Fantasy baseball draft season is picking up, so it’s time to start diving into a little starting pitching strategy. As I’ve mentioned a few times in my content, I am a proponent of waiting to draft starting pitching. I have no issue securing an ace in the first four rounds or so, but I’m usually only drafting two starting pitchers in the first nine or ten rounds so I can load up on bats. Part of that is because I think our projections of hitters are more reliable than our projections of pitchers, but the other reason is that I think the starting pitching landscape is filled with intriguing talent that comes with varying levels of risk but ALL OF IT comes with risk. That’s just the nature of pitching. It’s an unnatural motion and many guys are going to get hurt.
In recent years we’ve learned that this not only leads to few “safe” options early, but it causes some of the supposedly “safer” late-round arms to be pushed up inside the top 300 when people feel uncomfortable with the risk of their early-round pitchers. In response, I love to end my draft with high-upside starting pitchers in the final few rounds.
In this article, I’ll discuss some of my favorite starting pitcher targets going outside the top 300, which means after round 25 in 12-team drafts and round 20 in 15-team drafts. Generally speaking, your rotations should be filled by this point so we’re looking for upside with these selections. Given that we’ve accepted over the years that we’re going to use the waiver wire often for starting pitching, it doesn’t make sense to take a “safe floor, low upside” starter this late because those guys will always be on the wire. We’d rather take a starting pitcher who has risk but could become an every-week option for us if things break right.
As a result, the types of arms I look for late in drafts are pitchers who fit the following criteria
1) Have clear strikeout upside (the easiest path to fantasy success as a starting pitcher is to rack up strikeouts).
2) Have a fastball they throw for strikes and a secondary pitch they can use for whiffs. (These are two clear signs for me that a pitcher can unlock upside)
3) Have an easy narrative for improvements in 2025 (maybe it’s a new team, a new role, or a new pitch)
4) Are in a situation where I can determine their value after one or two weeks (I don’t want to miss opportunities to add waiver wire talent, so I need my late-round picks to be players who I can make a decision on quickly – maybe they don’t win the starting job out of camp or none of my expected changes show up in their first start. Fine, move on. Find the new guy. I don’t want a pitcher in his first start who goes five innings with two runs allowed and three strikeouts. What does that tell me? Is that guy good or not? I have no idea.)
So who does that leave for 2025?
Top Late-Round Starting Pitcher Targets
All ADPs are from NFBC Rotowire Online Championship (12-team league) drafts from February 1st to February 18th (16 drafts)
Brayan Bello – Boston Red Sox (ADP: 319)
Let’s check off our criteria.
Clear strikeout upside: Bello has had slightly above-average swinging strike rates in each of his three MLB seasons, but has yet to take the next step to turn those into consistent strikeouts. A first step was when he tweaked his slider into more of a sweeper at the end of 2023, then spent most of the offseason working on it. When he returned in 2024, it graded out as an above-average pitch by PLV and posted a 16% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) to righties. He also threw the slider nearly 40% of the time to righties after throwing it 22% to righties in 2023. From July 1st on, he had a 66% strike rate and a 24.1% K-BB% on it, and the pitch also had a 24% PutAway rate on the season, so it was a good two-strike offering for him and hints at some strikeout upside.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Bello also has a sinker that has a 70% strike rate to righties and gets above-average called strikes. I would love to see a better fastball to lefties, but he has backed off of his four-seamer a bit. Maybe he goes back to the cutter he threw 40 times in 2023? As far as secondaries, we covered his slider to righties above, and even though his changeup took a step back in 2024 in regards to command, it still had an 18.5% SwStr% to lefties, which means it remains an elite swing-and-miss pitch to opposite-handed hitters,
Narrative for improved 2025: Bello now has three pitches that do exactly what we want them to do. We just haven’t seen them all working at the same time. He doesn’t even have to learn a new skill here; he just has to have those skills active at the same time, and we could see a major breakout.
Quick determination: If either the sweeper or changeup still lacks feel or command early in the season, just move on. You may still want to pick Bello up later on if it all clicks, but I think he’s burned enough bridges with fantasy managers that people won’t run to claim him.
