Starting Pitcher Fantasy Baseball Breakouts or Fake Outs? Part 5

May 31, 2025

Dan analyzes 5 pitcher fantasy baseball breakouts, sleepers who are surging for Week 10. Are they breakouts or fake outs? Read his fantasy baseball outlooks for Noah Cameron, Hayden Birdsong, and others.

We are back for another deep dive into the results and arsenals of five more pitchers this week. I didn't think we'd make it to a fifth edition of this piece, but you all keep reading it and requesting further investigation of other pitchers.

This week, we shift gears and look at five very lightly-rostered pitchers across fantasy leagues. Most of these guys are young pitchers, too, so we have smaller sample sizes to work with from their careers, and young pitchers are rather volatile by nature in general.

With the analysis for each player, I attempt to decide whether they can sustain their early-season success or if regression to their prior level of performance is inevitable. I always reach a verdict for each player, where I try to take my most well-educated guess about how they'll perform going forward.

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The Red Flag Statistics

I thought it might be helpful for us to look at this set of stats for the entire group of pitchers, all in one spot. I call these the "red flag stats" because they are some of the first ones I examine when figuring out why a pitcher's surface-level stats (such as ERA) may differ from their other ERA-indicators.

• BABIP: Batting Average on Balls in Play
• LOB%: Left On Base Percentage (also known as "strand rate.") This is a percentage of runners who got on base against a pitcher, but did not score.
• HR/FB: The percentage of fly balls that were also home runs given up by a pitcher
• K-BB%: A pitcher's strikeout rate minus their walk rate - the bigger the number, the better.
• Hard%: The percentage of batted balls that were hit "hard" by opposing hitters.

We don't have any AJ Smith-Shawvers this week, but the last pitcher on the chart has an awful lot of red across the board. We'll get to him in a bit. Let's start with the elder statesman of the group and the Yankees' latest success story, the left-handed, soft-tossing Ryan Yarbrough.

Ryan Yarbrough, New York Yankees

2025 Fantasy Stats: 35.1 IP, 2 W, 35 K, 3.06 ERA, 1.05 WHIP

2025 Advanced Stats: 3.50 SIERA, 3.07 xERA, 24.8% K%, 37.8% GB%, 102 Stuff+

I don't think the Yankees in their wildest dreams expected the 33-year-old journeyman Yarbrough to enter the rotation and make four excellent starts in a row for them. Yarbrough worked his first 15 innings of the season in relief as a long man, a gig he's done well over the last few seasons with the Dodgers, Blue Jays, and Royals. He hasn't started more than nine games in a season since 2021 in Tampa Bay.

Even in his time in Tampa, he was often used as the "projected reliever" coming in after an opener back when the Rays made that trend popular for a bit. Of his 72 career starts, Yarbrough has pitched six or more innings just 38 times. He's been used so often as a spot starter or long man that most teams view him as only good enough to get through the opposing lineup two times at the most.

Ryan Yarbrough has been INCREDIBLE since entering the starting rotation earlier this month⚡️

2.25 ERA | 19 K | 0.85#Yankees pic.twitter.com/OPGUYiNxEO

— Fireside Yankees (@FiresideYankees) May 27, 2025

So, can he keep it going, and is he worth a pickup off the wire? Well, the short answer is "probably not" and "no" as he's set to face the Dodgers on the road on Sunday. We have never really seen him sustain this type of success over larger sample sizes, especially the strikeouts (he owns a career 18.9% K%).

As far as the red flags go, I will say that he's not a major regression candidate. The BABIP is low, but he pitched to a .212 BABIP over 98 innings last season. The strand rate is too high and 8% higher than his career-best mark of 79% that he posted last season.

But the batted ball metrics are quite solid, as his xERA is nearly identical to his ERA, and his hard-hit and barrel rates are in the 99th percentile for pitchers.

Yarbrough is a tough guy for hitters to pick up with a nearly sidearm delivery. He's all but abandoned his four-seamer, dropping it down to just 9% usage. He's throwing his sinker, sweeper, cutter, and changeup around 22% of the time, keeping hitters off balance with some solid horizontal movement even when he lacks velocity.

Verdict: Yarbrough is a feel-good story in real life as a veteran pitcher who has realized the best version of himself. He's just not likely to hang onto the fifth spot in the rotation for long with Luis Gil due back in the next month, and the Yankees are always in the market for more pitching depth at the deadline. He's going to be very useful for New York as a long man and spot starter, but it's hard to see him get enough starts to carve out any long-term fantasy value.

Logan Evans, Seattle Mariners

2025 Fantasy Stats: 35 IP, 3 W, 25 K, 2.83 ERA, 1.26 WHIP

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.43 SIERA, 4.93 xERA, 17.4% K%, 38.1% GB%, 97 Stuff+

So the timing here isn't fantastic as Evans was just sent down to Triple-A on Wednesday, but I still think it's worth examining what he did in his first MLB starts as there's a good chance we could see him up with the Mariners again later this season. For now, he's a fake out, and kudos to Seattle for pulling the plug on him before the flood gates opened.

