The Rotoworld Baseball staff offered their early sleeper picks for hitters and pitchers earlier this month, but now it’s time to look at the other end of the spectrum with our picks for “busts.”
Now, a quick word about “busts.” What does it mean, exactly? Ultimately, it’s a flashy word for a player who is deemed unlikely to live up to last year’s performance and/or their ADP (average draft position) for this year. Call them “busts” if you’d like, but “overvalued” works just fine as well. Either way, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
After unveiling our “busts” among hitters earlier this week, you’ll find our picks among starting pitchers below.
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2025 FANTASY BASEBALL BUST STARTING PITCHERS
Luis Castillo RHP, Mariners
Because the Mariners decided against trading him, Castillo is my No. 47 SP this season. In pretty much any stadium other than T-Mobile, I doubt he’d crack my top 70. That ballpark is covering up a pretty steep decline from the former Reds ace. Castillo’s fastball velocity dropped 1.5 mph from 2022 to 2024, and he’s now a slight flyball pitcher after spending years as one of the league’s top groundball inducers. His 24.3% strikeout rate last season was still quite good, but that was largely ex-Safeco’s doing. Mariners pitchers had a 27% strikeout rate at home and a 22% strikeout rate on the road last season. Castillo’s was 27% at home and 20% on the road. Pitching in Seattle, he had a 3.15 ERA and a 5.9 K:BB. Elsewhere, he had a 4.25 ERA and a 2.3 K:BB. There’s always the chance that Castillo will regain some arm strength and return to All-Star form at age 32. It just seems like a really bad idea to bet on it when he’s being drafted as a top-25 SP. – Matthew Pouliot
Garrett Crochet LHP, Red Sox
Crochet’s talent is obvious, and there’s loads of reasons to be excited about his chances of success in 2025 and beyond. There’s also some reasons to believe that he’s not worthy of being one of the first pitchers off the board this winter. In his 12 starts after the All-Star break, Crochet had an ERA of 5.19, and while that sample is only 38 2/3 innings, that’s part of the concern as well as he was (justifiably) coddled during the final few months of the season. Yes, his ability to miss bats competes with any starter in the sport, and there’s no denying that getting traded from the worst team in baseball to a potential playoff contender helps his odds. There’s just too much volatility to trust Crochet as my best starting pitcher in 2025, and you will very likely have to draft him as such to procure his services. – Christopher Crawford
Hunter Greene RHP, Reds
Having Hunter Greene as a bust just really means I’m not a fan of him as a top-25 starting pitcher, which is where he’s going in drafts right now. There’s a narrative that Greene’s strong 2024 season was due to his new splitter, but the pitch graded out poorly last year. It also had below-average zone rates, strike rates, and putaway rates to lefties with just a 22.7% CSW so the pitch didn’t do much for him. His success was because he added extension on his four-seamer, improved his zone rate on it, and gave up significantly less hard contact. However, he also had a massive Hit Luck score and just a 7.2% HR/FB rate which are both surely to regress hard. When you add in the injury risk due to his high-end velocity, I don’t believe Greene will hit that top-25 upside, and I have him as SP46 right now. – Eric Samulski
Chris Sale LHP, Braves
Sale had an excellent season in 2024, earning himself Cy Young honors after previously finishing in the top five of Cy Young award voting six times. Unfortunately, he ended the season on a sour note as he was unavailable with the Braves’ season on the line in the last game of the season. It’s Sale’s durability issues that give me pause with him this year. Prior to ‘24, the soon to be 36-year-old had thrown 102 ⅔, 5 ⅔, 42 ⅔ and zero innings in the previous four seasons. That’s simply not what I’m looking for from my ace pitcher. Sale’s NFBC ADP in February in the Online Championship is 34.15, making him the sixth pitcher off the board in most drafts. Drafting Sale just seems like an unnecessary risk to take at that point in drafts with pretty much every other pitcher still available. Corbin Burnes and George Kirby make sense as alternative options in that range as both eclipsed 180 innings and had a WHIP under 1.10 last year. – Nick Shlain
Roki Sasaki RHP, Dodgers
