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. However,
I also want to make sure I share my thoughts on the rankings below, but given that I’m going to discuss 100 pitchers, you’ll find short blurbs with my thoughts “off the dome” for these guys. Well, at least, I’ll try to do that because I can naturally be long-winded, but I’ll also link to other articles I’ve written where I dive into a given pitcher more completely.
I have Gerrit Cole ranked first overall primarily because I trust the depth of the arsenal more than with Strider. Cole has five pitches that he feels comfortable using, including a new cutter that he started throwing more as the year went on. I also believe that cutter was a big reason that he cut his home run rate down in 2023. I know the strikeouts were down; however, the swinging strike rates overall weren’t much worse, so I think he can rebound to just under a 30% rate and given that he’s likely to push 190 innings again on a team that is improved from 2023, I think Cole has the safety and upside I like if I’m going to draft a starter this early.
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Spencer Strider is great; there’s not really a debate about that. We just have to pick nits when we’re deciding between the top two arms. For me, I have concerns that Strider really just has two pitches and he gives up a lot of hard contact. With only two pitches, hitters are able to sit on one pitch. That certainly doesn’t help them all the time since Strider gets so many whiffs, but when hitters do make contact off Strider, it tends to be much harder contact than they make off an arm like Cole. Hence why Strider posted a 3.86 ERA. I know he’ll get me more strikeouts than Cole, but I’d rather take the safer ratios because I think I can chase strikeout upside with other arms later.
There was a time not long ago when Corbin Burnes was in the conversation as the top pitcher in fantasy drafts. However, he lost the feel for his cutter, and his results suffered. He started out 2023 slow as well, but changed his slider mid-year, taking four miles an hour off the pitch and adding significant horizonal movement. The result was far less hard contact and more swings and misses. He also made it his second most-used pitch in the final month of the season. Given how Burnes’ results overall improved with the pitch mix change, I think we can attribute some stickiness to it, and I expect it to carry over into 2024. The trade to Baltimore has also given him a ballpark upgrade and a team context upgrade, so he leapfrogs Wheeler for me after that.
Zack Wheeler has been about as consistent as any starting pitcher in baseball over the last eight years, only posting one below average season in 2017 when he battled injury. While he didn’t quite maintain the same level of strikeout gains from 2021, he has held onto a 27% strikeout rate, which makes him a solid source of strikeouts when you consider the amount of innings he has thrown over the last few years. Wheeler added a sweeper last season and went to it more as the year went on, giving him another swing-and-miss option to complement his previous more gyro-like slider. Wheeler has great team context, solid ratios, and good enough strikeouts to give you clear four category upside if you want a starter early in drafts.
While recent years have taught us that there’s not really any true security with any starting pitcher, Luis Castillo feels like one of the best bets going. He’s thrown at least 150 innings in five straight full seasons and threw 70 innings in the COVID-shortened 2020 year. Since coming to Seattle, he’s seen his strikeout totals rise as he’s gone more fastball-slider focused and less fastball-change focused. The new ballpark environment has also helped keep his WHIP low, which separates him from the tier below for me. I think Castillo gives you great value in four categories, and I’m happy to take him at his current ADP as my fantasy ace.
This tier is full of pitchers who have clear talent and I’d be happy to have them in all formats, but there’s just one issue that’s holding them from the tier above for me.
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. Nobody is saying he “cured” whatever injury issues plagued him earlier, but considering the elevated injury risk with all starters, I don’t believe we should continue to drag down a player’s value for years, even after they’ve continuously played well. We also have Pablo becoming a new pitcher in Minnesota. After going to Driveline in the offseason, he threw 1.5 mph harder in 2023 while also scrapping his cutter and adding a sweeper that missed tons of bats. 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. With the curve also improving, I think Pablo is developing into a talented pitcher with a deep arsenal.
There’s nothing wrong with Kevin Gausman, but I just have a little bit of hesitation due to his arsenal. Gausman’s four-seam fastball is not great and gives up a ton of hard contact, which puts a lot of pressure on his splitter, which is clearly his best pitch. However, Gausman rarely throws the splitter for strikes because he gets so many chases. What that means is that Gausman is a two-pitch pitcher, but one pitch is fairly average, and the other pitch is great but relies on chases. That’s a dangerous tightrope to walk and is a big part of the season that Gausman tends to sport high BABIPs and WHIPs. I don’t believe those improve going forward, and so I have him below where many have him.
