Finding value is a huge part of fantasy baseball success. While you need to hit on your early-round picks, being able to find key contributors late in the draft is a surefire way to rocket up your standings. For me, the best place to find value is with starting pitching. I started this article two years ago as a way to identify some starting pitchers who weren’t getting enough love in drafts. In that first season, I was able to hit on Kyle Bradish, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Bryce Miller (while missing on Roansy Contreras and Ken Waldichuk), and then last year, we hit on Jared Jones and Reese Olson while missing on A.J. Puk, DL Hall, and Garrett Whitlock (I guess I picked the wrong converted relievers).
The premise for this article came from The Process, by Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell. In their book, they report that, in 12-team leagues, 45% of undrafted pitchers finish the season in the top 108 starting pitchers. That means that 45% of pitchers with an average ADP outside of the top 108 pitchers at the start of the season will eventually end up inside the top 108 pitchers in value. They also found that 20% of undrafted pitchers in 12-team leagues end up inside the top 25 in terms of season-long value and that 50% of undrafted pitchers will have top-25 weekly value at some point in the season.
If you can find one of those pitchers who finishes with top 25 value, woo boy. The goal for today is to try and unearth who those pitchers might be. Even though the top 108 pitchers drafted in these leagues include relievers, we’re going to focus on just starting pitchers who are going outside of that because, statistically speaking, it’s far more likely for a starter to catapult into the top 25 than for an undrafted reliever to pop top-25 value.
For me, there are a few things that I’m looking for when trying to find a starting pitcher who could jump to the top of the heap.
- A chance at 130 innings or more
- Strikeout Upside (which, to me, means a big swing-and-miss pitch apart from a fastball)
- Fastball velocity (to me, this provides a safe floor; it’s hard to succeed around a bad fastball)
- An arsenal of three pitches or more (I believe that a pitcher needs a fastball for strikes, a secondary for called strikes, and a secondary for swinging strikes).
The ADP used is from March 1st to March 10th in NFBC Online Championships, which is 26 drafts.
Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Draft Values
First, I just want to mention four pitchers I thought about including here but ultimately didn’t feel as confident about due to injuries or lack of consistency: Brayan Bello, Reid Detmers, Grant Holmes, and David Peterson. You can check out my thoughts on Detmers and Bello in this article on SIERA underperformers, and check out my thoughts on Peterson in this article about late-round starting pitchers.
So, who made the cut?
Jose Soriano – Los Angeles Angels (ADP: 303, 125th pitcher)
Chance at 130 innings: Soriano threw 113 innings last year while missing the final month of the season while battling arm fatigue. There was nothing structurally wrong with his shoulder, but he had only thrown 73.1 innings in 2023, so it makes sense that he wore down a bit as the season went on. I think he’s a good bet for 140-150 innings in the Angels’ rotation this year.
Strikeout Upside: Soriano had just a 20.7% strikeout rate last season, but he has two plus breaking balls in his curve and slider, and that’s where the strikeout upside comes from for me. His curve had a 15.1% SwStr% to righties and a 14.8% SwStr% to lefties, so he can use it to attack all hitters, and his slider had a 19% SwStr% to righties. He also adds in a splitter that registered a 17.1% SwStr% to lefties, so there are plenty of whiff pitches in the arsenal.
Fastball Success: The fastball command has been a real issue for Soriano so far, but the shape of the pitches is fine. His primary fastball is a sinker that sits 98 mph and has nearly 16 inches of horizontal movement. It’s nasty. He uses it primarily low in the zone, which I don’t like, but I think much of that is his concern with throwing it up and in to righties when he can’t command it all that well. He also has a 99 mph four-seamer that he uses primarily to lefties, but it has this weird combination of run without much vertical movement, so it’s not an ideal pitch.
Deep Pitch Mix: Soriano has five pitches, and four of them are plus. The only “poor” pitch is his four-seam fastball, and he doesn’t use it that often; it’s just to set up the curve and splitter for lefties only. If he can just command his sinker better in 2025, he could be in for a huge breakout, which I covered in some detail when I discussed him as one of my favorite late-round picks.