Ironically enough, Evans was coming off his best start as a Mariner before being demoted, firing eight innings of one-run ball against the Nationals on Tuesday.

Logan Evans completes 8 frames for the first time in his professional career 🔥

8 IP | 4 H | 1 R | 1 BB | 4 K

The @Mariners 2023 draftee has a 2.83 ERA across six MLB starts. pic.twitter.com/Tnr8shcflD

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) May 28, 2025

Evans's Statcast sliders show the profile of a below-average starter, and just about every advanced metric backs that up. His SIERA is a run and a half higher while his xERA was a full two runs higher, too. He wasn't striking out many hitters at just 17.4% and was relying on a lot of offspeed stuff, while only hitting 92.8 mph on his four-seamer and two-seamer.

I'm all about a nice six-pitch arsenal when at least half of those pitches are high quality. But with Evans, it almost feels like he's digging deep into his bag of tricks to hide a bad fastball, and none of his secondary pitches stand out in terms of elite velocity, movement, or results. The only pitch he throws that has an xBA below .250 is his changeup.

He has good horizontal movement on everything but the cutter, but a pretty tight velocity distribution with the gap between his curveball and fastball being only 11 mph. He wasn't missing many bats with a lowly 7.3 SwStr% and a terrible 96.6% Z-Contact%. If we have to pick out one good thing, he showed some substantial control, which probably went a long way in helping him get the results he did without great stuff.

Verdict: The Mariners were wise to send him back down, as Evans had major regression coming. He's still an intriguing young pitcher with a varied pitch mix, but he will have to tweak his arsenal, and perhaps less could be more for him in the future in terms of throwing fewer pitches and focusing on his best pitches.

Cade Horton, Chicago Cubs

2025 Fantasy Stats: 20.1 IP, 2 W, 16 K, 3.98 ERA, 1.23 WHIP

2025 Advanced Stats: 3.88 SIERA, 4.12 xERA, 18.6% K%, 46.8% GB%, 97 Stuff+

We have another rookie to dig into here as the Cubs' top pitching prospect and former first-round pick, Cade Horton, is 20 innings into his rookie campaign and getting a mixed bag of results.

Horton had flashed some impressive strikeout numbers at Triple-A in 2024 (28%) and this season (30.6%), but also struggled with some walk issues with walk rates of 13.6% and 12%, respectively.

What's quite interesting is that at the big league level, the total opposite has been true so far. His strikeouts are down (18.6%), but so are the walks (4.7%). Unlike some of these other young starters, Horton's ERA lines up with his ERA indicators, and the only two red flags from our chart are his strand rate and K-BB%.

For some pitchers, an 18.6% K% and 4.7% BB% would be solid, but as a power pitcher with a history of more strikeouts, something isn't quite adding up, especially since Horton has faced a fairly weak set of opponents (COL, MIA, CHW, and NYM).

Cade Horton had his best Major league outing yet yesterday.

6 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, BB, 6 K#BeHereForIt pic.twitter.com/x1kLEEfEge

— Eric Cross (@EricCrossMLB) May 28, 2025

The good news is that his SwStr% sits at 11.8% after a solid outing against the Rockies and suggests that we could see that K% creep up into the low 20s. But I have some major concerns with his stuff, and there is some concerning batted ball data as well.

Instead of looking at the movement profile diagram, let's examine this chart as it tells us all we need to know. All that blue is BAD, and the only pitch in his arsenal with above-average movement is his sweeper. I worry the most about his four-seam fastball. He has an "over the top" delivery with a 50-degree arm angle, which usually helps create more induced vertical break. But Horton does not get a good extension and isn't getting much rising action on his heater. The pitch also barely moves horizontally, with just an average of one inch of glove-side movement.

So, despite averaging 95.5 mph on his four-seamer, the pitch is far too "straight" for my liking. But it's been to hitters' liking as they're hitting .333 against the pitch with an xSLG% of .524. The fastball has a 9.4% whiff rate, and I think he's playing with fire if he's going to throw his heater as much as 50% of the time. You can blow a fastball without movement by minor league hitters, but major league sluggers are a different breed.

Verdict: Horton has shown some positive signs with improved control, but he's also seeing a drastic drop in strikeouts compared to his minor league numbers. The batted ball data suggests his fastball is very hittable, and he could soon be in trouble against better offenses. He's a fake out for me and not a player I would look to add off the wire until he proves he can make some adjustments and get solid results against some better competition.

Hayden Birdsong, San Francisco Giants

2025 Fantasy Stats: 32.2 IP, 2 W, 35 K, 2.48 ERA, 1.29 WHIP

2025 Advanced Stats: 3.53 SIERA, 3.90 xERA, 25% K%, 31.1% GB%, 104 Stuff+

It's not been a very uplifting piece so far, as I keep raining on everyone's parade, but if there's one pitcher from this group that I really like, it's Birdsong. Let's talk about why you should potentially add the big right-hander off waivers (he's just 24% rostered on Yahoo).