George Kirby is an elite command pitcher who has posted elite ratios and high innings totals since breaking through into the big leagues. His issue is the current lack of a true out pitch. He introduced a splitter in the middle of the season and had great success with it, posting a 17.4% swinging strike rate in the second half and his slider also doubled its swing-and-miss in the second half of the year. If those gains can maintain then, paired with a solid four-seam and sinker, Kirby should emerge as a true fantasy ace.
What can I say about Yoshinobu Yamamoto? Every article you read about him and every analyst that breaks down his stuff mentions how elite his raw stuff is. On paper, he profiles as one of the best starters in MLB, and he has elite command to support his plus raw stuff. However, he will also be in a new league and in a new country, so there are major questions about how he adapts. I just don’t think anybody in the tier below him has his upside, so when push comes to shove, I’m likely going to draft him over all of those guys in almost every draft.
I know I have Zac Gallen inside my top 10, but I have real concerns about the amount of hard contact he gives up. Gallen relies a lot on command for his success, keeping the majority of his pitches low in the zone to increase tunneling and deception. However, he does that because his arsenal is not overly dynamic on its own. That means, when he misses his spots or sequences poorly, he tends to give up lots of hard contact. All three of his main pitches have an Ideal Contact Rate of 40% or higher, including a whopping 47.7% rate on his curveball. Considering ICR adds up barrels, solid contact and hard groundballs and divides them by batted ball events, it means that almost half of the contact that Gallen gives up is hard. That’s a tough tightrope to walk to keep ratios low, but he has been able to do it so far and given how many innings he feels likely to throw, he’s still a safer bet than most options in this range.
Here you see the direct results of the instability with starting pitching in this year’s landscape. Logan Webb lacks major strikeout upside, but he is among the most stable ratio pitchers that you’ll find. He has an elite change-up and slider that misses way more bats after he tweaked it’s shape three years ago, and one of the friendlier home parks for pitchers. Additionally, while his strikeout rate may not be ideal, he still racks up a solid number of strikeouts due to his innings volume. Last year, Webb had the 18th-most strikeouts among starting pitchers. Now, he may not throw 200 innings again, but he’s as good a bet as any to rack up high innings volumes with solid ratios and enough strikeouts to not hurt you. If you want stability, this is it.
This next tier is made up of pitchers with legitimate ace upside but some concerns about durability or development which make them a little riskier than the names above.
The argument against Tyler Glasnow is strictly connected to health, and it’s one I understand. He’s 30 years old and last year he threw a career-high 120 innings. However, according to him, it was the same injury in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Glasnow mentioned that the UCL injury first popped up in 2019 but the MRI came back clean, but then he had the same injury in 2020 and 2021 and the MRI kept coming back clean. When finally decided to have surgery, they found that the UCL was intact, which is why the MRI showed no major issues, but it was off his bone which led to the constant re-injury. Now, this isn’t to say that Glasnow will all of the sudden throw 160 innings, but it does give context to him being injury-prone. Also, as I’ve said a few times now, there are more risks and question marks at the top of the starting pitcher pool than ever before. I know when Glasnow is on the mound, he’s going to be elite, so there just comes a time in drafts where I’d rather take 130 innings of elite production and hope for health rather than take 170 innings that could be far worse.
Max Fried is arguably just as stable as Webb, if not more so. However, that’s just when he’s on the mound. He has a hard time pushing over 160 innings due to some previous injury concerns and the Braves cautious approach to pushing him too deep into games. However, Fried has a career 3.03 ERA and a collection of five pitches, each of which he has elite command of. I’ve read enough that makes me think we shouldn’t be worried about his forearm strain since he has had time to properly rehab and was able to come back and pitch at 100% health before getting a blister. As a result, I don’t believe he’s any greater of an injury risk than many of the other arms here, but he’s still hard to project for more than 160+ innings.
Bobby Miller is my favorite of the second-year pitchers who could make big leaps in 2024. For starters, he has a 99 mph fastball with good Induced Vertical Break (IVB) which had just average swinging strike rates but I think could perform even better if he gets it up in the zone more. He also has a curve, slider, and change which all miss bats and give him an arsenal to attack both righties and lefties. Improved approach with the four-seam will add more swing-and-miss which will improve his overall performance against righties and get his strikeout rates up to where his raw stuff indicates they should be. He started to do that as the season went on, and his SwStr% jumped 2%, so I’m optimistic it’s something that carries over into 2024.
Grayson Rodriguez is another young pitcher who made clear changes as the year went on, and we saw those directly in his results, registering a 2.58 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, and 24% strikeout rate across 76.2 IP after he was recalled from the minors in July. We can also tie those results to tangible changes, like a shift in vertical approach on his four-seam and was throwing both his change-up and slider harder, which suggests he was “letting it rip” a bit more and aiming less. He also scrapped his cutter, using that the harder slider to miss more bats than it did in the first half. The four-seam remains slightly above average, so he’ll need his breaking balls to step forward, and that’s why I slightly prefer Perez because of the elite raw stuff; however, given the step forward we’ve seen in those breaking balls, I believe that the second half version of Rodriguez is no fluke.
