Fantasy Baseball: Exercise caution with these six pitchers, Spencer Arrighetti among them

As we near the season's halfway point, much of the early noise has faded, and outlandish performances have largely come back down to earth.

But there are still a handful of fakeouts, the most detectable of which are on the pitching side. Here, I've singled out what I consider to be the six biggest.

As for what you could get in a trade, your mileage will vary. If it's nothing substantial, then the better approach may be to ride out the pitcher for as long as his good fortune lasts. Some of us have made bank on fakeouts before. If nothing else, though, you'll want to be prepared to pivot when the likely course correction comes.

Spencer Arrighetti

SP

HOU Houston

• #41 • Age: 26

2026 Stats

W-L

7-3

ERA

3.13

WHIP

1.20

INN

69

BB

32

K

68

Spencer Arrighetti's success this year may feel like a delayed payoff for the enthusiasm he inspired in 2024, but back then, he had 10.6 K/9 and a 12.2 percent swinging-strike rate, which are numbers akin to Paul Skenes. This year, he has 8.9 K/9 and a 10.1 percent swinging-strike rate, which are numbers akin to Foster Griffin. Since control was never his strong suit, Arrighetti needs to be more than just an OK bat-misser to be anything in the vicinity of trustworthy. Balls in play with runners on base tend to multiply damage. The reason he's gotten away with it so far this year is because he tends to allow weaker contact, with an average exit velocity of 87.5 mph, but even so, he puts the ball in the air too much to sustain the home run rate he had through his first 11 starts. The correction may have just begun with the three home runs he allowed Saturday. His ERA is still only 3.13, but if his xERA (4.57) and FIP (4.13) both pin him for an ERA over 4.00, they're probably right.

Connelly Early

SP

BOS Boston

• #71 • Age: 24

2026 Stats

W-L

6-5

ERA

3.64

WHIP

1.27

INN

81.2

BB

31

K

79

Connelly Early caught prospect evaluators by surprise last year when he put together a 2.60 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and 11.8 K/9 in the minors. He then came up to the majors and did much of the same in four starts, compiling a 2.33 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 13.5 K/9. Still, most prospect evaluators were guarded in their enthusiasm, and it turns out they may have been right. Early hasn't been nearly as effective in what's technically his rookie season. His pitches basically rate the same, but whether he's struggling to find the right mix between the six of them or simply not locating them as well, his bat-missing ability has cratered, with his swinging-strike rate sagging from 16.1 percent in the majors last year (and 14.3 percent in the minors) to 9.5 percent this year. Those are on opposite ends of the leaderboard. He's issued too many walks and has a pronounced vulnerability to the long ball, demonstrated in part by his 18th percentile average exit velocity. Given that he's served up 14 home runs in 15 starts, it's a wonder his ERA is as low as 3.64. His 4.41 xERA and 4.87 FIP suggest it won't be for long.

Emerson Hancock

SP

SEA Seattle

• #26 • Age: 27

2026 Stats

W-L

5-4

ERA

3.60

WHIP

1.02

INN

85

BB

19

K

81

Emerson Hancock struck out nine over six no-hit innings in his season debut and struck out 14 in a start against the Royals on May 2. Aside from those two, though, his starts have been pretty blah. Just taking the eight since the 14-strikeout effort, he has a 4.57 ERA and 7.3 K9. He seems a little confused as to what the plan is at this point. He had basically reinvented himself with a lower, Chris Sale-like arm angle and the pitches that best accompany it, such as a sweeper and a new emphasis on a four-seamer rather than the two-seamer. But lately, he's been leaning more on the two-seamer, much like when he had a higher arm slot. It seems to be more of a pitch-to-contact approach, but it leaves him vulnerable to damage and eliminates what made his transformation exciting in the first place. And seeing as the Mariners rotation is overloaded, with Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo basically sharing a spot and top prospect Kade Anderson expected to arrive later this summer, it wouldn't take much for Hancock to be on the outside looking in. I'm not saying it's imminent, but if he keeps regressing toward his 4.55 xERA, it could happen.

Will Warren

SP

NYY N.Y. Yankees

• #29 • Age: 27

2026 Stats

W-L

7-2

ERA

3.45

WHIP

1.33

INN

78.1

BB

26

K

84

What separates Will Warren from some of these others is that his ERA estimators, namely the 3.36 FIP, basically support what he's doing and suggest he may even be underachieving a bit. But strikeouts play a big part in those calculations, and my contention for him is that the strikeouts themselves are fake. How can I say that when he also had 9.5 K/9 last year? Look, I think they were fake then, too. He doesn't have a single swing-and-miss pitch in his arsenal, and his 9.3 percent swinging-strike rate ranks in the bottom 25 percent of qualifiers, down there with Bryce Elder and Andre Pallante. Already, we're seeing the strikeouts come down. Warren is averaging just 7.3 per nine innings in his past six starts, and while his ERA is a respectable 3.48 during that stretch, his WHIP is 1.58. His 7-2 record has earned him a lot of leeway in Fantasy, particularly while his ERA holds steady, but it's built on a brittle foundation that's already showing signs of giving way.

Eduardo Rodriguez

SP

ARI Arizona

• #57 • Age: 33

2026 Stats

W-L

6-2

ERA

2.45

WHIP

1.23

INN

88.1

BB

35

K

65

Eduardo Rodriguez may have a 2.45 ERA on the year, but how he's actually arrived at that number is one of the great mysteries of the first three months. One look at his Baseball Savant page will tell you he rates poorly at all of the attributes most critical for a pitcher. His walk rate (3.6 per nine innings) is in the 34th percentile. His strikeout rate (6.6 per nine innings) is in the 20th percentile and has little hope for improvement given that his swinging-strike rate (7.6 percent) ranks third-to-last among qualifiers, behind even Tomoyuki Sugano. He's done a reasonably good job limiting some of the hardest forms of contact, but even his xERA, which is the ERA estimator that most accounts for contact quality, is 4.93. The only starting pitcher with a bigger gap between his expected ERA and his actual ERA is, well, Sugano. Partly, I think Rodriguez has managed to make the most of some favorable matchups, such as the Giants and Mets when they were at their worst and the Rockies away from Coors Field. By virtually any data point, though, he's going to come crashing down soon, and you don't want to be caught holding the bag when he does.

Justin Wrobleski

SP

LAD L.A. Dodgers

• #70 • Age: 25

2026 Stats

W-L

8-2

ERA

2.72

WHIP

1.01

INN

79.1

BB

16

K

50

Most everything I said about Rodriguez also applies to Justin Wrobleski, with the main caveat being that he pitches for the Dodgers, who are sometimes capable of performing magic tricks. This would be among their biggest, though. For every Andrew Heaney and Tony Gonsolin, there were data points to back up the performance, skill indicators to suggest they were doing something right, and that's technically true for Wrobleski, too, in that his 5.1 percent walk rate (1.8 BB/9) ranks in the 93rd percentile. Outlier control is one of the more difficult skills to sustain, though, and generally isn't enough on its own. Strikes are easier to hit than balls, after all, so to limit damage against hitters who know they're coming requires almost Greg Maddux-like precision. Every now and then, you'll find a plebeian who can fake it for a stretch, but it usually doesn't end well. It could end especially poorly for Wrobleski, who is only working with two pitches, more or less, and whose combination of high average exit velocity and high fly-ball rate should have yielded far more than six home runs by this point.

Add CBS Sports on Google Join the Conversation comments

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/dont-believe-everything-you-see-from-these-six-pitchers/)._