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Fantasy Baseball Out% Standouts from Week 7

Here are the best pitchers at getting batters out from Week 7.

Taylor Tarter
Fantasy 5/21/2025

Here you can find the best pitchers at getting batters out after week seven, and even which specific pitches result in the most outs.

This is a tool we can use to determine pitchers to target in fantasy baseball, when we look at Out% along with other stats like whiff%, putaway%, and advanced ERA metrics like PLV.

Check out our Streamlit app to help track Out%: https://pitcherlistoutpercentage.streamlit.app

You can read more of the intricacies of the stat here, where I reflect on what we learned from Out% last season and how to use it in fantasy.

For the purposes of this article, we will focus more on how to use this stat for fantasy baseball and how it can help you make fantasy-relevant decisions in-season.

 

Fastball Out% Highlight

 

Logan Webb – SP SF

 

Since 2019, Logan Webb has finished a season with a K/9 rate above 8.5 only two times. He has never finished a season with a K/9 rate over 9.6. But this season, he has posted a 10.5 K/9 rate, while also maintaining some of his other strengths, including a low BB/9, an above average LOB%, and one of the league’s best groundball rates. Why the increase in strikeouts?

The two main reasons appear to be increases in strikeout rates on his changeup and fastball. His changeup’s strikeout rate increased 16% from last season, while his fastball K% is up to 70% this season, a 23% jump from last year. This has led to a 28% Out Rate on his fastball, making it one of the best in the league.

Among pitchers who have thrown at least 50 fastballs in at least 10 PAs, Webb’s owns the third best whiff rate and the best strikeout rate. The biggest differences for Webb from last season seem to be a slight increase in velocity, arm side break, and location.

Webb also only throws his fastball about 7% of the time, and is his least used pitch. But that does not seem to matter. He knows how to use it, and it has worked exceptionally well for him.

Webb also features an elite changeup, and an above average sinker in terms of Out%. So having three weapons that can get batters out, including a fastball, legitimizes the added strikeout rate and the low ERA.

 

Out% Pitchers To Buy

 

Merrill Kelly – SP ARI

 

Nick Pollack on twitter declared:

It appears he was correct. The cutter has become the pitch that has seen the biggest increase in league average Out% from last season. This means that pitchers this season have used it as an out pitch more often than in 2024. One pitcher who has used it extremely effectively this year is Merrill Kelly.

It is his third most used pitch, but has basically the same Out% as his sinker and changeup, and an even better out% than his breaking balls.

Kelly’s cutter is a spectacular pitch, and having it in an arsenal with four other offerings that have an Out% above league average makes it an even deadlier weapon. Kelly has top-notch movement on this pitch, with 4.2 more inches of vertical drop compared to the league, as well as 2.5 inches of arm side break – both of which rank top-six in the league. Kelly also locates the ball extremely well, with a 106 plvLoc+.

Kelly’s ability to get batters out with a lethal cutter, plus four other pitches, makes him a pitcher you should target in fantasy leagues.

 

Shane Smith – SP CWS

 

Shane Smith is a great, relatively under the radar fantasy asset this season. He appears to have pitched into some good home run luck, with just a 2% HR/FB rate, but that should not lead to two runs of regression to his ERA, especially considering his Out% repertoire.

Smith’s arsenal is overwhelmingly made up of his fastball, changeup, slider, and sinker, with the first three making up about 87% of his pitch mix.

This is important for fantasy and for Out% because those four pitches all rank above league average in Out Rate. Smith is a young pitcher, leaning on his fastball, and with it having such a high usage rate, but also a high Out%, that is a great sign for sustained success.

Moreover, every pitch Smith throws has a whiff rate of at least 22% and a putaway rate of at least 21%. Arguably his best pitch, though, is his changeup, with a 34% whiff rate, a 24% K rate, and a 22% putaway rate. Take a look at it here:

Among pitchers who have thrown a changeup at least 100 times in at least 25 PAs, Smith ranks top-25 in BAA, whiff%, and putaway%. He has done this with some pretty ridiculous vertical movement, and above average velocity on the pitch.

Smith should be more widely rostered in fantasy leagues, despite pitching for a team that may limit his wins. The strikeouts were there in the minors, and all signs point to more strikeouts to come in the majors too.

 

Out% Pitchers to Sell

 

Kodai Senga – SP NYM

 

Kodai Senga has just one pitch that ranks high in Out%, which is his forkball, with a 26.6% out rate:

The reason his forkball Out Rate matches the league average is because he is the only one throwing that pitch. He leans on it more than a quarter of the time. His second and third most used pitches are his fastball and cutter, which both have Out Rates below league average, a major issue for a pitcher trying to sustain success.

Senga seems to have succeeded this season in spite of some major flaws. His fastball and cutter both have BAAs over .300. He also has a career worst K/9 rate, and has walked more batters per nine innings than league average. Senga has a low HR/FB rate, about 10% lower than league average. And while Smith’s features a similar HR/FB rate, Senga presents more problems that signal regression, where Smith does not.

Senga’s 1.22 ERA seems entirely reliant on his home run luck, and the fact that 87% of baserunners have not been able to score. He is tempting fate though, with a high walk rate, a low strikeout rate, and below average Out Rates on nearly all of his pitches.

This is the time I would be trying to trade Senga. His value will never be higher, and regression will come sooner than later.

 

Kevin Gausman – SP TOR

 

Kevin Gausman is another pitcher I worry about having sustained success this season, largely based on Out%. However, there are some other issues as well.

First, Gausman really only throws three pitches – a fastball, splitter and slider. Here is the breakdown in their usage:

In the past, Gausman’s splitter has been an important weapon in getting batters out, including last season when it had a 20% Out Rate. This season, though, that number has dropped slightly, and his only pitch that ranks above league average in Out% is his fastball:

With such a limited arsenal, it is important for each of these pitches to be effective at getting batters out, especially the fastball. But if hitters figure out that they can spit on the splitter and slider and just go hunting for the fastball, which he throws a ton, batters will start to tee off.

Some other worrying stats for Gausman include a drop in his K/9 rate for a third season in a row, as well as a very low BABIP, a low LOB%, and a low HR/FB%. Also, all three of his pitches have higher xBAAs than BAAs. This all spells regression to an already high 3.97 ERA for a pitcher that is used to much better results.

Gausman is pitching closer to streamer levels than the elite levels he saw from 2021-2023.

 

Out% Pitchers to Buy

 

 

Out% Pitchers To Sell

 

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Taylor Tarter

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Taylor is an FSWA finalist, and a fantasy baseball champ that has been playing for well over a decade. Taylor is co-creator of Out%, a stat that measures how good pitches are at getting outs. You can find him @TaylorTarter on Twitter.

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