One of the biggest criticisms levied against Freddy Peralta is his lack of innings, but I think that’s a bit misleading since Peralta was not a full-time starting pitcher until 2021. He’s had three seasons as a full-time starter and has thrown 144.1, 78, and 165.2 innings, which averages out to 129.1 innings per season as the Brewers usually pull him after six innings. That’s not a lot of innings, and his cross-body delivery can lead to injury, but that’s exactly why he’s down in this tier. If we thought Peralta was a good bet to hit 160-170 innings again, he’d be getting drafted earlier. My point is that he’s actually a better bet for 140-150 innings than many people think. Peralta was electric in his final 17 starts of 2023, posting a 36% strikeout rate and rarely giving up hard contact. The concern for me is that not much changed between his rough first stretch and hot final stretch to point to a clear shift in results. Peralta struggles a bit more against righties because he becomes a two-pitch pitcher against them, but I think there is room for growth if he can elevate the fastball to righties the way he does to lefties or if he leans on the curve more to the gloveside. In a sense, I believe in Peralta’s skillset while also believing that he has more durability than people give him credit for and there’s upside for more.
These pitchers all feel safer than the names above and will likely give you more innings, but they also lack the upside of the fourth tier.
I’m not sure why people are so down on Zach Eflin. For years we said “If only he would throw his curveball more” or “If only he went to a team that could get the most out of his talent,” and then he does that and has a great year and people say, “What if he can’t do it again?” Which one is it? Is he the talented people who just needed a better environment or was he never that guy to begin with? Last year, Eflin upped the usage of his curveball significantly, added a sweeper, and changed his cutter to add more horizontal break. It resulted in a much higher swinging strike rate, which led to more strikeouts, and the arsenal was also one he could command better which led to a decrease in walks and better WHIP. To me, there’s no reason to believe Eflin can’t duplicate what he did last year (perhaps with fewer wins), and while he doesn’t have the upside of some of the future aces coming in the next tier, I think he is less volatile as well.
Now, Aaron Nola doesn’t have the same concerns regarding his durability, but he does have concerns regarding his diminishing strikeout rates. However, Nola is only 30-years-old and has shown no meaningful velocity decline, so I’m not yet to says he’s beginning to decline. I do have some concerns about how hard his four-seam gets hit, but Nola seems to share those concerns, which is why he began to use the sinker more and get it inside on righties. Another concern is that Nola’s curve has lost horizontal movement in each of the last three years and has also seen its SwStr% fall. I was hoping he would go to a new organization that might prioritize fixing that, but that was not to be. Still, Nola has proven to be a reliable starter who will post strong innings totals on a good team, and I don’t believe there is anything in his 2023 season that suggest it will repeat. He’s likely just an SP2 for fantasy but probably one of the better ones, and if the Phillies do fix the movement issues on his curve, we could see a much better 2024.
I wrote up Kyle Bradish last year as a breakout candidate, but I didn’t actually expect to be ranking him near my top 20 in 2024. However, Bradish rode his elite slider to a tremendous 2023 season with a 2.83 ERA. He also cut back on his four-seam usage as the year went on, opting for more reliance on his sinker, which is great because his four-seam remains below average. Yet, Bradish also has a good curveball which limits hard contact and is his preferred two-strike pitch to lefties. I worry a touch about him versus lefties because he has to throw his four-seam more, but he has two plus breaking balls and a good sinker, which means last year was no fluke. I’m just not sure there’s another level unless the four-seam improves.
Remember when Joe Musgrove was pushing to be a top-15 starting pitcher heading into 2023 drafts but then he dropped a weight on his foot in spring training and then also injured his arm during the year? The righty is 31-years-old but doesn’t profile as any different of a pitcher than he showed in 2021 and 2022. He has a slider that continues to miss bats, a cutter that induces weak ground balls, a curve that he can throw to righties and lefties and an improving change-up that he seemed ready to rely on more in 2023. We’ve seen Musgrove be an above-average starters in every season since 2019, and I see no reason why that should be any different now. He’s a rock solid SP2 for me.
Like the tier above, these pitchers have all flashed high-end SP2 upside or more, but they are more volatile or have much less of a track record.
