The calendar has flipped into March, and we’ve had almost a month of spring training games, so it’s time to update my starting pitcher rankings for the 2025 fantasy baseball season.
This is now my second year publishing my top 150 starting pitchers. If you’ve read my work before, you know I generally hate publishing starting pitcher rankings because they never feel done to me. As somebody who spends a lot of time watching/thinking about pitching, I always feel like there are tweaks I want to make or pitchers that I constantly change my opinion of.
It’s important to note that I only partially rely on surface-level stats when I do my rankings. I will look at last year’s SIERA, K-BB%, swinging strike rate (SwStr%), and Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) to get a sense of how the pitcher performed (even though I usually remember), but much of my analysis is done by breaking down a pitcher’s arsenal. I’ll use the Pitcher List pages, plus my knowledge of the pitcher, to get a sense of whether I believe the pitcher can consistently pound the strike zone and miss bats and whether he has a deep enough arsenal to pivot if something isn’t working. I don’t use projections in my pitcher analysis, so you may see some variation from typical rankings, and I’m OK with that.
As always, the pitchers are split into tiers, which I’ve named so you can understand why they are ranked where they are. The tiers themselves are more important than the rankings inside the tiers, so I wouldn’t split hairs over a few spots in the rankings. I’ve also ranked these pitchers as if I’m doing a 12-team league, so safe but boring low-end starters take a hit in value, etc.
PLEASE READ: I went to a lot of effort to share my thoughts on the rankings below, so you’ll find short blurbs with my thoughts “off the dome” for these guys. I would highly encourage you to read the blurb and not just focus on the ranking because it allows you to get a sense of WHY I have the pitcher ranked where I do and if that logic makes any sense to you.
OK? Ok, so let’s get started.
2025 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Rankings
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Rank |
Player |
Team |
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Fantasy Aces |
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| 1 | Tarik Skubal | Tigers |
| 2 | Paul Skenes | Pirates |
| 3 | Zack Wheeler | Phillies |
| 4 | Garrett Crochet | Red Sox |
| 5 | Corbin Burnes | Diamondbacks |
| 6 | Jacob DeGrom | Rangers |
You’re picking knits at the top between Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. Skenes’ fastball doesn’t get as many strikes as we think it should. The command could be better, but he’s talked about it this off-season. I prefer the depth of Skubal’s arsenal and noticed that Skenes had just a 55th-percentile zone rate last season which backs up what I saw when I watched him that he sometimes nibbled too much early in the count. He even talked about addressing that this off-season and attacking hitters earlier in the count, which is good, but I just feel a bit more confident in Skubal’s approach, team context, and innings so that’s the tiebreaker for me.
Zack Wheeler is one of the most dependable starting pitchers in baseball, which is wild to think of because when the Mets let him walk in free agency years ago, he was an injury-prone starter who seemed unlikely to ever emerge into this kind of workhorse. He’s not going to strikeout as many guys are the top two pitchers, or perhaps even the pitcher after him, because he’s as reliable as they come right now and would have a case for being the top pitcher in baseball if he struck out more batters and didn’t have an elevated 1.35 HR/9 to lefties last season.
The only thing preventing you from liking Garrett Crochet should have been his team context, and that is no longer an issue. Earlier this off-season 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 the Ideal Contact Rate allowed, meaning that it shows which 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. Crochet was the only pitcher in baseball who finished in the top 10% in all three. His ability to find the zone is fantastic, the extension is elite, he has three fastballs he can throw for strikes, and his strikeout potential is through the roof. We also need to stop citing his second-half stats as a knock against him. We know Chicago was limiting his innings because they were planning on trading him, and we know that a pitcher being forced out of the game after three or four innings, regardless of how well he is pitching, will screw with his rhythm. I don’t think Crochet is an innings risk at all this season, and I’m drafting him with confidence.
I think people are making too big of a deal about Corbin Burnes’ cutter and his workload history. For starters, we say we want pitchers that are dependable and can throw lots of innings, and then we go right ahead and ding a pitcher for doing just that. It doesn’t make sense. Then, we have the much-vocalized concerns about Corbin Burnes’ cutter, which seems to neglect the fact that he found that cutter towards the end of the season and returned to the version of Burnes that we’re used to seeing. He may no longer have a case to be the first starter off the board, but he feels like a safe bet as a fantasy ace this season.
Yes, I have Jacob deGrom this high. I sometimes think we forget just how good deGrom is. He has a season under his belt where he was the number-one starting pitcher in fantasy baseball and threw only 90 innings. So even if we think he can throw just 80-100 innings this season, those innings will be elite, and if he gets hurt, then you can just put him on the IL and make use of the roster spot, which is an important part of the calculation. In his brief 2024 innings, deGrom didn’t look like a much worse pitcher than we’ve seen from him in his career. He had 98 mph four-seamers and wicked sliders, plus the changeup he’ll mix in to lefties. You’re not going to get a full season from him, but he’s healthy now, so take all the innings while you can,. When you combine deGrom + his injury replacement on your roster, I think you’ll have a top 10 pitcher. MARCH UPDATE: deGrom spoke openly this spring about knowing that he doesn’t need to throw 100mph all the time but can be successful living at 97mph. That’s great news for his overall health.
Which players are seeing their ADP rise or fall the most in early fantasy baseball drafts?
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Ace-Ish |
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I like Logan Gilbert a lot, which is why I have him ranked 7th, but I think he’s going a bit too early in drafts. There is no denying the results that Gilbert put up last season, but I look at his arsenal, and I think he may have overperformed a bit. Gilbert has an elite slider; in fact, it was the best slider in baseball by Pitcher List’s PLV ranking. He also gets great extension on his four-seam fastball, but he keeps it low in the zone a lot, and I didn’t love how he missed towards the middle of the plate a lot. I think Gilbert’s lack of pristine commands means he’s in for some WHIP regression, but he’s a safe source of innings (if there is such a thing) and should be in for another strong season.
Cole Ragans continues to be an elite starting pitcher, pitching to a 3.14 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, and 223 strikeouts in 186.1 innings last season. All of that happened while his cutter and fastball were worse than in 2023. As Nick Pollack has pointed out to me a few times, Ragans’ cutter had a 29.4% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) allowed last season, but that number jumped over 42% in 2024 because his command of it wavered. His four-seam fastball velocity also fell a bit, and that pitch missed fewer bats than in 2023. So, Ragans did what he did in 2024 with two pitches regressing. That means there’s actually still room to improve on those numbers listed above, and that should excite anybody who drafts him.
This might seem high for Michael King, but I’m not sure we comprehend what he did last season. The Padres’ spring training was shorter than everybody else’s because they played the Dodgers in Korea. Considering it was King’s first season as a full-time starter, having a shorter spring training to build up was not ideal, and his first two starts were short and poor. However, from April 6th on, so his final 29 starts, King posted a 2.81 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 27.6% strikeout rate. That’s pretty damn elite. His arsenal transitioned well to the rotation, and adding a harder slider for called strikes to go with his sweeper was a really nice addition. I think he’s a 180+ inning pitcher on a good team with a safe floor, and I’m happy to wait and take him as my SP1 in drafts.
I’m probably just going to avoid this tier. On the surface, all of these pitchers are talented and are clear aces when they’re at their best. However, each has major health or innings concerns, and I like the pitchers in the next few tiers enough that I’d rather just take hitters where these pitchers go and avoid the stress of worrying if we’re going to get 110 innings or 150 innings.
