“Rising Stars on the Waiver Wire: Could Tyler Soderstrom and Jack Leiter Be Your Secret Weapons This Season?”

Brayan Bello – SP, BOS (11% rostered)
If you need an IL stash, Bello is already starting a rehab assignment in Triple-A, and optimism that the Red Sox could have him back by April 11th. I truly believe this is the year he breaks out. Bello tweaked his slider into more of a sweeper at the end of 2023, spent most of the offseason working on it, and then graded out as an above-average pitch by PLV in 2024. He started using it more against righties, and the swinging strike rate on it jumped from 10% to 16% while he also improved his zone rate as the season went on. The issue is that as his slider got better, he seemed to lose the feel for his change-up, which has always been his best pitch. Even though he doesn’t throw the changeup often to righties, Bello’s command of the pitch suffered in 2024, with a lower zone and strike rate, and it got hit much harder. It still had an 18.5% swinging strike rate to lefties, so Bello checks the boxes now of fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs to hitters of each handedness, and if he can get the command of his changeup back to be a consistent strike pitch then he has all the things I want from a starting pitcher and we could see a big leap.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29