Cole Ragans came out of nowhere, except that he really didn’t. He was a first round pick back in 2016 but between injuries (a botched Tommy John surgery which required a second procedure) and the COVID cancellation of the minor league season, he didn’t throw a pitch in a game between 2017 and 2021. Texas was reportedly bullish on his future, but they needed bullpen help when they sent him to Kansas City for Aroldis Chapman. The biggest part of Ragans’ breakout last year was his increased velocity, but he also possesses a true five pitch mix that he’s comfortable using in all counts. He can throw most of his pitches for strikes consistently (when he’s not nibbling) and has more than a few ways to get swings and misses. I have some concerns about team context and a minor concern about health, but I believe in what we saw last year.
Everybody wants to buy in on Tarik Skubal and I can see why, to a certain extent. He posted a 2.80 ERA (2.77 SIERA), 32.9% strikeout rate, 28.4% K-BB%, and 14.9% SwStr% in 80.1 innings last year; however, there are some concerns that have me viewing him more as an SP2. For starters, Skubal’s four-seam jumped up 1.7 mph in 2023, which is great news because it has poor IVB or Vertical Approach Angle (VAA), so he needs to velocity. While Skubal was able to hold the velocity for much of the year, it did dip 0.5 mph over the final month which leads me to think that, over a full season, he might not be able to stay above 95 mph. Nothing about the pitch shape or metrics suggests it should have missed bats the way it did, which means it could have had success because of his schedule. Skubal made just 15 starts last season and his final eight opponents were: @CLE, CHC, NYY, @CWS, CWS, @LAA, @OAK, and KCR. That means over half of his total starts on the season were against some of the worst offenses in baseball. In those eight starts he registered a 1.88 ERA, 0.73 WHIP, 37% strikeout rate, and 4% walk rate. Did Skubal really make a huge leap or is he simply a slightly improved pitcher who took advantage of an easy schedule?
Having Logan Gilbert this high is about a belief that his breaking balls and fastball all take a step in the right direction at the same time. His slider had a strong second half, getting more whiffs as he leaned on it a bit more, and the new splitter that he added was really strong in the first half but fell off in terms of hard contact allowed in the second half. Also, his four-seam performed worse in 2023 than it did in 2022. Still, we’ve seen all the pieces individually: the plus slider, the strong splitter, the above-average four-seam, and all of that paired with plus command. We’ve just yet to see it all come together at once, but what if that year is 2024?
Blake Snell’s fantasy value is incredibly hard to pin down because we all know he’s coming off of a career-best year that he won’t replicate, and we also have no idea where he’ll pitch. We also know he’s thrown over 130 innings just once since 2018, and has never had a BB/9 under 3.19 in a season. Those are all legitimate concerns. We also know that Snell has been really good for most of his career, with a 3.20 career ERA and 29.7% career strikeout rate. His change-up took a big step forward in 2023 and became his second most-used pitch, which is something we like to see since it ties up righties. On the downside, he also drastically over-performed with runners in scoring position and his BABIP as well below career norms, so he should see regression to the mean with both. I’m not ready to pay for Snell’s career year, but I’m also not going to ignore how good he’s been throughout his career.
The raw stuff Eury Perez possesses is great and good enough to make him a clear SP1 in fantasy, but he has to shift his approach in a way Bobby Miller started to and Perez hasn’t yet. Much like Miller, Perez throws his four-seam low in the zone which causes it to get hit hard. Unlike Miller, he has yet to shift that approach, but I believe he certainly can. The shape and velocity of the four-seam would make it far more impactful up in the zone. He also needs to throw his breaking balls more in the zone, with both his curve and slider both inducing lots of weak contact but not being thrown for strikes enough. Again, this is something I believe happens a lot with young pitchers who can dominate in the minor leagues by saying, “Here’s my best stuff; hit it.” I believe that Perez is capable of shifting his approach and being more deliberate with this location; I just think he hasn’t had to be yet.
Command is a huge issue for Kodai Senga. His ghost fork is a deadly offering and his slider has flashed swing and miss ability; although he struggles with the consistency of it. Therein lies the issue for Senga: consistency and command. He induces weak contact on his cutter, but his four-seam gets hit really hard and there were too many outings for me where hie command just left him. I think it’s reasonable to expect that he improves in his second season in this country and this league, but I don’t think he will all of the sudden become a different pitcher. The walk rate will remain high, and I don’t love any pitch besides the ghost fork, so while I see some room for improvement, I also still have concerns.
This is a tier of pitchers that you’d be OK with as your SP2 but they lack the upside of the group above.