Blake Snell has been an inconsistent pitcher for much of his MLB career, but he’s also been elite far more often than he’s struggled. We’ve now gotten three straight strong years of production from Snell, but he’s also thrown over 128 innings in just one of those three years and just twice in his whole MLB career. Could he throw 180 innings again? Of course, but I think it’s better to project him for 140 innings, and that keeps him below where the surface-level stats suggest he should be because he hasn’t been consistently elite in his innings. He posted a 4.20 ERA and 1.32 WHIP in 2021. He had a harmful 13.3% walk rate in 2023, where his strong ratios were propped up by tremendous batted ball luck. I’m not saying Snell is not good; he is. I’m just saying you could get 130 innings out of him, and only 90-100 of those could be truly strong innings. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it’s one I’m willing to take in the right situation. But not sure the recent injuries to George Kirby and Gerrit Cole will make this the right situation.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was tremendous when healthy in 2024, posting a 3.00 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and nearly 29% strikeout rate. We have plenty of data supporting the idea that the second season is often better for players coming over from foreign leagues. Yamamoto showcased a solid four-seam fastball, an elite splitter, and a pretty solid curveball, which he can use to all hitters. The Dodgers have a crowded rotation, but I still expect 140-150 innings of really good production from Yamamoto in 2025. I know people expect an innings cap on Yamamoto, but he wasn’t injury-prone in Japan, and the Dodgers can’t limit everybody’s innings, so they’re going to have to let a few starters just pitch as many innings as they can. I think it’ll be Yamamoto and Snell.
I’m surprised that I have Max Fried this high, which is maybe a bad thing, but he also has been so consistent for the last four seasons, never posting an ERA higher than 3.25 or a WHIP higher than 1.16. Much like Pablo Lopez, who we’ll discuss later, Fried saw regression in his changeup in 2024, but that’s important for Fried since he’s a lefty, and that pitch is crucial for his success against righties. We have enough of a track record with that pitch that I think Fried can get it back on track, and his move to Yankee Stadium isn’t much of a downgrade from Truist Park. I think Fried can continue to be a solid source of ratios and wins, and if he wasn’t battling through a forearm injury that has cost him time in each of the last two seasons, I’d probably have him higher.
What we saw in 2024 was peak Chris Sale, and while we’re not likely to see it again in 2025, it should also serve as a reminder to us that Sale remains a really good pitcher. Many of his struggles in 2023 and earlier were either related to injury or rust coming off of an injury. In 2024, we got health from Sale, but we also got pinpoint command of his three-pitch arsenal. However, he also ended the season unable to pitch in the playoffs due to injury, which is why he finds himself in this tier of the elite pitchers coming off of an injury. I think it would be foolish to write off what Sale did last year as a fluke or a mirage, but I also think it would be foolish to expect it again. I think we’ll see a good version of Chris Sale, but slightly worse than the one we saw in 2024, and also limited to about 140-150 innings. The good news is that he’ll be good for you when he’s on the mound, and then, if/when he gets hurt, you can move him to the IL and use his spot for another pitcher. I’m OK with that arrangement at this price.
Tyler Glasnow threw a career-high 134 innings last year and was solid for the Dodgers, finishing as the 20th-ranked starter overall based on FanGraphs player rater. We know Glasnow has a wipeout slider and a good four-seam fastball with elite extension. We also know Glasnow finished the season hurt with an elbow/forearm injury and did not have any surgical procedure this off-season to clear it up. He claims he has focused on fixing his mechanics to help alleviate some of the issues, but I’m not convinced. If a career-high in innings while pitching for the best team in baseball allows Glasnow to finish as the 20th-best starter, then we kind of have to operate as if that’s his baseline for 2025. The good news if you’re in leagues with IL spots is that Glasnow will be good when he’s on the mound, and then you can put him on the IL when he’s hurt and fill his spot on your roster with another pitcher and that aggregate pitcher could be a top-15 guy, but it’s a risk I’m not likely to take.
Pablo Lopez was ranked as a top 10 starter for me last year, and I clearly missed on that. My bullishness on Lopez was that I believed people were unfairly penalizing him for previous injuries: “I think Pablo Lopez is being unfairly punished for injuries he suffered during two seasons in Miami. Pitching is naturally risky from an injury standpoint, but Lopez has thrown at least 180 innings in two straight years.” I also looked at his improvement in Minnesota and said, “Pablo always had a great change-up, but now he has another plus pitch that he can use to take some pressure off the change.” The issue is that the changeup failed him in 2024. In 2024, his changeup had a lower zone rate, strike rate, and swinging strike rate and also gave up more hard contact. So even though the sweeper remained a good pitch for him, it meant he no longer had two plus pitches in each start. While I couldn’t have known he would lose his changeup for most of 2024, I guess I could have been more tepid in ranking Lopez based on his 100th-percentile outcome and baked in a bit more uncertainty for somebody without a long track record.
Is this another year where we’ll get a Dylan Cease trade right before the season starts? Even if we do, Cease will flash the ace upside and maddeningly inconsistent command. Cease misses bats with a wipeout slider, and his four-seam fastball added velocity last year, which helped fuel his success. Yet, he has never proven himself to be a consistently reliable fantasy arm when it comes to ratios, and he has some concerns about his ability against lefties since the four-seam performs so much worse against them. I love Cease’s upset, but his inconsistency scares me.
I could technically put Joe Ryan in the injury recovery tier because he’s coming off a shoulder strain that ended his season last year. However, he’s already back to full health and throwing bullpens, so we can feel a little better about his chances to put up innings in 2025. Last season, Ryan tweaked much of his pitch mix, changing the shape of the spitter and leaning more into the sweeper, and that helped him take another step forward in his development. The consistency of his secondary pitches remains questionable, but he now has a deep enough arsenal that he can mix and match with what’s working on a given day. If he actually can lock into one of those secondaries as a truly dependable offering, then Ryan is a top-15 starter in fantasy baseball.
Shota Imanaga had an impressive MLB debut that included one of the best early stretches we’ve ever seen from a pitcher in their first MLB stint. While he did run into the expected home run issues over the summer, he also showcased a plus splitter and sweeper that will consistently get him strikeouts against both left-handed and right-handed batters. His four-seamer does give up some hard contact, but it is also a reliable strike pitch that sets up his secondaries. The floor here feels very safe, and there will likely be those stretches or utter dominance because of his secondary weapons, but the home runs will also continue to be an issue when it warms up in Chicago.
Spencer Strider will likely be back on the mound in a game at some point in May, but he’s also coming back from Tommy John surgery with an internal brace, so we have far less data on how quickly pitchers recover from that. What we do know is that command is usually the last thing to return after those types of surgeries, and Strider is essentially a two-pitch pitcher, so command of his arsenal is incredibly important, especially with his slider since he uses it for called strikes and swinging strikes. If Strider is back in May but not the Strider we’ve come to know until July, then can you take him in the top 100 picks? If he keeps falling, then I’m happy to draft him in leagues where I can stash him on the IL to start the year.
Can Shane Baz stay healthy and deliver on his potential?
Justin Steele got hurt on Opening Day and then struggled to get back into rhythm when he returned, as is typical for pitchers after a lengthy absence. However, from May 27th to the end of the season, he posted a 2.47 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 112/31 K/BB ratio in 109.1 innings. That’s pretty elite production, and since the injury was just a hamstring injury, it shouldn’t leave us worried about his health in 2025. With the Cubs looking like a much-improved team, Steele should be a good bet for double-digit wins and 170 or more innings while producing solid ratios. His lack of elite strikeout totals is the only thing that makes him more of an SP2, but he’s probably my favorite SP2.
Bailey Ober is such an interesting pitcher to me. He came up as a command-first arm who got bigger and stronger and used his elite extension to put together a strong four-seam fastball that complements an elite change. He also made a huge change coming into 2024, breaking his slider into a sweepier version and then adding a harder cutter. The cutter helped as a backdoor pitch to LHB, which made hitters look inside and allowed the changeup to do damage away, and the slider became far more impactful to righties. We usually see even more growth the second year a pitcher is throwing a new pitch because they have a better feel for the offering, so it wouldn’t shock me if we get another step forward from Ober in 2025.