Max Meyer – Miami Marlins (ADP: 317, 134th pitcher)
Chance at 130 innings: Meyer threw 112 innings last year, split between Triple-A and the Majors. It was also his first year back after missing all of 2023 with Tommy John surgery, so that should make us feel pretty good about Meyer reaching at least 130 now that he seems locked into Miami’s rotation. Meyer has taken steps forward this spring to build on his prospect pedigree, and trade rumors are circling Sandy Alcantara, so I don’t think anybody is bumping Meyer from this rotation because they’re more talented. By the time Eury Perez comes off the IL, Sandy Alcantara could be on another team, or Perez could bump Cal Quantrill from the rotation.
Strikeout Upside: This is the place where Meyer needs to step up the most because he has a career 19% strikeout rate in 63 MLB innings, and that’s just not going to cut it. However, Meyer has made two key changes this off-season that have showcased a new level of upside. The primary one is that he lowered his arm angle, which has made him closer to the pitcher he was when he was drafted 3rd overall in 2020 out of the University of Minnesota. That has led to added velocity (more on that later) but also added movement on some of his offerings. Combine that with the fact that he has added a slower sweeper to complement his harder slider and a sinker that he can jam right-handed hitters inside with, and we’re starting to see a much different arsenal. I love the two sliders here from Meyer because I think it creates an important level of deception that will lead to a major bump in his strikeout rate. At least to right-handed hitters. The strikeout pitch to lefties is worrying me a bit here.
Fastball Success: Here is where we come back to the added velocity. Meyer has been sitting around 96 mph this spring, which is almost two mph up from last year. Some of that can be attributed to the new arm angle, but he also put on 20 pounds of muscle this offseason to try and do just this. The velocity and arm angle have led to a flatter fastball that could excel up in the strike zone for swinging strikes. Now that he also has the sinker that he can use to righties, they can’t sit on one fastball variation, which means the four-seamer could play up even more as a swing-and-miss-pitch.
Deep Pitch Mix: This is another area where Meyer has become a different pitcher, as you can see from the awesome table above put together by Putcher List’s Kyle Bland. Previously, Meyer had basically just had his 88mph slider, which he threw over 40% of the time, and his mediocre four-seamer. Now, he added a sweeper and sinker to that, plus the changeup he mixes in 15% of the time. That’s a five-pitch mix where the slider, sweeper, sinker, and four-seamer all got better this off-season.
Lucas Giolito – Boston Red Sox (ADP: 329, 142nd pitcher)
Chance at 130 innings: Giolito is back! He makes his spring debut for the Red Sox on March 11th after missing all of last year with Tommy John surgery. Now, Giolito has been a top-25 starting pitcher before, so the case for him is a little different from some of these other guys because it’s just about him showcasing a level we’ve already seen from him. He says he is going to be ready to start the season, and the Red Sox already have said that Kutter Crawford and Brayan Bello are unlikely to be ready by Opening Day, so Giolito should be in the rotation from the start, and this is a team that is trying to win a championship, so if he’s pitching well, they’re just going to keep him in the rotation. That makes 130 innings feel like a good bet here.
Strikeout Upside: For his career, Giolito has a 25.3% strikeout rate and was over 25% in each of his last two seasons, even when he was struggling elsewhere, so strikeouts have never been a huge problem. The larger question is whether he can get back to that 28% strikeout rate range, and I think there is a clear path for it. Last year, I covered some of the changes Giolito was making in spring training before he got hurt, and a couple of them caught my eye. In those three spring starts, the Red Sox had seemingly tweaked Giolito’s slider, which was something he had said in the off-season they told him they had a plan for. Back in 2021, Giolito’s slider averaged 85.6 mph, with more than 4.7 inches of vertical movement and 2.7 inches of horizontal movement. The pitch had a 20.3% SwStr%, allowed just a 33% ICR, and had a .167 batting average against. By 2023, he was throwing the pitch almost two mph slower and with more curveball shape. The SwStr% on the pitch fell to 15.9% with a 40.5% ICR and a .236 batting average allowed. He also threw it for fewer strikes. Last year, the Red Sox had him throw the slider harder again and made the pitch less curveball-ish. Getting Giolto back to his older slider would be huge for his strikeout potential since we know he also has that elite changeup.