I don’t know what to make of Framber Valdez, but I don’t have tons of confidence. His surface-level stats were good, but he has just a slightly above-average swinging strike rate and below average CSW and ICR. He’s a primary sinkerball pitcher whose sinker got hit hard in 2023. Additionally, he changed his cutter in 2023 to be three mph harder and it resulted with more swinging strikes, but it also got hit harder. He also rarely throws it to righties, which means his best strikeout pitch is rarely used to the majority of hitters he faces. That puts an awful lot of pressure on his curve, but I’m just not confident in the rest of the arsenal. I don’t think Framber will ever be bad, but I’m also not sure how good he’ll really be.
Jesus Luzardo will be entering his age 26 season and while we’ve seen clear growth from him over his two years in Miami, we may also have seen the level he will settle in at. There were no real meaningful changes between 2022 and 2023 with minor improvements in walk rate and a slight dip in strikeout rate. We know that Luzardo possesses an elite change-up that the Marlins have gotten more use out of, but there doesn’t seem to be another leap here. Still, even as is, Luzardo is a 3.50-3.70 ERA pitcher with a strikeout rate that will push 30% in a good pitcher’s park. That’s still a really stable fantasy asset.
I don’t love the move to St. Louis for Sonny Gray, but considering he’s a 34-year-old who doesn’t require as much development, I worry about St. Louis’ lack of pitching development less than I would with a prospect. I’m also optimistic about the way Gray leaned on his sweeper more as the year went on last year, throwing it over 10% more in the second half. The pitch misses a ton of bats and also allowed him to use his cutter less, which is good since the cutter gives up a fair amount of hard contact. Gray has solid SP2 upside, albeit without great strikeout rates, but I find him a touch safer than the next year.
I’m a little more concerned about Justin Steele. His 2023 season was obviously great, and his slider is certainly elite, but I’m not quite sure what else there is. Last year was his first season over 119 innings in pro ball and he’s only thrown above 100 twice, so I do have some durability concerns that make me more apt to draft him in leagues with an IL spot. He has also sported some high WHIPs in the past due to his lack of deep arsenal, which leads to hard contact, as I mentioned with Strider above. Steele can be a low-to-mid 3.00 ERA arm with a 24% strikeout rate, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He just lacks more upside, in my opinion.
This is a tier of pitchers I really like grabbing in drafts.
I’ve mentioned my fondness for Chris Sale more than a few times on the “On the Corner” podcast. To synthesize my thoughts into a shorter space: I believe he was more effective when you look under the hood than we thought last year. He still missed a lot of bats and pitched to solid ratios without his best stuff. He was clearly rusty after battling injuries and seemed to lose feel for his pitches every now and then, which lead to harder contact than you’d like to see. Still, the solid raw stuff was there. Plus, he’s been open about feeling that he didn’t live up to his contract in Boston and said he was pissed off about how he performed. For a player as competitive as Sale, that means he’s been attacking this offseason with something to prove. Now that he’s on Atlanta, he finds himself with better team context and I think, even if we get 140 innings, they’ll be 140 really good innings, and so I’m in on Sale in 2024.
I’m also in on Michael King for similar reasons. I think some of what we saw last year was real to the extent that King has a deep arsenal of pitches and the pure stuff to make hitters look bad. He moves to a much solid ballpark for pitchers and figures to slot immediately into the Padres rotation. However, he has battled injuries in the past, and the Yankees were inclined to not push his innings totals too high. As a result, I don’t think King is a lock for more than 130+ innings. I think they’ll be good innings, but I have him down in this tier due to his questionable innings and think I’d rather take the track record of Sale if push comes to shove.
This Joe Ryan ranking is either offense or too high depending on which Joe Ryan we get. The right-hander introduced a new splitter in 2023 and he was electric to start the season, looking like a legit ace. Then he lost his feel for the pitch in the second half of the year and the results were pretty disastrous. I’m not going to penalize a guy too much for losing feel for a pitch he just learned; it happens often. He’s presumably had another offseason to grow comfortable with the pitch, and we saw what kind of upside it brings. We also saw that he doesn’t have a lot of options to back it up should the splitter falter again, so I’m going to be a bit cautious on Ryan and think he belongs in this tier of question marks.
Admittedly, Bailey Ober doesn’t fit in this tier from a narrative standpoint, but I like him far more than the guys in the tier below him, so the only other option is to push him all the way to the bottom of the last tier, which maybe I’ll do. Ober came up through the minors as a command specialist, and even though he throws harder now, he doesn’t bring elite velocity. However, his long frame allows him to get elite extension, and so his fastball remains hard to hit. He pairs that with a good changeup that he started to rely on more in 2023, two solid breaking balls, and he still has that strong command. He’s not going to give you tons of upside, and you’ll always wonder when the other shoe is going to drop, but it’s also possible that it never does. And, maybe that’s the uncertainty that puts him in this tier.
