Fantasy baseball managers spend too much time looking at ERA.
The problem?
ERA often tells you what already happened, not how well a pitcher actually performed.
A bloop hit, poor defense, an untimely home run, or bad sequencing can inflate a pitcher's ERA despite elite underlying performance.
To find pitchers who could outperform their current fantasy value, I filtered qualified pitchers from May 1 through July 2 and sorted them by xFIP —one of the best indicators of future pitching success because it removes much of the noise caused by home run variance while focusing on the outcomes pitchers control.
But I didn't stop there.
I also looked at strikeout rate, walk rate, K-BB%, BABIP, HR/FB%, and Baseball Savant's season-long metrics to determine whether each pitcher's underlying arsenal supported the results.
These five arms consistently checked every box.
Nathan Eovaldi
May 1 – July 2
• 3.56 ERA • 3.11 xFIP • 25.2% K Rate • 5.5% BB Rate • 19.7% K-BB%
Nathan Eovaldi continues to age like one of baseball's most reliable veterans.
Over the past two months, he's quietly paired a 3.56 ERA with an even better 3.11 xFIP, suggesting his underlying performance has actually been stronger than the surface numbers indicate.
The biggest reason is command.
A 5.5% walk rate combined with a 25.2% strikeout rate gives him nearly a 20% K-BB%, one of the strongest marks among qualified pitchers during the sample. Even more encouraging, his 17.2% HR/FB rate sits higher than expected, suggesting a few poorly timed home runs have inflated his ERA.
Baseball Savant reinforces everything FanGraphs shows. Eovaldi ranks in the 93rd percentile in Chase Rate, 90th percentile in Walk Rate and 86th percentile in Whiff Rate while continuing to dominate hitters with one of baseball's best splitters.