Fastball Success: This will be the big thing we want to see early on from Giolito, and we’re not going to get usable data on it in his first spring outing, so we just have to keep an eye on this. Last spring, Giolito was sitting around 95 mph with his four-seamer, but then we know he blew out his elbow. The last time he averaged 94 mph or higher on his fastball was a three-year stretch from 2019-2021 that saw him pitch to a 3.47 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 30.7% strikeout rate in 427.2 innings. Giolito gets solid extension and good induced vertical break (iVB) on his four-seam, so if he can add velocity and can keep the pitch at the top of the zone, it can be a huge pitch for him since he tends to go as his fastball goes.
Deep Pitch Mix: Giolito will be mainly a four-seamer, changeup, and slider pitcher, but he does have a curveball he can mix in, and he had previously thrown a sinker. We know that the Red Sox like to have pitchers throw multiple fastball variations and don’t like them to rely so much on the four-seamer, so we should expect that sinker (or maybe a cutter) to show up in 2025, which will give him four or five pitches he can go to regularly. We know Giolito was battling some off-field issues in 2023 and then was traded across the country to an Angels team that fell apart. In 21 starts with the White Sox in 2023 before the trade, he had a 3.79 ERA, 25.8% strikeout rate, 1.22 WHIP, 12.3% SwStr%, and 28.8% CSW. So he was a decent pitcher for the majority of the last season we saw him on the mound. If the Red Sox can make him better than that version, we could see something closer to the 2019-2021 version of Giolito, and that is a very good starting pitcher.
Zebby Matthews – Minnesota Twins (ADP: 353, 163rd pitcher)
Chance at 130 innings: To me, this is the biggest thing keeping Matthews from being drafted higher. He pitched 129.2 innings between the minors and Majors in 2024, so durability isn’t a concern. The issue is whether or not Matthews will get enough of a crack at the MLB rotation. As it stands, he’s probably on the outside looking in, with Chris Paddack and Simeon Woods-Richardson likely to begin the year with Minnesota, but here’s the thing: Zebby is better than both of those guys. At some point, we just have to bet on talent to win out. I know many people think David Festa will get the next shot if a starting spot opens up, but I think Zebby is better, and we’ll get into that here.
Strikeout Upside: Zebby had a 30.5% strikeout rate in the minors last year, including a 28.4% rate in his 19 innings in Triple-A. In his brief MLB sample, his slider posted a 20.4% swinging strike rate, while his cutter posted above-average marks to left-handed hitters. His slider is a harder, gyro slider, so he can use it to both righties and lefties, which makes it a legit swing-and-miss pitch for any hitter he faces. He also tightened up his cutter this off-season, which should make it a better bridge pitch between his four-seamer and slider and could add deception for all of those offerings.
Fastball Success: A big change for Zebby this spring has been that his fastball is up to 96 mph, which is important. It’s a flat fastball that has success up in the zone, but he doesn’t have good extension on it, so the added velocity would be nice. He has above-average iVB on it as well, and he does a great job locating it, which is the hallmark of Zebby’s success overall. Last year, in his small MLB sample, the four-seam fastball had a 26% PutAway rate, which measures the rate at which a pitch thrown in two-strike counts results in a strikeout. The MLB average for starting pitchers on a four-seam fastball was 17% last year, so Zebby is way above that, which makes sense with his fastball location and shape.
Deep Pitch Mix: This is another area where Zebby might feel like a stretch because he has only three pitches that he uses over 7% of the time; however, if we break it down by batter handedness, it looks more enticing. Against right-handed hitters last year, he used the ofur-seam fastball 41% of the time, slider 33% of the time, and cutter 22% of the time. Against lefties, he only used the slider 21% and the cutter 13% but added in the changeup 12% of the time and the curve 10% of the time. That means he essentially has at least three pitches he can use to hitters of each handedness, and that’s music to our ears. The changeup and curve are inconsistent, but they give lefties a couple of other looks to think about, which matters. You pair that kind of arsenal with elite command, and I mean ELITE command, and you couldn’t have something here. Matthews had just a 3% walk rate last season across three minor league levels, which gave him some of the best control in, quite literally, all of baseball. As a 24-year-old who started last season in High-A and then made his MLB debut by the end of the season, there is a lot to dream on here.
