters he faced while walking just 6.8% across 79 innings. Those numbers were nearly identical to the strikeout and walk rates he posted in 2024 in nine starts.

Now he's set to start the year in the majors for the first time in his career as either the fourth or fifth starter in the Minnesota rotation. He has plus velocity on his four-seamer and above-average arm-side movement on the pitch as well. His stuff grades out quite well (Stuff+ of 106) as he complements his fastball with a hard slider, changeup, cutter, and curveball.

His Pitching+ rating of 108 was identical to Sheehan's last season, though you could argue that his secondary pitches aren't quite as nasty. The slider was very good, but the changeup and curveball have below-average movement. Both were still decent pitches, and Matthews has the arsenal of a solid MLB starting pitcher.

The plate discipline metrics all check out, and you could argue that he had some poor batted ball luck with an xERA a full run lower (4.67) than his ERA (5.56) and a crazy-high .357 BABIP.

Matthews struggled with lefties at times, giving up nine of the 12 home runs he allowed to southpaws, and had a FIP that was two full runs higher. It might just be a pitch mix and sequencing issue for Matthews, and more experience against big league hitters is what he needs to sort that out. He'd probably be better served moving off his fastball for more cutters and sliders, and we usually see hard-throwing pitchers become less fastball-dependent with more MLB experience.

You're simply not going to find too many pitchers with 18% K-BB% and great stuff this late in the draft. Minnesota has been known for getting the most out of its starting pitchers, and Matthews may be just a few tweaks away from a very productive season in 2026 for fantasy managers.

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