Starting Pitcher Fantasy Baseball Breakouts or Fake Outs? Pitchers On The Rise (Week 12)

June 18, 2026

Are these pitchers fantasy baseball breakouts or fake outs? Dan analyzes advanced pitcher statistics and surging fantasy baseball SPs for Week 12 of 2026, including Dustin May, Michael Michael McGreevy, and Andre Pallante.

Some weeks, I end up having a theme for this piece, whether it's young pitchers, widely available pitchers, or maybe veterans having a late-career renaissance. But I have never focused on three pitchers who are all part of the same starting rotation before! Enter the St. Louis Cardinals, who, despite being picked to finish last in the NL Central division, are currently eight games over .500 and in second place. Their starting pitchers have a collective 3.99 ERA through 72 games, good for the ninth-best mark in MLB.

If you are new to this column, remember that the goal is to look at several pitchers each week who are showing signs of "breaking out." That term gets thrown around a lot in our industry, but to me, it means they're flirting with the possibility of improving their baseline performance across a larger sample.

So, while we typically look at younger pitchers as potential "breakouts," I won't limit myself to only youngsters. The concept of the breakout can be applied to pitchers of all experience levels, as we have seen numerous examples of pitchers improving significantly from season to season, even into their 30s. All roster percentages are courtesy of Yahoo! Let's see which of these arms we can trust going forward and where we can expect regression! All statistics were current through Wednesday, June 16.

Dustin May, St. Louis Cardinals

• 58% Rostered
• 2025 stats: 132.2 IP, 4.96 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 21.1% K%, 9.6% BB%
• 2026 stats: 81.2 IP, 3.75 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 22.8% K%, 6.4% BB%

No, I am not obsessed with the Cardinals; I have always hated them. They always find a way to be good and maximize their roster talent. It's frustrating to a Pirates fan, as my team usually does the opposite.

I wrote about Hunter Dobbins last week, and then St. Louis promptly sent him down to Triple-A because, frankly, they don't need him right now as they have five starters giving them some really good innings just about every time out.

There's really no question that Dustin May has become their ace, and his most recent start against the Padres was an exclamation point that capped a four-game stretch in which May posted a K:BB of 33:4 with just four earned runs allowed over 27 2/3 innings.

Dustin May finishes the first complete game AND shutout of his career 😤 pic.twitter.com/tXWltetICr

— MLB (@MLB) June 16, 2026

The strikeouts are up in a big way recently, as May has five starts with seven or more Ks since May 9. And if you toss out his first two disastrous starts of the season (13 ER in 7 1/3 IP), May has allowed more than three earned runs just once in his last 12 starts.

Once a talented prospect with the Dodgers who made brief appearances at the MLB level for five straight seasons, May missed the entire 2024 season with arm troubles. He returned in 2025 and finally logged more than 100 innings as a starter for Los Angeles and Boston, but looked like a watered-down version of his former self.

So is this version of May legit? And if so, what can we point to as the changes he's made to transform himself into a really good starting pitcher?

May has always used a sinker-heavy approach, which has led to a solid 46.5% career GB%, but he's drastically cut down on sinker usage this season while throwing far fewer sweepers. He's throwing more four-seamers, cutters, and changeups, while also adding a downright filthy curveball.

He's still very sinker-sweeper heavy to righties, but the cutter, changeup, and curveball have been weapons that he can utilize to keep lefties off balance. He struggled badly against LHH last season, allowing 15 home runs, a .495 SLG, and a 1.55 WHIP. He's been considerably better against southpaws this season, with a lot of the damage they've done against him coming in those first few starts of the year.

May now has a solid six-pitch arsenal, with every pitch showing above-average vertical or horizontal (or both) movement.

Both breaking balls are falling off the table, even the sweeper, which tends to be a pitch with more horizontal movement than downward bite. While he's throwing fewer sweepers, the pitch has been more effective this season with a 35% Whiff% compared to just 27% last year. The curveball has a solid 32% Whiff%, too, and both pitches have solid velocity differential from May's four-seamer and sinker, which are both sitting at 96-97 mph this year.

We love to see a velocity bump on the hard stuff, and May is throwing both pitches anywhere from 1.5 to 2.0 mph faster this season.

When we check the regression stats, nothing stands out as far as LOB%, BABIP, or ERA indicators (3.75 SIERA, 3.38 xERA). May is literally checking every box for a breakout right now.

Verdict: I think we can trust May going forward in our fantasy lineups in just about any matchup. This crazy run he's on now won't last forever, but he's established a really solid baseline of production since mid-April and should be a solid source of wins with good ratios going forward. The strikeouts will likely vary, but he gets enough of them to help out there as well.

Michael McGreevy, St. Louis Cardinals

• 38% Rostered
• 2025 stats: 95.2 IP, 4.42 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 14.5% K%, 5.0% BB%
• 2026 stats: 78.1 IP, 2.99 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, 16.5% K%, 6.1% BB%

How is St. Louis doing this? Do they have some kind of witchcraft or voodoo in the clubhouse that we aren't aware of? McGreevy is a pitcher who was about as pedestrian as they come last year, posting an ERA in the mid-four range and a paltry 14.5% K%, and now he's turned into a quality start machine (9 QS in 14 starts this season).

