There are a few words a smart Fantasy analyst is loath to use. "League-winner" feels like you're tempting fate, while we've all gotten burnt by the player who has "turned the corner" only to blow up in our faces. But Jacob Lopez sure looks like a league-winner right now, doesn't he?
And as for Andrew Painter, well, he's turned the corner, no? These two pitchers have been linked in our discussions for the past couple of weeks, and both pitched well again Wednesday, so let's take a look at what they're doing right, because both look like the highest-priority, waiver-wire adds for the third straight week. Starting with Lopez, who is, in a lot of ways, just running a repeat of last season.
After an underwhelming start to the season, he got hot in mid-June and ripped off a 12-start stretch where he put together a 2.30 ERA (2.88 xERA), with 10.8 K/9 and excellent all-around results. That run ended with a nine-run blowup and an elbow injury, but for about two months, Lopez was as good as just about anyone. His turnaround this time started a month later, but he's up to nine starts with a 2.51 ERA, 10.9 K/9, and the peripherals to mostly back it up.
How does this soft-tossing lefty keep putting together runs like this? Well, Wednesday's start is a good example. Despite averaging less than 90 mph on his four-seamer (Lopez's velocity was actually down nearly 1 mph or more across the board in this one), he generated 17 whiffs on 102 pitches, with a solid 88 mph average exit velocity allowed.
He's got this cross-body delivery that comes from way off toward the first base side of the mound with elite extension and hitters just have a tough time picking him up, especially when paired with unusual movement profiles on every pitch in his arsenal. In short, there just aren't a lot of pitches that look like Lopez's, and that helps the whole arsenal play up. And when he's missing bats, he's especially dangerous.
Lopez can have iffy command at times – something you'll see pretty regularly with other cross-body pitchers like Andrew Abbott and George Klassen – which combines with his below-average velocity to give him a very slim margin for error. But even when things aren't going well, he still tends to generate a lot of weak contact in the air, in the form of both harmless pop-ups and medium-shallow fly balls that are easy outs. When he's getting that strikeout rate up into the 30% range, that combination is devastating.
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