Jack Leiter – Texas Rangers (ADP: 356, 171st pitcher)
Chance at 130 innings: At this point, I don’t believe Jack Leiter is in the Texas rotation, so that could be what caps his innings projection here; however, he threw 112.2 innings combined last season, so he would certainly have the ability to hit 130 or more innings if he was given the opportunity. I believe the Rangers want Leiter to face MLB hitters. He has shown that he can make adjustments at the Triple-A level, and his 33.3% strikeout rate in 77 Triple-A innings last year suggests that he doesn’t have much left to prove there. The Rangers could start the season with Leiter as a multi-inning reliever and then give him the first crack at a starting job if any of Tyler Mahle, Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom, or Jon Gray get hurt, as they have for many of their professional seasons. Mahle himself is only throwing 92 mph this spring and doesn’t seem like the pitcher we have come to know, so there’s a chance Leiter takes his spot very soon.
Strikeout Upside: As I just mentioned above, Leiter had a 33.3% strikeout rate in Triple-A, so there is certainly strikeout upside there. He didn’t pitch particularly well in his small MLB sample size last year, but his four-seamer posted a well-above-average 15.9% SwStr%, and his curveball also posted a 15.8% SwStr%. Yet, it’s his slider that has been his best pitch in the minors last year and grades out as a 60 on scouting scales. He did a lot of work last year on refining his mechanics so that he could command his secondary pitches better, and we saw real improvement at the minor league level. Given that he came to spring training with some new pitches (more on that later), we could see yet another step in development for Leiter in 2025.
Fastball Success: One of the biggest changes for Leiter has been that he is sitting 98 mph on his fastball in spring training with less horizontal movement, or run, on his four-seamer. That has made the four-seamer even flatter, which is helping it miss even more bats up in the zone. He commands the pitch well, which helped ensure that Leiter already had an elite four-seamer, so these changes just put it over the top even more. There’s also a great breakdown on Twitter from a Blue Jays minor league pitching coach about the changes Leiter made to his mechanics, which have led to this uptick in velocity but also his improved performance overall this spring.
Deep Pitch Mix: As you can see from Kyle Bland’s chart above, there are two big changes for Leiter’s pitch mix this spring. For one, he has added a sinker, which is part of the reason he also worked to take horizontal movement off of his four-seamer. Being able to run a sinker in on the hands of righties will allow the four-seamer to play up more but also open up the outside part of the plate for his curve and slider. The other big change is that Leiter has added a kick-change, which Lance Brozdowski broke down in this video here. The kick-change is almost two mph harder than the changeup he used to use and has significantly more drop and run away from lefties. It has been a dynamic pitch for him this spring and deepens his arsenal even more. The slider coming in at 89 mph should enable him to use it to both righties and lefties, but this new changeup means that he has that plus the slider, and four-seamer to lefties. Also, since the kick-change is almost like a splitter in many ways, it’s a pitch that can be used to both righties and lefties, which gives Leiter so many new possible ways to attack hitters. If we knew he was locked into a starting job right now, I’d have him ranked right around guys like Nick Pivetta, so I think you’re getting major value on Leiter right now in drafts.
Prospects Who Likely Won’t Break Camp In Rotation
Every year, I include a few prospects who likely won’t break camp in their team’s rotation, which makes them hard to draft in most formats, but they are players I want to highlight. I should first mention
Bubba Chandler – Pittsburgh Pirates
Chandler is currently being drafted 289th overall as the 116th pitcher, so he’s close to the cut-off. However, his ADP has risen (the number has gotten higher) as it’s become clearer that the Pirates are not likely to break camp with him in the rotation. The Pirates have a history of being aggressive with their pitching prospects, and Chandler has the upside to match or surpass what Jared Jones did last year, so he’s certainly a name to keep an eye on.
Quinn Mathews – St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals are rebuilding, so they should give prospects like Mathews a chance, but we know they’re not going to early in the season. However, Andre Pallante has not looked good this soring, and Steven Matz has a long injury history, so a rotation spot could open up soon. This spring, Mathews showed off a 94 mph four-seamer with a sinker and slider that he can mix in to lefties. However, he makes his bones with a ridiculous changeup that had a 53% whiff rate in the minors last year. It absolutely eats up right-handed hitters and made some veteran MLB hitters look foolish this spring. Since he can also mix in the slider to righties as well, he can attack all hitters with at least three different pitches, which gives him the deep arsenal we like. He has a good track record with volume from his time at Stanford, so him throwing 150 innings wouldn’t be a concern. He’s one of the pitching prospects I think could be up soon, and I’m looking to stash him as soon as I hear a call-up might be imminent.
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