He's doing it with a seven-pitch arsenal where no single pitch even stands out, too. His changeup is the only pitch with a 30% Whiff% or better, and his fastball averages just 91.5 mph.

While one pattern we will notice with all three Cardinals pitchers here is a varied and balanced arsenal of pitches, McGreevy strikes me more as a "throws a lot of different pitches because none of them are very good" kind of guy, while May's arsenal is solid across the board.

Like May, McGreevy has cut down on the sinker and sweeper usage in a big way and is throwing his best pitch (changeup) far more often. Otherwise, the rest of his arsenal looks about the same, other than a few sliders mixed in as another offspeed pitch he occasionally deploys against lefties.

I wish I shared the same optimism about McGreevy's rest-of-season outlook that I have for May's, but alas, I do not. Let's look at the red flags!

The first thing that stands out to me is an 85.2% strand rate. That's the fourth-best rate among qualified starters, and remember that the league average is around 72%. His ERA is being propped up by all those stranded runners, and he lacks the type of strikeout stuff to consistently strand runners. He's getting lucky with double-plays to end innings or hard-hit balls being hit right at fielders, and the batted ball data definitely backs that up.

Yes, the Statcast metrics are ugly! McGreevy has the third-worst EV90 rate at 106.5. If you're not familiar with EV90, it's the exit velocity at which 90% of a pitcher's batted balls are at or below. His 116 maxEV is the fourth-worst in the league, and the gap between his ERA (2.99) and xERA (5.61) is 2.59 runs and trails only Randy Vasquez and Tomoyuki Sugano as the third-worst mark in MLB.

His SIERA is slightly better at 4.46, but it will never support his low ERA with such a low K% and a big decrease in GB% since he posted a 62.5% in his rookie season in 2024.

How bad is McGreevy's stuff? His 81 Stuff+ rating is the lowest of any qualified starter (among 62 MLB starters) and a full four points lower than Bryce Elder!

After digging into McGreevy's profile, I am convinced his surface stats are more of a mirage than anything. If May is a true breakout, then McGreevy is one of the biggest FAKE OUTS I've seen this year.

Verdict: Leave McGreevy on your wire. He offers no upside in strikeouts, and his ratios are heading for major regression at some point, once the Cardinals' magic wears off. He can't keep this up, there's no way!

Andre Pallante, St. Louis Cardinals

• 26% Rostered
• 2025 stats: 162.2 IP, 5.31 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, 15.5% K%, 8.7% BB%
• 2026 stats: 76.2 IP, 3.76 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 19.3% K%, 7.8% BB%

Perhaps even more surprising than McGreevy's improvement (which seems temporary, as I have established) is what Andre Pallante has done in his fifth full MLB season with St. Louis.

Pallante was an innings eater for St. Louis last year, but had terrible ratios and a comically bad K-BB% of just 6.8%. He finished with a win-loss record of 6-15 across 31 starts.

He's not exactly setting the world on fire this year, but he is sporting a sub-four ERA, a 4% increase in strikeouts, and his eight wins have already tied his career high set back in 2024.

It's clear to me that the Cardinals' approach has been to have their pitchers throw their worst pitch less often, their best pitch more often, and to feature a balanced arsenal where they don't lean on any one pitch by more than about 30% of the time.

For Pallante, it's meant a big decrease in fastballs and an increase in sliders and curveballs. While he can sit 95 mph with his four-seamer, it's a "flat" fastball that lacks vertical or horizontal movement. He throws it primarily to lefties, while going heavy sinker-slider to righties, and has had better batted ball results with his fastball this season as a result.

Pallante's curveball has even more vertical drop than May's, and he throws it a bit more often. Pallante uses a much higher arm slot, so his knuckle-curve has a true 12-6 movement that can be effective against hitters from both sides of the plate.

Andre Pallante, 80mph Hammer. 🔨 pic.twitter.com/QdqEkRrVCr

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 17, 2026

Pallante's outlook is a lot more sustainable than McGreevy's, in my opinion. He passes the regression stats test with a .262 BABIP being the only real stat that stands out (his career BABIP is .295, right around league average). His SIERA sits at 4.16, which makes sense since he's upped his strikeouts, lowered his walks, and is still getting a ton of groundballs (53.3%).

His xERA of 3.66 is actually lower than his ERA, validating his results a bit further.

His four-seamer is the only pitch with a SLG% allowed of .400 or higher, and he's done a great job of retooling his pitch mix. He is working ahead in the count often, as his 67.7% F-Strike% is the fourth-best mark among qualified starters. A career-best 19.5% called strike rate also reflects that he's really made strides in how he sequences his pitches and keeps hitters off balance.

It's tough to lean that hard on called strikes over swinging strikes for strikeouts, but it's a great sign that he can at least keep up the solid run prevention.

Verdict: I prefer Pallante to McGreevy if I have to predict which Cardinals' starter will finish with the better fantasy stats this season. While he's never going to be a high-end fantasy option, I think Pallante can provide some decent ratios along with some value in wins, as St. Louis has been better than we expected. He's also more widely available, so let your league mates pick up McGreevy, while you snag Pallante instead!

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