We saw some improvements from Tanner Bibee‘s four-seam fastball at some points in the season, but that pitch continues to remain a bit inconsistent, which is why I still see him as more of an SP2 and not a potential fantasy ace. He has a cutter and slider that work against both righties and lefties and a solid changeup for lefties, so all of these pieces are there, but I like it when pitchers have a solid fastball to use as a foundation or have elite command, and Bibee doesn’t have either of those. No, he doesn’t walk a lot of guys, but he’s not precise with the command of his secondary pitches in the corners of the strike zone, and that’s why I continue to think he’s probably a mid-3.00 ERA pitcher. MARCH UPDATE: I wrote about Bibee adding a sinker, and I think that could help offset some of the concerns I have about his fastball performance.
Logan Webb was the poster child for drafting a “safe” starting pitcher above some of the more volatile names in 2024. However, that safety didn’t quite pan out. Webb made some pitch mix changes, cutting back on his changeup and changing his slider into more of a sweeper. I don’t love a lot of those changes, and they didn’t work well in 2024, but we should expect Webb to tinker with them again. He used his sinker inside to righties more in 2024, and I’d love it if he kept that but undid some of the changes to his slider. We also know that he’ll get volume once again, and I trust that he has adapted his arsenal before to fix glaring issues and will do so again in 2025 to remain a firm SP2.
It was a tale of two seasons for Framber Valdez, which Nick Pollack and I have chatted about on the On the Corner podcast. In his first 15 starts, Framber posted a 3.84 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, and a 19% strikeout rate. That was brutal to roster. In his final 13 starts, he seemed to find the command of his curveball and posted a 1.91 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, and 30% strikeout. It saved his season, but we also have seen Framber pitch long enough in the majors that we know he’s not replicating that level over an entire year. I think Valdez is a pitcher whose primary fastball – a sinker – gives up a decent amount of hard contact and who has lost his slider since it was a plus cutter for him back in 2022. So, he’s a mediocre fastball pitcher with a plus changeup who needs his curveball to succeed. Since that pitch seems to leave him at times most seasons, I think we’ll continue to ride the rollercoaster with Framber again in 2025.
Spencer Schwellenbach is somebody I have continued to inch up my rankings since the off-season began. I know people have some concerns about how many innings he has thrown in the past, but there are no injury red flags here or any reason to think he’s not giving you a full season on the mound. In this MLB debut season, he continued to shift and evolve his pitch mix as he got comfortable, and I love to see a young pitcher that can adapt to the level and utilize a deep pitch mix to his benefit. The four-seamer is just fine, but he has a six-pitch mix, and we’ve consistently seen that deep arsenal push guys past where their Stuff+ grades say they should be. He can attack hitters of both handedness with multiple pitches, and his team context is great, so I’m all for Schwellenbach this season.
While Bryce Miller was tremendous last year, his pitch mix concerns me the most of any pitcher in Seattle’s rotation. He has an elite four-seam fastball but no secondary pitch that is consistently a plus pitch. They can flash plus at times, but it’s a roll of the dice to see which pitch shows up in which start. He started messing around with a cutter last year and has been posting videos of him throwing it this off-season, and if that pitch looks legit early in spring, I may move Miller up another tier. As it stands right now, I think 2024 was his peak, and we should expect some regression from there but still solid results. MARCH UPDATE: The cutter hasn’t really looked that promising in the spring in very limited usage, but I think it’s a pitch that could become more impactful as the year goes on. At this point, I’m just willing to say that we’ve seen continued growth from Miller in every MLB season, and I see no reason why that can’t continue.
I love Shane McLanahan, so you’ll need to take that into account here. However, he was one of the top 15 starting pitchers in baseball (perhaps better than that) before undergoing Tommy John surgery, and he’s now about 15-16 months from surgery, so he should be fully ready to go. The Rays have said he will throw about 140 innings this season, and I expect those to be good innings, even if they’re not the elite innings we’re used to seeing from him. However, the new home park, plus the Rays likely taking a while to stretch him out, will equate to a lower seasonal impact than other health risk pitchers who can be moved to the IL.
I was super high on Luis Castillo coming into last season, and I have to admit when I’m wrong. I was ignoring too many red flags because I considered Castillo “dependable.” He is, to a certain extent, but he has also given up too much hard contact in recent seasons, and it’s worsening. Castillo will have his moments of frustration, and the four-seamer may continue to regress, but he’s a volume arm with promise in his slider, while said heater still dominates RHB. Castillo’s strikeouts could return with slider polish in two-strike counts or a redemption arc for his signature changeup. He’s a safe play for the full year without the tantalizing ceiling of younger flamethrowers.
Is Aaron Nola ever going to be a top-10 arm again? Unlikely, but it’s hard to see him completely falling on his face either. His innings totals will give him a good chance at wins and accumulating strikeouts, and his curveball continues to be a bread-and-butter pitch while the four-seam approach upstairs has helped, and he’s even dabbled in some sinkers and cutters. I know what I’m getting with Nola, and while I likely don’t want him to be my ace, I don’t think he’s due for a 2024 Kevin Gausman season.
Hunter Brown is the ultimate tinkerer. I know we’re tempted to look at his stats from mid-May on last year and say that he’s a potential stud. However, we should remember that in 62.1 innings at the start of 2023, he pitched to a 3.61 ERA, 2.99xFIP, and 21% K-BB% before tweaking his pitch mix and then imploding to 6.57 ERA in his final 61.2 innings. I love the shift from the slider to the cutter and using the four-seamer as more of a whiff pitch; however, the strikeout rate wasn’t elite and we’ve seen him tinker his way out of success before, so I find it hard to blindly trust that what we saw at the end will continue but if it does, he’s going to be really really good.
I wrote two articles about Roki Sasaki this off-season, so I encourage you to check out my breakdown of his arsenal and my thoughts on him with the Dodgers. Those thoughts summarize that Sasaki is a talented young pitcher who experienced some regression last year that we assume was due to arm fatigue. We need to be sure that the diminished stuff was actually just due to fatigue, and then we need to be sure the fatigue and shoulder issues are behind him. We also had a report this off-season that Tommy John surgery was recommended for Sasaki two years ago, but he chose not to undergo surgery, in part because he didn’t want to jeopardize his chances of getting an MLB contract. Pair all of that with his presence on a Dodgers team that will likely manage his innings carefully, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Sasaki tops out at 120 innings this year, which will cap his upside.
I had been higher on Jared Jones, but Nick Pollack talked me down a bit as we went through our off-season shows. Jones has an elite four-seam and slider combo that worked well for Spencer Strider and can work well for Jones. The issue is that Jones seemed unable to maintain fastball velocity as his starts when on, and so the pitch got hit harder when he got deeper into games. He also has struggled to feature a consistent third pitch, and he was not good late in the season after he came back from injury and was also potentially fatigued. Can he be a top-20 starter in fantasy? Yes, I think so. But we need to see more consistency and maybe more confidence in a third pitch before that clicks into place. MARCH UPDATE: Jones’ changeup has taken a clear step forward, which is really important to see, and he’s added in a new sinker, which is an important wrinkle for him to address those four-seam fastball issues I mentioned above. I think we will see another good year from Jones in 2025.