Jose Soriano – Los Angeles Angels (ADP: 320)
Clear strikeout upside: This is where Soriano is a stretch. He doesn’t have “clear” strikeout upside following a season where he posted just a 20.7% strikeout rate and an 11% swinging strike rate, both below average, but I think we can still see the strikeout upside in his arsenal.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Soriano doesn’t command his fastballs extremely well, which is the major impediment to strikeouts. He has both an average zone rate and strike rate on his sinker and league-average zone rates on his four-seam fastball. However, this was his first season as a full-time starting pitcher, so the idea of saving pitches and working ahead in the count is something he’s still learning. He showed an ability to pitch his way out of trouble in 2024, so perhaps he can just tap into that earlier in the counts. If he does, he has a curve that posted a 15.1% SwStr% to righties and a 14.8% SwStr% to lefties, so he can use it to attack all hitters. He also has a slider that had a 19% SwStr% to righties as well as a splitter that registered a 17.1% SwStr%. to lefties, so there are plenty of secondary options to choose from when it comes to getting whiffs.
Narrative for improved 2025: Fastball command. Soriano has multiple secondary pitches he can use for swings and misses to both righties and lefties, which means it’s tough for hitters to create a game plan for him. If he can just get ahead with his fastballs, the sky is the limit. He has a clearer path to sustained success, in my view, than somebody like Bowden Francis, who is going over 100 picks before Soriano.
Quick determination: If the fastball command doesn’t improve, you move on. Pretty easy there.
Tony Gonsolin – Los Angeles Dodgers (ADP: 326)
Clear strikeout upside: Back in 2024, Gonsolin posted a 13.5% SwStr% and a 24% strikeout rate, both of which are not elite marks but are above league-average, which we’ll take this late in drafts.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Back in 2023, his last MLB season, Gonsolin’s four-seam fastball had an above-average strike rate and zone rate to righties. While it’s not a great pitch, he commands it almost the same to both righties and lefties, so he will fill up the zone with it, but righties have hit it a little harder. He also has a slider to righties that had a below-league-average swinging strike rate in 2023 but posted a 20% mark in 2022. His splitter to lefties also under-performed in 2023 but was a plus swing-and-miss pitch in 2022, so we have seen the secondaries for whiffs not too long ago.
Narrative for improved 2025: Improved health could mean a return to 2022 form for Gonsolin. He added more movement to the splitter in 2023 but he couldn’t command the pitch at all, so it got far fewer chases out of the zone. Similarly, he added more drop to his slider in 2023, which cost him some horizontal movement. He commanded the pitch a little bit better in the zone, but it missed far fewer bats in part because he threw it low in the zone 13% less to righties than he had in 2022. We need to see Gonsolin get back to burying that slider low and finding a splitter he can control in the strike zone. But he has a 3.19 career ERA with a 23% strikeout rate, so there is fantasy goodness here if he gets back to his old self.
Quick determination: Gonsolin is competing for the 5th spot in the Dodgers’ rotation with Bobby Miller and Dustin May. If Gonsolin doesn’t win the spot then you can drop him. It doesn’t get much easier to determine that.
Ryan Weathers – Miami Marlins (ADP: 340)
Clear strikeout upside: Weathers was pretty good in his 16 starts last season, posting a 3.63 ERA, 15.3% K-BB%, and 12.1% swinging strike rate, which were all above league average.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? In 2023, Weathers threw his four-seam fastball 56% of the time, but it had a 49% zone rate and a 60% strike rate, both of which were below the MLB average for starters, and his first pitch strike rate with it was just 39th percentile. In 2024, he cut his four-seam usage by 16% and added a sinker he threw 12% of the time. The sinker had a 72.5% strike rate, and he threw it early in the count 66% of the time because it had a 77th-percentile first-strike rate, which means he finally found a fastball he could get over for strikes. In addition to that, Weathers has a changeup that posted a 20% SwStr% to righties last year and a sweeper that registered an 18.5% SwStr% to lefties, so that checks the boxes when it comes to whiffs.
Narrative for improved 2025: Just health really, which Weathers knows since he lost 25 pounds this offseason. The left-hander looked solid in 2023, and I think the pitch mix he has should have led to a higher strikeout rate than the 22% mark he posted. If he can get his four-seam fastball over for strikes against righties early in the count, preferably up in the zone since he has a flat fastball and good velocity, then we could see another step forward.
Quick determination: If the four-seamer doesn’t get better or get used in better locations then Weathers likely won’t take a step forward. However, even if the pitch is just as good as it was last year, Weathers may not have the strikeout totals, but he should have solid ratios and is going late in drafts.
Bobby Miller – Los Angeles Dodgers (ADP: 342)
Clear strikeout upside: Bobby Miller has yet to rack up many strikeouts at the major league level, but he has 254 strikeouts in 216 career minor league innings, and we’ve seen the raw stuff he possesses, so we know that strikeout upside is there.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? We saw this from him in 2023 at least. His four-seam fastball was an above-average zone-rate pitch with an 80th-percentile strike rate. Meanwhile, his curve posted a 16.4% swinging strike rate to righties and his change-up posted an above-average swinging strike rate to hitters of both handedness, so the foundation was there in 2023 when we were getting so excited for his success.