First of all, we have no real red flags. Okay, his HR/FB is a few ticks under league average, but that's getting pretty nitpicky. Before we go any further, we should acknowledge that Birdsong did not win a starting job out of spring training and spent the first two months of the season working out of the bullpen. He's made just two starts since entering the rotation, accounting for the last nine and one-third innings of his 32 and two-thirds covered this season.

Like Horton, Birdsong throws out of a high arm slot at 48 degrees and can bring it with an average velocity of 96 mph on his four-seamer. He can touch the high 90s when he wants to, and he gets an average of 18.7 inches of induced vertical break, which makes the heater in this next clip look like it's coming at a hitter at 100+ mph.

Hayden Birdsong, 98mph ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/VwGeBgdHNq

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 21, 2025

He throws his slider harder than most pitchers at an average velocity of 88.5 mph, which creates a nice velocity gap between it and his 12-6 curveball that drops off the table at 79.6 mph. Both his changeup and curveball have elite vertical movement. He can go up in the zone with his fastball while having two offspeed pitches that he can then feature down in the zone or outside the strike zone for swings and misses.

Hayden Birdsong's changeup is a devastating pitch pic.twitter.com/Lf920Qb5hP

— Brent Maguire (@bmags94) April 22, 2025

His changeup is getting fantastic results with just a .212 batting average allowed, .215 wOBA allowed, and 45% whiff rate. His 25% K% feels very sustainable given his strong 12.4% SwStr%, and I love how his arsenal messes with hitters' eye level. His Stuff+ rating of 104 is the best of our bunch of rookies today, and given that he has some experience from last season and now some experience pitching out of the pen, I think he's well-positioned to make the most of his opportunity as a starter for the rest of the season.

When Justin Verlander comes back, someone will have to be the odd man out between Birdsong, Landen Roupp, and Kyle Harrison, but my money is on Birdsong as the guy who has the best chance of sticking in the rotation of that group.

Verdict: Birdsong has been impressive as a reliever and looked solid in his first two starts. He has the stuff to be a quality pitcher in the big leagues and more upside right now than any of the other rookies we are looking into in this article. I support the idea of adding him where you can, as we could be ready to see him break out in a big way in 2025.

Noah Cameron, Kansas City Royals

2025 Fantasy Stats: 25.2 IP, 2 W, 16 K, 1.05 ERA, 0.82 WHIP

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.71 SIERA, 3.15 xERA, 16.3% K%, 38.9% GB%, 94 Stuff+

Red flag alert! This is where I will take a stand and go against the grain a bit, since Cameron has been a popular pickup this week and is now 42% rostered in Yahoo leagues.

It's certainly impressive that Cameron has been able to work into the seventh inning in all four starts, and his ratios look very pristine right now, but the underlying numbers simply don't support this level of production.

Noah Cameron is the 2nd pitcher since 1893 with 6.1+ IP and 1 run or less in his first 4 MLB starts 🤯

(H/T @EliasSports) pic.twitter.com/5x4tDTRlrd

— MLB (@MLB) May 29, 2025

While it's true that any pitcher sporting an ERA of 1.05 is likely due for regression, there's a huge gap between Cameron's ERA and his SIERA of 4.71. His FIP of 3.78 and xFIP of 4.48 are a bit more friendly, but SIERA will punish him for his lack of strikeouts and groundballs. If there's one ERA indicator that likes him the most, it's xERA (3.15), as he has done well to suppress hard contact.

But some of our red flag stats are comically unsustainable. A BABIP of .153 is unheard of, and a 98.9% strand rate is insanity. Those are the types of numbers you see when you have such a small sample of innings and there's nowhere to go but back towards the mean over time.

The lack of strikeouts is concerning. Maybe he turned a corner after whiffing eight Twins in his third start, but he only managed two strikeouts against the Reds, a team that is strikeout-prone against lefties! His SwStr% of 10.5% does imply that he could still improve that number closer to the 20% range, but it's pretty obvious that he's not a strikeout pitcher yet, despite posting K-rates in the high 20s in the minors.

Suppose you're not going to blow it by guys with velocity (Cameron doesn't at just 91 mph on his four-seamer), then you have to have plus movement on your pitches. This chart shows that, like Horton, whom we discussed earlier, Cameron does not get very good vertical or horizontal movement on his pitches.

He has a five-pitch arsenal and is leading with his four-seamer at 28%. While I usually support a varied arsenal, I'll repeat what I did in Logan Evans' breakdown - more pitches aren't always better if none of these pitches are all that great.

Verdict: The ratios have been impressive, but they won't last. Cameron is getting very lucky on batted balls, even if he is doing a decent job of limiting hard contact. I don't see the profile of a breakout pitcher here. I see many red flags suggesting that Cameron could be faking us out, and an implosion is on the way. I'm not investing in him yet, and I won't be surprised to see him roughed up sooner rather than later.

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