I know people think Hunter Greene used his new splitter to fuel his breakout season, but that wasn’t the case. I covered Greene and his splitter extensively in my First Pitch Arizona presentation, which I did again at PitchCon, so make sure you check that out at this link here. The short version is that Greene needed a third pitch, so in that respect, the splitter was good; however, the splitter was graded as a below-average pitch by PLV. It didn’t give up hard contact, but it had just a 33% zone rate and a 53% strike rate to lefties, both of which were below average. As was its 22.7% CSW. It was also a poor two-strike pitch to lefties, so it wasn’t a pitch for strikes or swinging strikes. Greene’s success was because of his four-seamer. He added extension, which is rare, improved his zone rate, and gave up significantly less hard contact on it. However, he also had a -15 Hit Luck on his fastball, which means 15 batted balls off the fastball that ended in outs should have been hits based on batted ball quality. All of this means that Greene wasn’t a much different pitcher in 2024 and also got a bit lucky, so I’m not buying into a full-on breakout.
Robbie Ray came back from Tommy John last year and looked elite in some starts and then rusty in others before a hamstring injury ended his season. His fastball velocity returned to the levels we wanted to see, but he struggled to control his breaking balls. Well, we know command is the last thing to come back after Tommy John, so Ray should take a step forward in that regard in 2025. The Giants are going to let him throw as many innings as he can handle, and while he’s always been a pretty volatile arm for fantasy purposes, we know what the ceiling is when he’s clicking.
George Kirby is rock-solid, and his command is elite, which makes his floor a bit safer, but I’m not sure he has the upside of the rest of these guys, and he’s a bit of an accumulator, so that worries me a bit. We keep thinking he’s going to take another step forward, but we still need to see it from the slider or curve. Maybe this is just who he is, which is solid but not elite. Wait, am I talking myself out of Kirby? MARCH UPDATE: Kirby will start the season on the IL with inflammation in his shoulder. The Mariners don’t seem concerned, but this is the third time Kirby has had shoulder inflammation since 2021; that’s concerning to me. This may be too high of a ranking.
I discussed Bryan Woo in my First Pitch Arizona presentation on new pitches, which I also recorded for Pitch Con, and you can check it out here. The quick summary of my thoughts on him, which I share in detail at the end of that presentation, is that I think Woo is a top-20 pitcher based on talent. The biggest issue for Bryan Woo in 2023 was that he got hit hard by lefties, and he also relied too much on his four-seamer. In 2024, Woo changed his slider into more of a sweeper and then added a gyro slider that had 10 inches less horizontal break. That gave him a breaking ball he could throw for strikes to lefties and another he could use for whiffs. Oh, and his changeup also got much better. So Woo now has two strong fastballs in the four-seam and sinker; he has a harder slider for lefties and the sweeper for righties and an improving changeup. If we knew he was healthy, I’d draft him up by Bailey Ober, but his elbow injuries last year concern me a bit, so I dropped him down here.
Where should rising stars like Paul Skenes, Jackson Chourio, and James Wood be drafted in dynasty formats?
Sonny Gray and Zac Gallen are both boring veterans but should settle in as safe SP2s for fantasy. I prefer Gray because I like his deep arsenal of pitches and know that he has a “feeling out” process every season where he tries to find the feel for his breaking balls but then goes on strong runs – much like Framber Valdez. I also know that he gives up less hard contact than Gallen. Gallen has always worried me a bit because he relies so much on the tunneling of his pitches to keep hitters off-balance. It’s why he throws everything low in the zone, so all of his pitches play off of one another. But when he misses, he gets hit hard, and his Ideal Contact Rates are always higher than we like to see from top-tier pitchers. That makes me feel more confident in him as my SP2 because I don’t think the strikeouts will ever be that great, and I think some bad starts throughout the year should be baked into his cost.
I had Freddy Peralta just outside the top 20 last season, so this is me shifting my expectations. On the one hand, he threw 173.2 innings, so I think our concerns about him as a 130-140 innings guy need to be put to bed. On the other hand, how did his fastball get so bad? A pitcher rarely loses that much extension on their fastball, but we saw it last year from Peralta, and his fastball command got worse, as did his slider command. Peralta was still able to get strikeouts and likely always will, but the decline in his fastball performance has made him a much less dynamic pitcher.
I was never a fan of drafting Sandy Alcantara when he was a top-10 starter off the board because I felt like he was a low-strikeout, high-groundball pitcher on a bad team with a suspect defense behind him. I thought so much of his value hinged on him throwing 200 innings, which scared me. That hesitation backfired on the year he won the NL Cy Young, but now Alcantara is being drafted as a fantasy SP2, which feels right to me. Early reports in September were that Alcantara was hitting 99 mph in a bullpen session, so he should have the same elite velocity with his strong sinker to induce groundballs. He still could improve his secondaries and get more swings and misses, but even if he’s the same pitcher we saw before injury (with fewer innings volume), he’s a strong pick here. MARCH UPDATE: Alcantara has looked great this spring, but we’re getting confusing information on whether he’s on an innings limit or not. The Marlins may be monitoring his innings early to trade him later in the season.
Carlos Rodon needed to adjust in 2024 after hitters jumped all over his fastball. His pitching coach even seemed to call him out in a postgame interview, saying that he could no longer just blow fastballs by people. Well, starting in June, Rodon re-introduced a change that he used to throw but hadn’t used it much since 2021. He threw the changeup exclusively to righties, and it ate them up with a 26% Ideal Contact Rate, 26% swinging strike rate, and 32% CSW. From July 1st on, once he leaned into the changeup around 20% of the time to righties, Rodon had a 3.34 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and 31% strikeout rate in 15 starts. Those are impressive and repeatable numbers if he continues to utilize the changeup as he did over that timeframe.
Yes, Kodai Senga could be in a tier below with the injury recoveries, but I think his upside is a bit higher than those pitchers this season, and I wanted to separate him into a tier of players I think have a similar upside and volatility to him. Senga has that elite Ghost Fork, but the cutter he started using at the end of 2023 was a game-changer for him. If he’s healthy, he has the potential to be a top-25 arm, so I think this is a fair value, given the health concerns we have.
This tier is slightly different than the injury recovery tier you’ll see below because these are two pitchers I think could be legitimate aces this season if they are healthy. The other pitchers are all pitchers I think could be really solid for you if healthy, but unlikely to be true aces for myriad reasons.
Gavin Williams battled injuries in 2024 and regressed from the solid 82 innings in his MLB debut in 2023. However, there are a lot of things to like about Williams, and I think we’re forgetting that he tore up the minor leagues as a pitching prospect for the Guardians. Part of what has me interested in Williams this year is that he introduced a cutter last year, but when he started throwing it in July, even his coaches weren’t sure if he was actively incorporating a cutter or not getting enough depth on his slider. From August 1st on, he started to lock in a consistent shape threw it nearly 17% of the time. It misses bats to both lefties and righties, and he can pound the strike zone with it against lefties too. Combine that with a high-90s fastball with elite extension, and I think we’re in for a good year for Williams, who people say is injury-prone but he’s had no elbow surgeries in the past and, as of now, we have no reason to believe last year’s early-season injury will carry over into this season. MARCH UPDATE: Gavin Williams has looked good this spring. His velocity is up, as is the vertical movement on his fastball. I also spoke to him about his new mechanical tweaks, his slider grip, and the cutter he mistakenly added last year. I’m fully in for this season.
Cristopher Sanchez is a rock-solid starter who I often think is more useful in 15-team leagues than 12-team leagues because of a lack of ceiling. However, we saw Sanchez try to use a cutter a bit last year, and there are rumors he added a new pitch this offseason, which I believe is a cutter. That would be useful for him to pair with his changeup against righties, and I think would give him some of the ceiling we think he’s currently missing with just a 20% strikeout rate. son. MARCH UPDATE: Sanchez’s velocity is up to 97 mph this spring, which will help his whole arsenal play up. He also added in a cutter to help neutralize righties, which is what we wanted from him. I’m buying the breakout.