A literal phenom, it’s likely Sasaki grows into an ace behind his devastating splitter, near 100 MPH gas, and the Dodgers’ support in his development. That being said, he needs time to get there and is being over-drafted as the 23rd starting pitcher off the board since February 1st given his current limitations. First off, his workload will be light this season. He threw just 111 IP, 91 IP, and his career-high 129 1/3 IP respectively over the last three seasons in the NPB and 130 IP seems like his absolute ceiling. There’s either an injury – he missed time with arm issues last season and was recommended Tommy John surgery back in 2021 – or stays on schedule and only pitches a few innings per, which would kill his chance to earn wins. He would need to be highly dominant a la Paul Skenes or Tyler Glasnow to return meaningful value at his current cost and he’s not that guy yet. His repertoire is shallow, as of now, and I question how much swing-and-miss his fastball will get off the jump. While its velocity is still elite, it lost significant vertical movement over the course of last season. I’m not sure how quickly he can rediscover his optimal fastball shape after a full season where it regressed plus the adjustment to a slightly larger ball in the US that’s more difficult to grip than the one used in Japan. That pitch needs to be elite for him to be an immediate superstar since his command is middling and slider is inconsistent. The Dodgers’ rotation (and team) are so stacked that they will not likely push him in the regular season since his development is so high-stakes. They will play the long game with him and that could mean headaches for fantasy managers. – James Schiano
Blake Snell LHP, Dodgers
There’s no doubt that Blake Snell has been one of the best pitchers on a per-inning basis over the last several seasons. The problem for the 32-year-old left-hander has been staying on the mound. And despite his move to one of the best teams in baseball with the Dodgers, the move to Los Angeles does nothing to quell the volume concerns as the team is notorious for limiting their starting pitchers. Snell has pitched more than 130 innings just twice in his career and is coming off a 104-inning season in San Francisco. Also, he has a career 2.69 ERA at home and a 3.74 ERA on the road. This is noteworthy considering the fact he’s pitched in Tampa Bay, San Diego, and San Francisco, three prominent pitcher’s parks. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has played as an extremely hitter-friendly park, something that gives me pause for a pitcher that issues high walk rates with fly ball tendencies. – Jorge Montanez
Spencer Schwellenbach RHP, Braves
Schwellenbach was an unexpected revelation last year for the Braves, rising from relative obscurity to establish himself as a potential front-of-the-rotation stalwart. The talent is undeniable, but fantasy managers should exercise extreme caution in re-draft formats since Schwellenbach remains extremely inexperienced for a pitcher being selected as a borderline top 100 overall pick in fantasy drafts. The 24-year-old spent the first two seasons of his collegiate career as a shortstop and didn’t begin pitching until 2021 when he was a closer. The upper-echelon starter kit is there for Schwellenbach to blossom into an elite fantasy starter, but I’m not sure there’s enough strikeout upside based on last year’s results to justify his current draft day price tag. I’d much rather roll the dice several rounds later on a less expensive option like Shane Baz, Gavin Williams, Kumar Rocker, Jackson Jobe or Bubba Chandler. – George Bissell
Gerrit Cole RHP, Yankees
This one could wind up making me look silly at the end of the season as well, but I have a hard time justifying using a top 60 pick on Gerrit Cole heading into the 2025 season. Sure, he’s healthy now and the injury concerns that hampered him in 2024, but we also saw genuine skill decline in his profile last season. His strikeout rate has dropped each of the last three seasons, with his 25.4 percent mark from 2024 registering as his worst output since his days with the Pirates back in 2017. The dip in strikeout rate coincided directly with a drop in velocity – all the way from 97.8 mph in 2022 to 95.9 mph in 2024, once again his lowest mark since 2017. Are we sure that he’s just going to bounce back like nothing happened heading into his age-34 season? Sure, it’s possible, but I’m definitely not taking that risk as my SP1 or SP2. – David Shovein
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