Narrative for improved 2025: Health is obviously the biggest factor here. Miller went to the IL with a shoulder injury early last season and then followed that up with a knee injury when he came back over the summer. As I covered in my post-hype sleepers piece, some of that likely had to do with poor mechanics, which impacted his command and may have led to the injury. If we get a healthy version of Bobby Miller that looks like the version we saw in 2023, we should get immediate improvement. He’s also spent most of the off-season working with new teammate Blake Snell, who has perfected an approach with fastballs up in the zone and breaking balls low in the zone. Considering Miller has a pretty flat four-seamer with a good height-adjusted vertical approach angle, pitching upstairs would be a huge boost for him. In his lost 2024 season, he threw his fastball up in the zone just 38% of the time, so health and fastball location/command are two keys for Miller in 2025.
Quick determination: Miller is competing for the 5th spot in the Dodgers’ rotation with Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May. If Miller doesn’t win the spot then you can drop him. It doesn’t get much easier to determine that.
Lucas Giolito – Boston Red Sox (ADP: 349)
Clear strikeout upside: Last year, Giolito was sitting at 95 mph with his four-seam fastball in spring training before injuring 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. So if he’s bringing that velocity again, we’ve seen that clearly lead to strikeouts.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Even when he was struggling, Giolito had a league-average four-seamer when it came to zone rate and strike rate. He used it early in the counts a decent amount, but the diminished velocity helped contribute to a diminished iVB and a less flat fastball which was more hittable up in the zone. As far as secondaries go, back in 2021, Giolito’s slider averaged 85.6 mph with almost five inches of vertical movement and three inches of horizontal movement. The pitch had a 20.3% SwStr%, a 33% ICR, and a .167 batting average against. By 2023, he was throwing the pitch almost two mph slower and with more curveball shape. Giolito said after his first spring start last year that the Red Sox team identified an issue in the offseason and had a plan to modify the pitch as soon as Giolito arrived: “Coming into camp, the whole pitching team, they were showing me some data about it, how it was getting a little bit too slow, a little bit too curveball-ish, so we switched up the grip.” If Giolito can get his slider back to his previous versions then we should have two secondaries for whiffs because his changeup is his bread-and-butter pitch that had an 18% SwStr% to lefties in 2023 even as he struggled with a lot of the rest of his arsenal.
Narrative for improved 2025: Health is obviously the biggest narrative, but if Giolito is healthy and recaptures his old slider, then we could get a version of him that’s a rock-solid fantasy starter again.
Quick determination: The injury to Kutter Crawford makes it seem all but certain that Giolito will start the season in the Red Sox rotation, so we just need to keep an eye on his fastball velocity and his slider shape. If the fastball is 93 mph or under or if the slider still has that curveball shape then we can move on.
David Peterson – New York Mets (ADP: 350)
Clear strikeout upside: Peterson had a 26% strikeout rate in 2023 and a 27.8% mark in 2022, and while some of that was propped up by a few relief appearances, he’s also posted above-average swinging strike rates in every MLB season, so I think that cements the idea that Peterson has some strikeout upside.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? When it comes to getting a fastball over for strikes, Peterson relies a lot on his sinker. It has an above-average zone rate and strike rate and he uses it early in the count 67% of the time. Considering it also posted an above-average ICR to both righties and lefties, it’s a pretty solid foundational pitch for him; however, as you would expect from a left-hander, righties make far better contact on the sinker. While the ICR on the pitch against righties was still slightly above the league average, it was significantly worse than against lefties, and he relies a lot on his defense soaking up groundballs. His slider misses tons of bats to lefties, with an 18.5% SwStr% and his four-seam is also good at getting swings-and-misses against lefties, but the whiff pitch to righties needs to come into focus. On the surface, you could say it’s his slider, which had a 17.5% SwStr% against righties but that also came with a 57% ICR, which is terrible. The pitch Peterson likely needs against righties is his changeup, which grades out well, but had just a 12.4% SwStr% against righties in 2024.