Much like we discussed with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, it’s hard to rank Shota Imanaga because we haven’t seen him against MLB hitters outside of a few innings in the World Baseball Classic. Still, he posted elite Stuff+ metrics at the WBC and features an array of offerings that he uses to keep hitters off-balance. He gets impressive IVB on his fastball, which is a great foundation, and he actually had better strikeout metrics than Yamamoto in Japan last year. I don’t know how he’ll adjust to the majors, but he’s been a very good professional for a while, so I think the floor is pretty safe here.
Bryan Woo is another Seattle pitcher with tons of upside, if he can make a few changes stick. Woo showed a great four-seam fastball in his debut, but he had a real problem with splits, giving up a .282/.389/.539 slash line to lefties, which is why Woo started throwing a cutter at the end of June. According to Pitcher List metrics, Woo used the cutter inside to lefties over 50% of the time, but, perhaps weirdly, threw it low 70.5% of the time, which is far too often in my opinion. You would believe a pitch designed to mitigate hard contact from lefties would be thrown more in on the hands, and that’s perhaps why the pitch itself allowed a 50% ICR, which is not good at all. However, now that he has a full offseason to get comfortable with the cutter and work to gameplan how to use it and how to elevate the four-seam more, I think we’ll see an improvement in his splits from last year, which makes me bullish on Woo’s upside.
I think people forgot about Shane Baz. The former top prospect is coming back from injury after not pitching at all in 2023 and while his minor league success has not carried over into the majors in his very brief sample size, the raw stuff is electric. Baz is in this tier simply because of innings concerns because, on a pure stuff basis, he could be up with the Eury Perez tier. Still, we also know Baz is going to be ready for the start of the season, and Tampa Bay has two big-time starters (Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen) not set to return from their own injuries until the summer at the earliest, so Baz should get a long leash for the first few months of the year. The Rays may limit his innings down the stretch, but I’ll worry about that later in the year. If I can get 120+ innings from Baz, which I think is feasible, then I love him at this cost.
This is a tier of pitchers I may avoid entirely in drafts. I like something about each of these guys, which is why they’re inside my top 50, but they also scare the heck out of me.
We all know how good Dylan Cease can be because we saw it in 2022. However, even in 2022, he sported an elevated walk rate, and we saw consistent evidence of that command might leave him at any moment. We also saw GIF-able swings and misses on multiple breaking balls, and he looked like a young pitcher who was putting it all together. Then that control got the best of him in 2023, and he had a pretty brutal season. He’s also now the only starter remaining on a White Sox team that looks like it could be among the worst in baseball with a bullpen that is sure to cost him a few wins this season. Yes, he’s likely to be traded and that could put him in a better situation, but what if he’s not? He’s not on an expiring deal. He also won’t be as bad as he was last year. Even if the walk rate stays high, his left on base rate should rebound from a career-low and the BABIP should rebound from a career-high. All of that should lead to Cease being at least a 3.90 - 4.10 ERA pitcher with the skills to be so much better, and the command to be worse. That’s tough to roster especially at 180 innings where you’ll feel that WHIP even more.
It was a career-worst year for Yu Darvish, but he’s Yu Darvish. Great analysis, right? We’re all done here. OK, no, in reality, I still believe in Darvish and I believe in his ability to put together at least a solid floor season with his deep arsenal of pitches. He dealt with a bone spur last year, which limited his innings and his effectiveness, but he shouldn’t be hampered at all in 2024. There was no meaningful dip in velocity, so age doesn’t seem to be catching up with him, and he has so many pitches that he seems to be as good a bet as any pitcher to age well since he can keep hitters off-balance and mix-and-match pitches based on what feels good on a particular day. I’d love to see him elevate his four-seam a little more and sometimes I think his command wavers because he is trying to throw so many pitches, but the floor in a non-injury season is pretty safe. Oh, man, now maybe he should be in the tier above. Ugh. Rankings are hard.
Justin Verlander improved a lot in the second half of 2023. Perhaps it was coming back to Houston and his personal catcher, Martin Maldonado, who will actually not be in Houston next year. Maybe it was also that he got his fastball up in the zone more, which increased his IVB and jumped his SwStr%. He also started throwing his curve a little softer and with more downward bite, which led to more weak contact. I dunno. I just keep thinking that 2023 was his worst year in a while and he still had a 3.22 ERA. I don’t necessarily think the strikeouts are coming back, and he will be 41 next year so Father Time is lurking, but I think Verlander has another year of decent production in him.
