Splits Issues: Pitchers Inside The Top 450
Looking into SPs being drafted for 2026 fantasy leagues that had major splits issues last year.
One of the possibly underrated things that MLB pitchers have to overcome is the splits issue. Left-handed hitters have an inherent advantage against right-handed pitchers, and vice versa.
Sometimes, you’ll end up with a pitcher with pretty good overall numbers, but some concerning splits stuff under the hood. And that’s what I’m going to show quickly here.
Using 2025 data, I found xwOBA allowed against each side of the plate for every pitcher who made at least ten starts. I found the biggest differentials between those xwOBA marks, and filtered out the guys who were good enough against both sids to not matter. Three examples to make that clearer:
We have wide gaps there. All three of those guys were way better against lefties than righties, but they also allowed low xwOBA to righties, so it’s not something to worry about. Teams would be smart to stack righties against them, sure, but it’s still probably not going to work out super well.
What we’re looking for are names that really struggled against one side of the plate. Those are the types that can get hit around when opponents are able to stack those opposite-side hitters against them.
I have also filtered to only pitchers going inside the top 450 ADP for 2026, because talking about Yu Darvish doesn’t matter anymore.
Tier One Problems
Schwellenbach is the only guy who is seriously pricey this year. And he had troubles with lefties last year, giving up a .353 xwOBA with just a 19.6% K%. However, it was a season cut short for Schwellenbach. He threw just 886 pitches against lefties last year. The problems in his breakout 2024 season weren’t nearly as bad, but you still see a gap there:
2024: .315 xwOBA vs. LHB, .261 vs. RHB
So he was dominant against righties and still better than average against lefties. If we combine 2024 and 2025 and look at this pitch mix data when up against left-handed bats:
The main neutralizing pitch when you don’t have the platoon advantage is the changeup, and that’s not in Schwelly’s bag. He has a splitter, which has been awesome, but that’s not a pitch you can throw in any count. So it seems like Schwellenbach has some tweaks to make to be good enough against lefties to be a true SP1 in fantasy leagues in 2026. I think he can do it, but it’s a slight reason to be pessimistic about his upside.
Pablo Lopez is the other guy in this group in the top 200. It’s the same situation as Schwellenbach; Lopez missed multiple months last year, so the sample size is short when we’re slicing it up another level to only look at his performance against lefties. In 2024, he was strong against both sides:
vs. LHB: .309 xwOBA, 23% K%, 5.3% BB%
vs. RHB: .287 xwOBA, 28% K%, 5.4% BB%
I am pessimistic overall about Lopez, as his K-BB% has been falling for multiple years, and he’s coming off an injury-plagued season. But we shouldn’t run for the hills over his splits issues from 2025, specifically.
As for Zebby Matthews, this could really hold him back. He’s thrown a changeup 14% of the time against lefties in his MLB career, but it’s not a good one. That pitch has gone for a 9.4% SwStr% and a pathetic 31% Strike%. It doesn’t get crushed (.412 SLG, .329 xwOBA), but it’s so rarely a strike that it’s not a useful pitch for him, and the lower usage against lefties shows a lack of confidence. Work to do for Zebby before he finally fulfills my breakout pick prediction for him.
Tier Two Problems
Edward Cabrera and Ryan Pepiot are the only two inside the top 300 in this group, so these issues are mostly accounted for in the cost.
I’ll say that this is a serious, serious issue for Yusei Kikuchi and lefties in general. Most teams can stack 7-9 righties on any given day. When you look to see which pitchers faced the highest percentage of righties last year, the league leaders were well above 75%.
Kikuchi was #12 on that list, facing a right-handed batter 79.4% of the time.
When you flip it around and see which pitchers faced the most lefties:
The league leaders come in twenty points lower. There are more right-handed batters in the league than left-handed, which makes the splits thing more important for left-handed pitchers to figure out.
11 left-handed starters qualified for this last year and gave up an xwOBA above .350 to righties:
Only Povich, Peterson, and Liberatore are being drafted in the top 500 this year. So this is more of a general tip. If you’re going to invest in a left-handed starter, make sure they can get righties out, because they’re likely to face a lot of them (and increasingly so if they start struggling against righties).
Let’s take a quick look at Edward Cabrera and Ryan Pepiot before wrapping this up. We’ll look at their pitch mix data from last season only:
Cabrera:
Cabrera’s main pitch last year was a changeup. You’d think that would help him against lefties. And yeah, it was tough on lefties with that 64% GB% and .291 xwOBA, but again, it was rarely a strike. A 44% Ball% is very high, a 35% Strike% is pathetically low. So the lack of strike-earning ability on the pitch makes him throw the curve, sinker, and four-seamer more than he’d probably like to, and those two fastballs got absolutely smashed. Lefties can just let the changeup go by and start fastball hunting, and that’s I think what we saw in his struggles last year.
But I am less worried about this part of Cabrera’s game because of the changeup he possesses.
Pepiot:
He actually had reverse splits last year. Generally, I don’t believe in reverse splits. I think most often they’re just a consequence of small sample sizes. That comes with the territory when you’re dividing a guy’s performance up into splits.
Pepiot has a good changeup, and that helped him handle lefties pretty well (he gave up home runs against them, but that should be helped majorly by the park change this year). Against righties:
Bad slider performance and mediocre four-seamer results. The best pitch to have when you’re a righty facing another righty is the slider, and that’s just not the strength of Pepiot. Changeups don’t work as well without the platoon advantage, so Pepiot needs to come up with something else. Either improve the slider or up this cutter usage or something.
But I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker for Pepiot. In 2024, when he was in Tropicana, he was very strong against both sides of the plate:
vs. RHB: .279 xwOBA
vs. LHB: .308 xwOBA
I’m drafting Pepiot confidently.
That will do it, but click here to access the data if you want to dive into more names on your own.