Narrative for improved 2025: Peterson eats up lefties and likely will continue to do so, but if his changeup takes a step forward in 2025 then he could thrive against righties as well. In 2024, his changeup had just a 51st-percentile low location rate, and that seems like the easiest fix for me. If Peterson can keep his changeup low in the zone against righties, and also, well, keep it in the zone, since it had just a 29% zone rate, then I think Peterson will see his strikeout numbers against righties improve too. If he can also clean up the four-seam success against righties as well, the sky is the limit.
Quick determination: The Mets talked about piggybacking Peterson at the start of the season, but the injury to Frankie Montas may have squashed that. Peterson will be in the rotation to start the season, and if we see improved changeup success against righties, don’t let him go. If the changeup continues to miss the zone, and he can’t get righties to swing and miss then it’s a quick hook for the lefty.
Reid Detmers – Los Angeles Angels (ADP: 356)
Clear strikeout upside: Nick Pollack and I recorded an episode of “On the Corner” where we made a leaderboard of three stats we look at regularly with starting pitchers. We included swinging strike rate, PLV, which is the Pitcher List pitch grading metric that factors in command, and Str-ICR, which is a Pitcher List stat that measures how many strikes a pitcher throws and subtracts Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) allowed, meaning that it shows what pitchers throw a lot of strikes and don’t get hit hard. We then looked at the starting pitchers who finished in the top 20% in all categories, the top 25% in all categories, and the top 33% in all categories. Even in a down year in 2024, Detmers’ swinging strike rate was 85th percentile in baseball among starters, his Str-ICR was 74th percentile, and his PLV was 67th percentile. The raw ability is most certainly still there.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? One thing I was particularly interested in last year was the change Detmers made to his fastball. In addition to adding extension on the pitch, Detmers added significant iVB, up to 17.1 inches, which is well above average. Considering Detmers likes to throw that fastball up in the zone, the added iVB is nice to see. It might also be part of the reason why the ICR on the pitch dropped from over 47% down to 40%, and the swinging strike rate went up to an 82nd-percentile mark. It had a slightly below-average zone rate and a league-average strike rate, but he’s clearly working to improve it. His slider also had a huge leap in PLV grade in part by reducing the velocity by almost three mph and adding more horizontal break, which led to an 18.2% SwStr% to lefties; however, he makes mistakes with it in the zone often and it gets hit hard. It’s the same story with his curveball, which had a 13% SwStr% to lefties but also got hit hard. The slider also posted a 21.7% SwStr% to righties and Detmers’ changeup has become a solid whiff pitch too with a 16.7% SwStr% to righties.
Narrative for improved 2025: As I mentioned above, Detmers’ biggest issue is command. His slider gets hit hard because he can throw it over the plate consistently, but he doesn’t always bury it at the bottom of the strike zone. Detmers also has the same issue with his curveball, which is up in the zone over 50% of the time, and his changeup is low in the zone just 53.4% of the time to righties. The league average for starting pitchers is 67.2%. That’s just not going to work.
Quick determination: It’s all command of his secondary pitches. If Detemrs can’t get them low in the zone then we’re likely to see the same version of him we’ve seen in the past and you can move on quickly.
Edward Cabrera – Miami Marlins (ADP: 357)
Clear strikeout upside: In 2024, Cabrera posted a nearly 26% strikeout rate with a 12.8% swinging strike rate, so the swing-and-miss potential is most assuredly there.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? The fastball for strikes is an issue here. We did see him throw the four-seamer over the plate more often in 2024 but they were basically just “get me over” fastballs that were over the heart of the plate and got crushed with a near 50% ICR. His sinker had better contact rates against righties, but he struggles to throw that in the strike zone. Previously, we had seen solid swinging strike rates from Cabrera’s changeup, but, much like with Bello, the bread-and-butter pitch took a step back in 2024 mostly due to poor command. It did post a 24% SwStr% to righties, while the curveball also had 18.8% SwtSr% to righties, which gives him two secondaries for strikes there. He just needs to get that changeup back against lefties. His slider also posted a 12.5% SwStr% to lefties and since it’s more like a cutter, perhaps that could be a whiff pitch to lefties for him as well.
Narrative for improved 2025 Health and command. Can he be more precise with his fastball command and can he find the feel for the changeup again, perhaps at a slower velocity to create more of a gap between his fastball and slider? If not those two things, can he start using the slider more to lefties for whiffs? Those are all ways that Cabrera could improve in 2025.
Quick determination: Is the command of the fastballs better or has he moved to the sinker more instead of the four-seamer? If not, move on. Pretty simple.