I feel less confident about Carlos Rodon. We’ve obviously seen how good he can be when he’s healthy, and he certainly wasn’t healthy last year. However, he hasn’t been healthy for the majority of his career, and therein lies the issue. The fastball velocity seemed to be there at the end of the year in 2023, and he was able to put together some solid, high strikeout starts, but it just wasn’t consistent. I feel like I have to rank Rodon here because if he’s healthy enough to throw even 140 innings, they should be really good ones, but he’s such a gamble that I’m just not sure I’ll be drafting him.
Tanner Bibee does not have a great fastball, but he has two legitimate secondary pitches. That sounds a lot like a typical pitcher for the Cleveland Guardians, who have always seemed to get a lot out of pitchers with poor fastballs, even if that profile scares me. I have some concern that he elevates his curve a lot, which, logically to me, is a potential issue because curveballs up in the zone are much easier to hit than curveballs out of the zone below. However, hitters also didn’t hit his curveballs up in the zone in 2023 and, at some point, I need to acknowledge how good he was as a rookie with a 2.98 ERA and 1.18 WHIP, even if that came with a 4.19 SIERA. Bibee did have a sub-25% strikeout rate, so I think we could be looking at a 23% strikeout rate pitcher with an ERA around 3.70, and that’s solid, but I’m not fully bought in on last year.
I know, you’ve seen this before and you’re not going to fall for Nick Pivetta, but I can assure you that this time is different. For starters, Pivetta now has a whole new pitch that drove his second half success. Pivetta picked up the “whirlybird,” which is the sweeper he picked up from teammate Chris Martin in late June. The pitch was electric with a 25.4% SwStr% over the remainder of the season. He also began to throw his old slider harder and turned it into more of a cutter which made the pitch itself more dynamic and allowed his four-seam to play up. All of that takes pressure off of his solid curveball and allowed Pivetta to crush the second half of the season, finishing with a 29% K-BB%, 34.4% strikeout rate, and 3.26 ERA over 47 innings in eight starts to end the year. He was also electric out of the bullpen with this new pitch mix before moving back into the rotation. That’ll play.
I expected to be higher on Bryce Miller when I started these rankings, but he kept falling down my rankings a bit. Miller lived and died with his four-seamer as a rookie, and it gets tremendous IVB, but the also only throws it up in the zone 54% of the time, so it actually gave up an 11.6% barrel rate last year, which is not ideal for a pitch he throws almost 60% of the time. He has essentially two sliders, with a harder-gyro slider and a sweeper, but the sweeper didn’t really miss many bats last year. He added a sinker as the year went on to keep right-handed hitters off of his four-seam, which was good because that allowed the four-seam to play up more as a putaway pitch. The issue is there’s really nothing much here yet beyond the sinker, which is just a set up pitch, the slider, which is far more effective to lefties, and a fastball that needs to be elevated more to reduce hard contact. There is a path forward for Miller, but it does involve a few changes and perhaps a new pitch for lefties, like a cutter?
I don’t know what to do with Hunter Brown. He looked really good to start the year, but then the bottom totally fell out with an ERA barely under 7.00 over his final 16 starts. Perhaps it was fatigue since he’d never thrown over 130 innings before or perhaps it was just the inconsistencies that come with a pitch mix in flux. In the second half of the year, Brown went to his curveball more as he lost the feel for his slider, and then he also toyed around with a sweeper. He mixed in a splitter more in the second half too, but lost some velocity and IVB on the fastball as the year went on. Yet, he started going to that fastball more as the year went on, and it caught way too much of the plate. So which version of Brown will show up? If he can command his secondaries and doesn’t need to rely on the fastball so much, then he’s the low-to-mid 3.00 ERA arm we saw in the first half of the year, but if he can’t harness his breaking balls then he’s at risk or imploding again. I want to believe in the talent, but it’s also scary.
Ryan Pepiot had a 2.14 ERA, 0.76 WHIP, and 24% strikeout rate in 42 innings for the Dodgers last year. But only three of those games were traditional starts. Also, now he’s on Tampa Bay. All of that makes it hard to figure out what to do with him. I do know that his fastball has great IVB and extension, but he only threw it up in the zone 44% of the time (21st-percentile) so the Rays could easily get him to start elevating that more, which would up his SwStr%. I also know that his change-up is a really good pitch, and he tightened it up a bit in 2023 for more swings and misses. His slider also improved in 2023 and while it remains a below average offering, it now gives him more of a usable third pitch. Considering Tampa Bay has added sweepers with a few of their acquisitions, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them tweak Pepiot’s slider, and that could unlock another level for him. We just won’t really know until we see him on a mound with his new team.
