Not on the current slate
Stephen hasn't been scored in 50 days — his last matchup was against Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday, July 4, 2026. A gap that long usually means an injury, a minor-league option, or a roster move rather than a rest day. Everything below is his most recent real production, not a projection.
Season line
10 starts, 4-3, 4.50 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 54.0 innings. He's struck out 34 over that span, against 12 walks. This is the baseline the matchup adjusts from — the model starts here and then asks what the specific lineup he's facing does to strikeout arms, how the park plays, and how deep he's likely to go.
He throws right-handed
Stephen throws right-handed, which is the ordinary case and means fewer wild swings in the lineup he faces. Opposing managers aren't restacking against him the way they would a left-hander, so his projection moves more on the quality of the lineup than on its handedness. What does move it: how deep he's been going lately, and whether the lineup in front of him strikes out.
His last 5 starts
Stephen has 15 strikeouts in 23.0 innings across his last 5 starts, a 5.9 K/9, with a 5.87 ERA over that stretch and 6 walks. Strikeouts are the one pitcher market where our model has found real, graded room — projected workload and the specific lineup he draws move that number more than a season-long rate does. Start-by-start detail is in the log below.
Strikeouts and control
Stephen has 34 strikeouts and 12 walks in 54.0 innings this season — 5.7 K/9 against 2.0 BB/9, a 2.8-to-1 ratio. That's strong control, and it does more for his projection than the raw strikeout number does. Walks are the fastest way to shorten a start — an arm that doesn't issue them gets deeper into games, which is what the outs and strikeout lines are really pricing.
What his floor looks like
Stephen has made 10 starts this season, averaging 5.4 innings with a 4.50 ERA across them. In the 10 starts we hold detailed lines for, he got through five or more innings 7 times. That ratio is the honest read on his floor, and it's what separates an arm worth projecting on the outs board from one whose good starts are unpredictable enough that the market prices them better than we do.
How long he goes
Stephen is averaging 5.4 innings a start across his last 8 outings, with a high of 9.0 and about 83 pitches a night. He's not going deep, and that caps the strikeout and outs projections no matter how good the matchup looks — you can't strike out hitters you don't face. Expected batters faced is one of the bigger inputs to his score for exactly this reason.
A long gap since his last start
Stephen hasn't started in 52 days. That's the single most useful warning on a pitcher's page, and it's the model's weakest spot. A gap that long usually means an injured-list stint, and a first start back is often on a strict pitch limit that no stat line reveals — books frequently don't post an outs line at all in that spot. Our projection is built on his healthy workload, so it will overshoot a shortened rehab start. Read any projection here with that in mind until he's stretched back out.
His best start in the log
Stephen's high-water mark was Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at CIN: 8 strikeouts over 7.0 innings, 2 earned runs. One start doesn't set a projection — the model works off the blend of his recent work against the specific lineup in front of him — but it does show the ceiling when the matchup lines up.
How the model reads him
The number on Stephen is about tonight, not about him. Strip out the name and the model is asking one question: what does this specific lineup do to this kind of arm, in this park, for as many batters as he's likely to face? That gets scored against every other starter on the slate. The combination math is proprietary and re-tuned every week. The grading isn't — it's all public, including the misses.
What we'd flag
Books don't price every player — coverage tops out around 87% even for confirmed starters, so "no line" here usually means no book posted one rather than a gap in our data. Lineups change late, and an afternoon projection can be stale by first pitch. And the model is tuned across hundreds of graded outcomes, so one game tells you nothing about whether it's working. For Stephen specifically, he's coming off a 52-day gap.