Jack Flaherty had a tremendous season last year, so this may feel low, but we have seen through his time in the big leagues that his success is predicated on the velocity and command of his four-seamer. Last season, the command of his slider and curve was so pristine at the bottom of the strike zone. The command of the slider wavered when he went to the Dodgers, and that resulted in a 3.58 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and 61 strikeouts in 55.1 innings. That feels like a reasonable expectation for Flaherty in 2025 since we know consistency has always been a bit of an issue for him.
We wanted Ryan Pepiot to throw more high fastballs when he was with the Dodgers, and lo and behold, he went to Tampa Bay, did that, and had real success. Pepiot has a strong slider and changeup pairing to go with that elite four-seamer, so the pieces are there for him to be a real difference-maker for your fantasy rotation. The issue is that he has struggled to put batters away with those secondaries when he gets ahead, and he’s now going to be pitching in a minor league park outside in the humid Florida weather. Tropicana Field also allowed pitchers to post higher than normal iVB readings, so that could hurt Pepiot’s fastball performance and is why I moved him slightly down my rankings.
I’m a big Shane Baz fan. I picked him as my favorite pitcher value for our Rotoworld staff picks because he’s a 25-year-old former top prospect who missed all of 2023 and 2024 after having Tommy John surgery. Last season, in his return to the mound, he posted a 3.06 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and 69/27 K/BB ratio in 79.1 innings for the Rays, and that was without his best pitch. Before the injury, Baz featured a good four-seam fastball and a wipeout slider that had a 24.3% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and 36% Ideal Contact Rate. He could throw it for strikes but also whiffs. Last season, that pitch was flatter and with worse command, so it posted just an 11% SwStr% but still didn’t give up hard contact. Yet, Baz responded by making his curve much better in 2024, registering a 16.6% swinging strike rate and also a 90th-percentile zone rate as a pitch he could command low in the strike zone. Unfortunately, Baz’s slider hasn’t looked like the elite version this spring, and we have some concerns over pitching in a minor league home park in Florida, but Baz is an elite talent. In 288.1 career minor league innings, he posted a 3.15 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, and a ridiculous 342 strikeouts. I think he remains a good value here.
Spencer Arrighetti was good to end the season, posting a 3.18 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 29.3% strikeout rate over his final 65 innings. However, his first 80 innings featured a 12% walk rate compared to the 7.9% walk rate in his final 65 innings. So, which is the true Arrighetti? Because his first half 1.60 WHIP would be disastrous. I know we love to believe that young pitchers “figured it out,” but part of me is not sure if I can simply believe that the second half is who Arrighetti really is rather than it being a strong stretch. Yet, this price feels good for me. Arrighetti has a deep arsenal of pitches, a strong minor league track record, and has adjusted well to MLB hitters, so even if he’s not a “breakout star,” this ranking feels like a safe spot for him.
I covered Clarke Schmidt in that same FPAZ and PitchCon presentation linked above with Hunter Greene and Bryan Woo, so make sure you check that out for a detailed breakdown of why I’m into Schmidt this year. The short answer is that Schmidt added a cutter when he became a full-time starter in 2023 and then continued to tweak it during that season and the off-season, which led to a different pitch mix and pitch usage in 2024. He started using the cutter harder but also up in the zone, but not exclusively inside the lefties. He also started throwing his sinker up in the zone more. The cutter and the sinker worked really well together attacking similar areas of the strike zone, and Schmidt was tremendous last season. I don’t think it’s a fluke, but I also don’t think he has the strikeout upside of some of the pitchers in the tiers above.
Yu Darvish battled through a few injuries in 2024 and also a mysterious personal issue that caused him to leave the team for an extended period and be placed on the exempt list. However, he had a decent year when he was on the mound, posting a 3.31 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in 16 starts. If you also take out the two starts in May before he went on the IL, where we know in hindsight that he was pitching through an injury, then he allowed 21 earned runs in 76 innings, which is a 2.47 ERA with 71 strikeouts. That’s a solid stretch of production. He has a deep arsenal of pitches that he can adjust depending on who he’s facing and what pitch feels good on a given day, which I like. I also like that he leaned into his slider more in 2024 because that’s been his best pitch. I’d have him ranked higher if he wasn’t 38 years old and a bit of a health risk (which I can say because I’m 40).
Shohei Ohtani is aiming for a May return to the mound, which would put him on pace to throw about 130-140 innings in his first season back from Tommy John surgery. However, given his previous innings totals and the fact that the Dodgers will want to be cautious with their star, I think a projection of 110 innings feels a bit safer. It may seem like a big difference, but those 20 innings will matter, especially since, unlike some of the other injury-prone arms above, if you draft Ohtani as just a SP-only he won’t be IL-eligible in certain formats since he’ll still be hitting. That means he’ll need to take up a bench spot if the Dodgers decide to skip starts or go to a six-man rotation, etc. Ohtani remains a tremendous pitcher with a high-90s fastball with elite extension and a legit sweeper. The Dodgers will also likely have him use his cutter more, which should help against lefties; yet, he should expect some rust in his first season back on the mound, and the innings concerns bring him down here.
I don’t like Jesus Luzardo as much as the other veteran arms in the injury tier above, so I had to move him down here, despite him also missing most of last season with an injury. At his best, he has a solid fastball to support a really good changeup against righties, but his command of that fastball has always been spotty, and it lacks extension, so he has to walk a tightrope with it. Yes, he has flashed 30% strikeout upside, but he’s also moving to a far worse park for pitchers that should exacerbate some home run issues, and I’m just not convinced that we haven’t already seen who he is as a pitcher, which is a 3.50 ERA guy with a slightly high WHIP and the ability to rack up strikeouts. MARCH UPDATE: I’ve moved Luzardo up for two reasons. For one, Luzardo’s velocity is up this spring, and his changeup looks great, which is key for him. The second point is that I realized a 3.50 ERA with a 28% strikeout rate is more valuable than a lot of pitchers in their tiers below.
I’ve come around on Kevin Gausman a bit over the last few weeks. I had him ranked inside my top 10 last season despite acknowledging that he was essentially a one-pitch pitcher with an elite splitter and a mediocre fastball. That was why he always gave up a lot of hard contact and had high WHIPs. Well, the splitter regressed a bit in 2024, and so the bottom fell out for Gausman, whose fantasy value was saved by a flukey 14-win season. At 34 years old, I think the days of Gausman as a top-10 starter are done. Remember that we only have three years of elite production from Gausman after he reinvented himself in San Francisco, so it’s not like he’s been a stud for 10 years and just lost it. Pitchers who rely on the splitter as their primary pitch are always a risk. However, why I’m more in on Gausman than I was a month ago is because of the continued talk that he will use a new cutter or sinker more in 2025. Even if those pitches are just average, it means hitters won’t be able to sit on his four-seam fastball as much as they have been in the past. That should lead to less hard contact and potentially make the splitter more effective down below the zone again. At this cost, I’ll take that gamble.
How much can we trust what Reynaldo Lopez did last season? On one hand, he has always been talented, but he hadn’t thrown over 66 innings in a season since 2019. Back then, he did have two straight seasons with 188 innings, so maybe I should believe in his health a bit more than I am right now, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is a 130-inning season coming from Lopez with an ERA closer to his 3.58 SIERA. The team context is good, but you’re looking at a 3.50 ERA over 130 innings with a 25-26% strikeout rate. That’s fine, but it’s not something you need to chase earlier than this.
We also know the Mets signed Clay Holmes to be a starter, and I wrote about how I think he could be a good one, but he needs to show it first. MARCH UPDATE: Man, has Holmes shown it. I know we don’t want to overreact to spring training, but we had an idea of what Holmes needed to do as a starter, and we’ve seen him do it and do it really well so far. This may be aggressive, but I’m buying in.
