Fantasy Baseball SP Streamers: Top Waiver Wire Pitchers for Thursday

It's a short day today on the MLB schedule, with just nine games on the docket. That means more than one-third of the teams have the day off, leaving us short on fantasy players as we hit the final stretch to make a run at a fantasy championship. If you still have innings to burn, it is about time to start digging deeper into streamers who might be able to help your cause.

Let's look at four starting pitchers in action on Thursday who are widely available in fantasy leagues and have good matchups. Most stats are from MLB.com, as are the probable pitchers. The full streamer rankings are listed at the bottom.

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Kade Anderson, Seattle Mariners vs. Athletics

Jack Perkins, Athletics @ Seattle Mariners

We'll start today with a game in which we can target both teams with streaming pitchers. Seattle is one of our top targets, showing bottom-five numbers over the full season and sitting in the same lowly group in many areas over the past month. They haven't shown much offensive prowess at any point this year and are likely to remain among our streaming targets for the rest of the season. The A's play at one of the best hitter's parks in baseball, a minor league stadium in Sacramento. When looking just at road games, they rank in the bottom five in essentially every box stat. The future Las Vegas franchise is a strong target outside of their current home park.

Anderson is owned in over 50% of leagues, not exactly a streamer by our full definition, but he is available in enough leagues to make it worth checking on him given his upside and the strong matchup. Anderson tore through the minor leagues after being taken with the third overall pick in last year's draft, and he might never ride a bus again (at least in the sense of playing on a minor league team). His numbers don't look great in a super-small sample of just 10 innings, but Anderson is likely a future ace, and that upside can show up on any given day.

Perkins has made 12 starts and 20 relief appearances this season, doing good strikeout work but giving up too many runs and home runs. While his numbers are worse at home (as should be expected), he also hasn't been very good on the road, leaving a low floor to go with the appealing K% (25.2% versus league average around 22%). Perkins has just 134 career innings, so while things haven't gone his way, there's plenty of time for him to improve, especially if he keeps striking guys out.

Anderson is a mid-to-high-level streamer and Perkins a low-to-mid-level streamer. Both pitchers are helped by this game taking place in Seattle, one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in baseball, and both guys have intriguing ceilings due to their strikeout work, but Anderson is on another level as a pitcher both now and into the future.

Quinn Mathews, St. Louis Cardinals vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

Well, are you ready to get weird? You are seeing right that we are talking about a pitcher who is going against the Dodgers today, partly a product of the short schedule today and partly a product of Los Angeles struggling on offense over the past month. Don't get it wrong: I'm not suggesting that you target the Dodgers often with the thought that you can steal a fantasy championship. They do rank in the bottom 10 (or very close to it) in runs, hits, doubles, home runs, and all four slash categories over that recent stretch, so we can at least entertain the idea that LA is vulnerable right now.

Mathews made his big-league debut on August 1 and has made four starts for the Cardinals. He gave up two or fewer runs in three of those outings, but the other one was rough, as Mathews gave up 10 hits and seven runs in five innings against the Phillies the Saturday before last. That makes his overall numbers look rough, but Mathews has been a better pitcher than that most of his time, and he found plenty of success in the minor leagues, so there's hope that he can continue his successful ways.

Mathews is a low-to-mid-level streamer. Maybe we should bump him down even a little further given the potential for the Dodgers to go off offensively, but LA has struggled hard lately, and Mathews has the makings of a successful pitcher, so there's a little intrigue on such a short day.

Blade Tidwell, San Francisco Giants @ Pittsburgh Pirates

Tidwell has just 52 2/3 major league innings to his name, time that hasn't been overly kind to him: 56 hits, 34 runs (5.81 ERA), and nine home runs with both a walk rate and strikeout rate worse than average. It's tough to glean too much from such a small sample, and he was better in the minors (including above-average strikeout work), so there could be better times ahead, but it's tough to trust Tidwell just based on what we've seen. The San Francisco pitcher will have to show more if he wants to be the second Tidwell to be shown the money.

Pittsburgh was actually a successful offensive team for most of the season. I was ready to target them at the beginning of the year after a weak 2025, but the Pirates haven't been on our streaming list in months, hitting well enough to keep themselves in the playoff race along with a stronger pitching staff. Pittsburgh has taken a turn for the worse over the past month, though, ranking in the bottom 10 in essentially every box stat during that time. Most importantly for our purposes, the Pirates strike out as much as any team in baseball, setting a nice ceiling for opposing pitchers on any given day.

Tidwell is a low-level streamer. Pittsburgh was much better most of the season, and Tidwell hasn't been as successful as Mathews, so he's a step below his fellow pitcher with a questionable matchup today.

Thursday's Streamer Rankings

1. Kade Anderson, SEA
2. Jack Perkins, ATH
3. Quinn Mathews, STL
4. Blade Tidwell, SF