Luis L. Ortiz – Cleveland Guardians (ADP: 360)
Clear strikeout upside: Ortiz was good in 2024, finishing with a 3.32 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 135.2 innings for the Pirates. It was good enough that the Guardians sought him out in a trade this off-season. However, the strikeouts weren’t there, and we have to look back at his slider from 2023.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Part of Ortiz’s turnaround was connected to adding a cutter and taking some of the pressure off of that sub-optimal four-seamer. Ortiz could always throw hard, but he struggled to command his four-seamer or sinker which led to elevated walk rates and lots of hard contact allowed because when they were over the plate, they were usually over the heart of the plate. Having the cutter allows Ortiz to rely less on those two fastballs and use the four-seamer more for whiffs. Last season, he threw the four-seamer inside to lefties way more often, likely because he throws the cutter to similar spots, so he’s now giving lefties two fastballs to think about, which has dropped the ICR against the four-seamer. His slider also performed well as a whiff pitch to lefties in 2024 with a 16.6% SwStr%; however, it posted average marks against righties, so we need to find some way to get back to the slider he showcased as a prospect.
Narrative for improved 2025: That slider, which the scouting reports loved simply didn’t get the whiffs it should have against righties, so I’m curious to see if Cleveland can get more out of it. If they can, I think Ortiz is in for a big year with his new three-fastball pitch mix. He’s one of my favorite late-round starting pitchers.
Quick determination: Even if we get the version of Ortiz that we got last year, he should be a usable fantasy player on a good team; however, if Cleveland has tweaked that slider at all into more of a strikeout pitch then we could see a bigger leap in 2025.
Hayden Wesneski – Houston Astros (ADP: 374)
Clear strikeout upside: Wesneski was used primarily out of the bullpen the last two seasons, so it’s hard to make the comparison, but he still boasts a great slider that posted an 18.2% swinging strike rate and 39.1% CSW last year with a better-than-average strike rate and a solid 35% ICR allowed.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? His once-lauded four-seam fastball is essentially average. It averages 94.5 mph and despite elite extension and poor iVB, so it’s more successful lower in the zone. That leads to solid strike rates but subpar swinging strike rates. Wesneski used his sinker nearly 20% of the time to righties. The sinker, similarly, did not induce many swinging strikes but did have a much better ICR for right-handed hitters, so he has two fastballs he can command for strikes. As I mentioned above, that sweeper can still be an elite offering to righties and actually posted an 18.7% SwStr% and 22% ICR against lefties in 2024. In 2022, Wesneski had a cutter that posted a 21.2% SwStr% to lefties when he threw it 22% of the time, and he also used a changeup 19.3% of the time to lefties with an 18.2% SwStr% and 16.7% ICR so he has shown those skills, but we need to get one of them back now.
Narrative for improved 2025: The quick narrative is that Wesneski is now getting a chance with a new organization and a better organization for pitching development. We also just covered that he showed the upside to attack both righties and lefties in 2022, so we just need to get back to that level.
Quick determination: Does he win the starting job and does either the cutter or changeup look improved? If so, hold on. If not, move on.
Tylor Megill, New York Mets (ADP: UNDRAFTED)
Clear strikeout upside: In 2024, Megill posted a 17.6% K-BB%, 12.8% SwStr%, and 27.6% CSW, all of which were better than the league average despite him having a fairly uneven season.
Fastball for strikes and secondary for whiffs? Megill has a four-seam fastball with elite extension, but he can’t command it, so he added a sinker last season, which has a 73% strike rate. He uses it primarily as a strike pitch to righties, which is crucial for him. He also added a cutter in 2024, and despite it having above-average swinging strike rate marks to righties and lefties, it’s also a pitch he can command for strikes with league-average zone and strike rates. It also allowed Megill to throw his slider less in 2024, which is good because his slider was a great out-pitch but struggled as a 20% usage pitch. In 2024, Megill used the slider 47% of the time in two-strike counts and it had 70th-percentile chase rates in those counts and was an above-average putaway pitch. So the presence of the cutter not only added swing-and-miss with the cutter itself but added swing-and-miss by improving the performance of the slider.
Narrative for improved 2025: Megill now has a fastball he can throw for strikes to both righties and lefties, two potential whiff pitches for righties, and a splitter that had a 19% swinging strike rate to lefties. He really has everything he needs to be a good MLB starter, but the consistency of that command is going to be crucial. With a full off-season under his belt to work on the cutter and sinker, we could finally see that in 2025.
Quick determination: The Mets have plenty of starting pitching options, and even with Frankie Montas out, there’s a chance Megill doesn’t win a rotation spot. If he doesn’t, or if the command or his sinker or cutter aren’t there, you can simply move on without a worry.
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