Jeffrey Springs is going to suffer through both a team and a ballpark downgrade after being traded to the Athletics, who will play all of their games in a minor league stadium. That being said, he’s going to get the ball every fifth day and pitch as deep into the game as he’s capable. The left-hander looked good in his return from Tommy John last year, posting a 3.27 ERA with a 26.1% strikeout rate, and I think his inflated WHIP has a lot to do with a .330 BABIP that led to more hits than he should have allowed. However, Springs was shut down at the end of the season with elbow fatigue, and then the Rays traded him. That has me a little bit concerned, but I think this is fair value for him given how productive he’s been when on the mound.
Last year, I told myself an off-field storyline about Chris Sale having a bounce-back season because he is a competitive person who was destined to prove his contract with Boston wasn’t a waste of money. Now, I’m telling myself a similar story about Walker Buehler, who said that it wasn’t until the playoff lights came on that he truly felt his head snap back into place in his return from surgery. Buehler then signed a one-year deal with Boston, where he knows this season is him pitching for his final long-term contract. You don’t need much more motivation than that. Boston also hates to throw four-seam fastballs, which is great because that pitch has become a mediocre one for Buehler. The Red Sox could easily lean into his cutter/sinker and sinker more as early fastballs and then dial up his sweeper usage, and we could be looking at another strong season for Buehler. If we start to see signs of this in spring training, I will be moving him up.
Yusei Kikuchi didn’t reinvent himself as a pitcher in Houston. He toyed with his pitch mix for most of the season and then seemed to decide, correctly, that leaning into the changeup wasn’t the way to go, so he went fastball/slider heavy to great success. He’s done that before, so we need to be sure he sticks with his approach, but even so, he’s not a “new” pitcher. He does seem to control his four-seamer in the zone better than he used to and is using it up in the zone more often, which is great. However, Kikuchi always seems to go in and out of hot stretches, and he’s now with an organization that I don’t trust at all to help him problem-solve when he starts to struggle. Plus, his chances for wins are significantly depressed with the Angels.
Nathan Eovaldi feels like he’s on the verge of a steep decline because we know his success is tied closely to his fastball velocity, but he has continued to produce so far. However, he has leaned into the splitter more, creating more groundballs for his elite defense to vacuum up. As a result, the strikeout rates have settled around 23-24%, but the ratios have been solid, and he threw over 170 innings last year. The ceiling doesn’t feel overly high, and there is a risk that his health or fastball velocity will catch up to him this year, but we can’t ignore that he continues to produce so far.
It might be weird to see Zach Eflin this high based on where others have ranked him, but remember that he was ranked inside the top 20 for many people last season, so he does have upside compared to where he’s going in drafts. After finally living up to his promise with that strong curve/cutter combo in 2023, he took a step back at the start of last season, and Tampa Bay traded him to Baltimore. However, Eflin seemed to find his curve there and posted a 2.60 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, and 47/11 K/BB ratio in 55.1 innings in Baltimore. I don’t think he’ll be quite that good in 2025, but I think he’s probably a 3.50 ERA arm with a plus WHIP who won’t get a lot of strikeouts but will pitch deep into games for a good team. That’s solid in all league types.
I know that Ronel Blanco was awesome last year, and I’m probably just being hard on him because he came out of nowhere as a 30-year-old, but I just can’t shake that. However, Blanco has a really good changeup and slider pairing that should continue to make up for a fairly average four-seam fastball. He’s certainly more of a true talent high-3.00 ERA pitcher (he had a 4.17 SIERA), but there’s no reason to expect real regression from that other than a lack of track record.
I’m a big fan of Reese Olson. In his first 19 starts, before landing on the IL, he posted a 3.23 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and 21.6% strikeout rate but also had just four wins over that span, which hurt his fantasy value. Olson features a strong slider that posted a 22.6% swinging strike rate and also has a changeup that was successful against hitters of both handedness when he was able to spot it low in the zone. I don’t love his fastballs, and it’s clear he doesn’t either since he has been vacillating between four-seam and sinker approaches to righties. If Olson can find a fastball approach that works, he could be in for a big season.
We still dream about what could be with Taj Bradley. Everybody is going to remember that nine-start stretch over June/July where he posted a 0.82 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, and 31% strikeout rate over 55 innings, and it’s hard to blame you. He had his four-seam fastball working up in the zone and his new splitter dropping under the strike zone, and he was carving hitters up, but the issue for Bradley is always consistent command. He was unable to keep command of his fastball consistently up in the zone, and so the two-pitch approach became less efficient. From July 31st on, he posted a 6.51 ERA, 1.54 WHIP, and 22.4% strikeout rate in 56.2 innings. I want to believe in Bradley, but he needs another pitch he can throw in the zone for strikes, and it’s not the cutter, which he can’t command.
Tanner Houck is coming off of a career year that was fueled by health, improved mechanics that had him striding more directly to home plate, and increased splitter usage to lefties. In 2024, Houck threw his splitter to lefties 20% more, and his triple slash to lefties fell to .215/.289/.300. Considering he also has a wipeout slider to righties, this is a good one-two punch for him. However, the splitter didn’t get tons of swings and misses but induced tons of weak contact by working well off Houck’s sinker. I believe what Houck did last year, but he has also never really been a strikeout pitcher, so that’s going to cap his fantasy upside.
Nick Pivetta is still unsigned, so it’s hard to truly rank him right now, but this is about where his true talent says he should go. We know he’s going to be inconsistent, but we also know he’s going to miss bats and have some stretches of really strong results before settling down to about a 4.00 ERA with plus strikeouts. MARCH UPDATE: Now that he’s in San Diego, Pivetta is in the best home ballpark he’s ever been in, which is crucial for him; however, he’s also never pitched to an ERA under 4.00 in his career, so I’m not sure we should really expect anything drastically different now.
Grant Holmes is locked into a rotation spot in Atlanta and is likely the fourth starter, which means he could hold his rotation spot when Spencer Strider comes back. His four-seam fastball is pretty average, but he has two plus breaking balls, and that’s enough for me to take him this late in drafts, especially given his team context. MARCH UPDATE: Grant Holmes also added in a kick-change this off-season, and it’s looked pretty good early on. So he has two plus breaking balls plus a potentially solid changeup, all of which can take the pressure off his average four-seamer. That makes me more into him than I was a month ago.
I don’t think Jackson Jobe breaks camp with the Tigers. I want him to, but they have Tarik Skubal, Reese Olson, Jack Flaherty, and Alex Cobb (while healthy) locked into the rotation. Kenta Maeda, Matt Manning, Keider Montero, and Casey Mize will get a chance to earn that fifth spot, and I think the Tigers will give Mize, their former first-overall pick, one more crack at the job. He’s coming off his first fully healthy season in years and likely deserves a month or two to show what that can do for his results. If he falters or Alex Cobb gets hurt, then I think the Tigers will be quick to call up Jobe. MARCH UPDATE: We know Alex Cobb will not be ready to start the season, but it’s unclear if the Tigers will let Jobe take the reins or give Keider Montero or Kenta Maeda a spot. Regardless, I think Jobe will be up early.
We know the Pirates have been aggressive with calling up their young pitching prospects in previous years, so there is a good chance they will do the same with Bubba Chandler. The signing of Andrew Heaney makes me think it won’t happen to start the season, but maybe by late May? If so, Chandler is a good enough prospect that he would be worth stashing for when that time comes.
These are all pitchers who I think will wind up being far more valuable in 15-team leagues than in a typical 12-team format where there are often high-upside starting pitchers we can find on the waiver wire.
Seth Lugo and Nestor Cortes have always been solid when on the mound, and I expect nothing different. We saw a major breakout for Lugo in 2024, and I don’t expect him to pitch to that level again; however, he has elite feel for his pitches and can spin different types of breaking balls depending on the count or the hitter. I still think he’s better suited for 15-team leagues, but he can be an asset anywhere.
Max Scherzer has also basically never been bad and has produced mostly elite results for a decade. I don’t expect him to pitch a full season, but I expect him to start the year strong and then you may have to find a pitcher to replace him when he winds up on the IL, but what if he throws 90-100 innings before that? MARCH UPDATE: Scherzer has looked good this spring, with a little extra movement on his secondaries. I don’t know how many innings I’m getting from him, but I feel confident they’ll be solid ones until he gets hurt. This late in drafts, you don’t care if he pitches 160 innings.
These are all pitchers who have shown legitimate upside but have very real questions to answer about whether or not they can consistently put it together.
I’ve never been a huge Brandon Pfaadt fan in terms of the belief that he can be an ace. He gives up a lot of hard contact and is basically just a four-seam/sweeper pitcher, which is why he continues to have really pronounced splits. I covered him in more detail in this article.
In his first 11 starts of 2024, Nick Lodolo posted a 2.76 ERA and 1.01 WHIP, with a 26% strikeout rate. We forgot that because he dealt with injuries AGAIN, and was ineffective for the remainder of the season, but the talent is still in there. He has two fastballs he can use against righties and lefties, and both a curve and change, which means he can attack hitters of each handedness with a secondary as well. However, his arm angle causes his command to go in and out, and he has many health red flags, so it’s hard to know exactly what you’ll get from him.
Yes, Bowden Francis broke out after he returned to the starting rotation, armed with a splitter. But did you know that the splitter had just an average strike rate and a 10th-percentile swinging strike rate? Also, in two-strike counts, it had a below-average putaway rate. So perhaps the introduction of the pitch just gave hitters something else to look for and allowed his whole arsenal to play up, but I expect regression from that splitter, and I’m just not sure what his other go-to pitch is. The four-seam fastball is solid because of his extension and iVB, but the curve doesn’t miss bats, and he can’t really throw the slider for a strike, so I’m not convinced here.
MacKenzie Gore came out of the gates solid, posting a 3.47 ERA and 27.2% strikeout rate in his first 17 starts; however, that also came with a 1.37 WHIP that spoke to the lack of command that would undo him at the end of the season and lead to a 4.40 ERA, 1.48 WHIP, and 22% strikeout rate in his final 15 starts. He has the arsenal to be a solid starter and is only 25 years old, but the command of his secondaries is so bad right now that it’s hard to trust him until we see that improvement.
Max Meyer has looked like a new man this spring. He’s come into camp with 20 pounds of added muscle and armed with a new sweeper and sinker. He relied so much on his slider to carry everything for him in previous years, so the added depth to the arsenal is crucial. Now that I’ve seen what those added pitches look like in game action, I’m willing to buy in at this price.
Will Warren has been one of the stars of spring training. He gives off major Michael King vibes from his mechanics to his sinker, change, and sweeper arsenal. Warren took big steps forward in the minors last year and has looked polished this spring. With Luis Gil and Gerrit Cole suffering injuries, there’s a good shot that Warren opens the season in the Yankees’ rotation, so I’m willing to take a shot on him here.
This is higher than most people have Brayan Bello ranked, and part of me still wants to rank him higher. 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 rat,e 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. MARCH UPDATE: I still believe in Bello, but his spring was delayed with shoulder discomfort. He had a clean bill of health and is throwing, but he’s gonna start the year on the IL, so I have to move him this low.
This is a pretty simple tier of pitchers who are still in battles for a rotation spot or have some questions about their role heading into the regular season. That uncertainty keeps them down here because I believe they all have fantasy-relevant talent.
Drew Rasmussen is potentially battling with Zack Littell for the final spot in the Rays’ rotation. Both have experience out of the bullpen, but Rasmussen missed most of last season after surgery, so Tampa Bay may be cautious with his innings this year. However, he has proven to be a solid starter when he’s on the mound, so this is a fair price for him if you’re also being cautious.
My general thoughts on Sean Manaea is that he really took off after lowering his arm slot, and some of that is real, but we’ve also seen him have hot stretches before, so I can’t believe he’s a totally new pitcher. MARCH UPDATE: Manaea suffered an oblique injury early in camp and will miss the first few weeks of the season. However, he should be back by the end of April, so this feels like a fair spot for him, and I’d take him a bit earlier in shallower leagues with IL spots.
Last year, I was guilty of ranking Grayson Rodriguez at his peak outcome when I put him and Bobby Miller inside my top 20. This year, I’ve used that as a lesson to try and grade young pitchers with upside at something closer to their 75% outcome, which is why I have Rodriguez in this tier. You can’t argue the level of his raw ability. His slider and curveball could both be plus secondary pitches, his fastball has great velocity and extension, and his changeup continues to flash as a potential plus pitch to lefties as well. His issue is that his feel for that pitch comes and goes, so he can’t attack specific areas of the strike zone consistently. However, he’s only 25 years old, so if this is the season he can start to find the feel for those pitches, he’s a top-15 starter in fantasy. MARCH UPDATE: Grayson Rodriguez has “pain behind his elbow” and is getting a cortisone shot to deal with inflammation. If he falls this far, then I’ll take a shot and put him on my IL in case he actually gets healthy, but I’m basically avoiding him in most leagues.
Where do we rank Brandon Woodruff? He’s coming off a season missed due to shoulder surgery and is not going to be ready for the start of the season. However, he’s been a top-15 fantasy starter before when healthy and was tremendous in 11 starts in 2023 before getting hurt. I’m more inclined to take him in leagues with an IL spot because I can stash him there to start the year, but this is a big roll of the dice because we just have no idea what version of Woodruff we’ll get in 2025.
The Dodgers are another team that could use a six-man rotation since so many of their pitchers are coming off injuries or surgeries, and that would allow one of Dustin May or Bobby Miller (or Landon Knack or Justin Wrobleski) to earn a starting spot. May has the leg up, but if Miller looks anything like the pre-knee injury 2023 version of himself, he’d be hard to keep out of the rotation. Ryne Nelson seems like the odd man out in Arizona right now after they signed Corbin Burnes.
These pitchers are all younger pitchers who I think have a real chance at breaking out this year. Of course, there are some concerns about their ability to put all those talents together, which keeps them down here.
I also really like Jose Soriano, who I think has the pitch mix to attack both righties and lefties with success but just needs to optimize it better. The secondaries are great, but the fastball command is poor. If that command improves, he could really take off. I’ve also written about Soriano as one of my favorite last-round sleepers already this year.
Kris Bubic appears to have the inside track to win the 5th starter job in Kansas City. He has looked good so far this spring after pitching in relief last year following Tommy John surgery in 2023. In addition to looking good as a reliever last year, Bubic has come into spring training with increased velocity and added movement on his pitches. I like the team context here, and I’m willing to take a gamble on Bubic’s pedigree and say he’ll be a late-breakout-type starting pitcher.
In that leaderboard where Nick Pollack and I looked at starting pitchers who were top-third percent in baseball in all of swinging strike rate, PLV, and Str-ICR we were surprised that Reid Detmers finished in the top third in each of those three metrics. Even in a down year in 2024, Detmers’ swinging strike rate was 85th percentile among starting pitchers in baseball, his Str-ICR was 74th percentile, and his PLV was 67th percentile. To me, that says a lot about who Detmers is as a pitcher because even when he’s bad, he shows enough to make you see why we still have hope for him. The Angels should start him in the rotation and see if this is finally the year they can get something out of him or trade him. You can draft him late and watch a start or two to see if something has clicked, or just move on if it hasn’t.
I covered Ryan Weathers as one of my favorite late-round starting pitcher targets, so you can read that here.
Jack Leiter has flown up my rankings this spring. Part of it is that both Tyler Mahle and Kumar Rocker have struggled. The other part is that Leiter is now SITTING 98 mph, he’s added a sinker, and modified his changeup to be a kick-change that has looked really dynamic. I believe the Rangers feel that Leiter has little left to prove in Triple-A, and they want to see him facing MLB hitters. He could make the roster as a multi-inning reliever and then step into the rotation when a spot opens up, but I think he’s in for a big season.
Zebby Matthews is another pitcher that has looked really good this spring, with increased velocity. He has leapfrogged teammate David Festa for me. Matthews has a deeper arsenal and better command, so that increased velocity makes me feel much better about Zebby as a potential breakout this season.
A look at the top MLB prospects who have a chance to make a fantasy impact in the coming seasons.
WE’RE OUTSIDE OF THE TOP 100 STARTING PITCHERS HERE, SO I’M NOT GOING TO BLURB EVERYBODY IN EACH TIER.
In deeper formats, I’m probably taking many of these starters over the pitchers in the tier above, but these guys have less upside, in my opinion, so in a 12-team league, I’d rather gamble on the upside of the tier above at the end of my drafts.
Marcus Stroman saw a big value boost this spring with the injuries to Luis Gil and Gerrit Cole. Stroman now seems locked into the rotation, and he provides a safe floor, which is useful in deeper formats. Plus, the win chances are solid on the Yankees.
Tobias Myers may be boring, but he’s just 26 years old and has a solid arsenal of pitches that work well off of one another to create weak contact plus a potentially elite changeup. If he gets more consistent with that changeup this year, he will shoot up these rankings.
I don’t think Nick Martinez gets enough credit for being as good as he’s been. Most of that likely has to do with him switching back and forth between the bullpen and the rotation, but I think he’s locked into this rotation now, which makes me feel good about drafting shares of him.
I need to talk about my dude, Luis L. Ortiz. He was good for the Pirates last year, with a 3.32 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 135.2 innings. A lot of that had to do with introducing a cutter that he could pound the zone with. Ortiz could always throw hard, but he struggled to command his four-seamer or his 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 allowed Ortiz to rely less on those two fastballs and actually use the four-seamer more for whiffs. He pairs that with a solid slider that doesn’t get the whiffs that it should. I’m curious to see if Cleveland can get more out of that slider because if they can, I think he’s in for a big year, and he’s just 26 years old. He’s one of my favorite late-round starting pitchers.
I like David Festa. He consistently missed bats at the minor league level, and while his first two big league starts didn’t go well, he posted a 3.81 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 30% strikeout rate in his next 12 appearances. The issues are that he has trouble making it three times through the order, and he may not start the year in the rotation if the Twins are committed to keeping Chris Paddack there. If Festa does get a starting gig, I’d probably move him up near Bowden Francis, but not much higher because the concerns about how deep into games he will go should remain.
It seems that the injury to Grayson Rodriguez will give Cade Povich the chance to open the season in the rotation, and I really like the growth we’ve seen from his changeup this spring. If he pitches well early on, he could stick.
I wrote about Kyle Harrison’s new cutter here and why I think it’s crucial for him, but he really hasn’t used it much this spring.
I also covered both Tylor Megill and David Peterson as two of my favorite late-round targets in this article.
As with before, we’re not going to get into lots of detailed blurbs here. I’m not really drafting any of these pitchers in a 12-team league, but I will take gambles on them in deeper formats.
I don’t really know what to expect from Tomoyuki Sugano in his first MLB season. He doesn’t throw hard, but he has a deep arsenal of pitches and good command. He will also be pitching for a good team and in a solid ballpark, so there are certainly cases to be made that he’s worth a flyer in most formats. For me, I’m only really taking this profile in deeper leagues where innings matter most.
Michael Soroka is in the Nationals’ rotation and has looked good this spring. His fastball velocity is up, and he has more movement on his slider, which has been carving hitters up. Remember that he was a very polished young pitcher for the Braves, so it wouldn’t shock me if he comes a boring but solid veteran. He looked good for the White Sox out of the bullpen last season.
I made a case for Hayden Wesneski as a late-round pick in this article if you want to read that in depth.
Richard Fitts looks like a new man this spring. His fastball velocity is way up, sitting 97 mph, and he also added in both a curveball and a sinker. The Red Sox love to take the emphasis away from the four-seamer, and building out Fitts’ arsenal has been a priority for them. With both Kutter Crawford and Brayan Bello not likely to be ready for Opening Day, Fitts could be the fifth starter for Boston, so I’ll gamble here in case it sticks.
If the Rangers move Jon Gray to the bullpen, then I think Kumar Rocker has the inside track to make the opening day rotation. He has a high 90s fastball with elite extension but its shape doesn’t allow it to get that many whiffs. He does have a sinker he can also throw for strikes and a legit slider that will tie right-handed hitters in knots, but he may not have a similar pitch to stifle lefties. The upside is there, but until he fills out that arsenal, he could also be incredibly inconsistent. MARCH UPDATE: Rocker has struggled this spring, and I think he’s ticketed for Triple-A.
Yes, we know that Emerson Hancock will likely start the year in the Mariners’ rotation, but for how long, and just how good is he really?
Both Landen Roupp and Hayden Birdsong are unlikely to be in the rotation to start the season, but I like both of them more than Jordan Hicks and Kyle Harrison.
DJ Herz flashed last year, but command has always been a major issue for him, and he’s unlikely to be in the rotation to start the year, which makes it tough to draft him.
Chase Dollander is a top pitching prospect and has a chance to break camp in the Rockies’ rotation, but are you really trusting a rookie starting pitcher in Coors Field?
As the title suggests, these are all starters that I like, but I just have no clear idea how much time they’ll spend on the mound this year. If you’re not in a league with IL spots, then I would ignore this entire tier. In leagues where you have plenty of IL spots, I love late-round picks on Eury Perez and Sawyer-Gipson Long because they can be put on IL.
Eury Perez is coming back from surgery and should be ready to go after the All-Star break, which would mean he’s kind of on a similar trajectory to what we should expect from Noah Schultz. Except we’ve seen what Perez can do at the MLB level before.
You may look at Luis Gil’s stats and think that this is too low, but his command worries me. His four-seamer is good, but he simply could not throw strikes with his changeup in the second half of the season, and his slider was inconsistent all year long in terms of its command in the strike zone. This is part of the reason many thought Gil had more of a reliever’s profile when he was a prospect. We know he can miss bats, and all the pieces are there for this to work, but it’s hard to just become a better command pitcher, so it’s hard for me to trust Gil to take that next step.
I spoke with Shane Bieber at spring training and wrote about his recovery, if you want to read that here, but he won’t be back until the All-Star break.
We did not see the same Gerrit Cole in 2024 that we’re used to. Now, some of that has to do with him coming off an arm injury, but it also has to do with him aging and becoming a different pitcher. His four-seamer’s swinging strike rate has fallen to fairly average levels, and the slider last year was not nearly as good as we’re used to seeing. Cole has added a cutter and leaned into his curve more, which is nice, but this reminds me of the later-stage versions of Max Scherzer, where he became more of a pitcher who needed to mix and match his pitches and hit his spots to accommodate for a less overpowering fastball. That should still lead to 180+ innings for solid production for Cole but likely not longer the elite production we’re used to seeing. MARCH UPDATE: Cole is going for more imaging on his elbow, but Tommy John was recommended, so I assume that will be the course of action.
These guys all have rotation spots (or so we think), but I think they profile best as streamers in deeper leagues.
These are all pitchers who I think will debut at some point in the summer. I’m most confident in these top five names, and I would scoop up Brandon Sproat, Noah Schultz, and Quinn Mathews as soon as it seems like they’re being called up because I think they’ll be first.
Read the full article here