I have historically been way out on Yusei Kikuchi because his secondaries seemed suspect to me and he gave up a lot of hard contact; however, he made a few meaningful changes in 2023. For starters,, he scrapped his cutter and added a curveball. The curveball not only missed bats, but it was a pitch that he could throw for a strike. Since it has a similar movement profile to his slider but is 5.5 mph slower, it created more deception in his arsenal and allowed his slider to play up. The change-up is still not a particularly good pitch, and the slider is less effective to righties, so Kikuchi does have minor splits issues, but his home park is more pitcher friendly, and I think him as a 26% strikeout rate pitcher feels sustainable.
Everybody loves to dream on Hunter Greene because he throws 100 mph and has a wicked slider, but here’s the issue: that fastball is actually not as good as we think. Sure, a 13.2% SwStr% is solid but it gives up tons of hard contact because it has below average extension and IVB. So since Greene only throws a change-up 5% of the time, he basically brings the Spencer Strider profile to the mound but with worse command and a fastball that is far more hittable. Oh, and he pitches in a terrible park for pitchers. Yeah, I might be out until we see a consistent third pitch or changes to the fastball.
Brayan Bello is another Red Sox arm that changed his slider during the season. Bello changed his slider late in the summer and went from averaging 2.3 inches of horizontal movement and 6 inches of drop at 84.9 mph to averaging 7.8 inches of horizontal movement and just 2.8 inches of drop at 85.9 mph in September. The pitch also posted a solid 21.4% SwStr% that month. Bello did seem to fade down the stretch, likely due to him tiring from the most innings he’s ever thrown in pro ball, but reports this offseason are that Bello will prioritize the slider in 2024. That would give him strikeout upside to his solid sinker/change profile that leads to lots of groundballs, and is a combination that would make him a much more dynamic pitcher for fantasy.
Braxton Garrett’s ranking comes down to your faith in his cutter. The pitch missed a lot of bats in the first half of the season, but did allow a fair amount of hard contact. That hard contact caught up with him in the second half, and the pitch faltered, which meant that he really on had his slider. It’s a pretty good slider, so it’s not a bad foundation for his arsenal, and pairing it with a sinker/cutter combo should allow him to succeed versus righties and lefties. However, he’ll need that cutter to be more consistent because the change-up is average. Yet, if there was any organization that could help him fix the change-up, it would be Miami, so there are a few paths forward here for a better 2024 than the already solid 2023 season that saw him finish with a 3.66 ERA and 1.15 WHIP.
This tier is safe. It’s not likely elite, and it probably won’t excite you, but it’s safe, and that can be nice.
Jose Berrios feels incredibly consistent. His 2022 season was his worst ever, and almost all of it feels like an outlier. He got right back to form in 2023, with a 3.65 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 23.5% strikeout rate. His curve is still the star of the show, but he started to use his sinker more as the year went on. However, instead of attacking righties with it inside, it basically lived out over the plate as a get-ahead pitch. He also saw massive whiff gains in his four-seam in the second half despite no real change to the pitch, so I’m not sure if I buy that sticking. We know his profile; we’ve seen it for years, and it works. There just probably isn’t another level.
This is not the Shane Bieber of old. With diminished velocity on his four-seam fastball, Bieber now keeps the pitch low and then throws his breaking balls even lower. That approach has led to solid called strike rates on the four-seam and good swinging strike rates on the breakers, which certainly works. However, it does require him to be more precise. We saw a slight shift in the movement profile of the curve in the second half and it resulted in fewer whiffs, so Bieber is now the type of pitcher who has to walk a tightrope with command. I think he can do that better than most, but you’re likely getting a pitcher with low strikeout upside but solid ratios.
Kenta Maeda was actually pretty good last year. After getting off to a slow start due to injury, Maeda posted a 3.36 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 29% strikeout rate in 88.1 innings from June 1st on. That’s like, really good. Yes, he still doesn’t throw hard, but the splitter remains a tremendous pitch, and he started going to it more as the year went on. The four-seam, despite it’s mediocre velocity, was actually a decent whiff pitch against righties for him since he also throws the sinker inside, which creates more deception on the four-seam. With a solid slider to round out the arsenal, Maeda remains just a solid pitcher who is now in a more pitcher-friendly park. I’m not sure how many innings we’ll get, but I think they’ll be good ones.
Jordan Montgomery is just not the pitcher this offseason narrative is making him out to be. Perhaps it was his good playoff run or the fact that he and Blake Snell have been the best pitchers on the market for what feels like two months now, but the truth is that Montgomery in 2023 was basically the pitcher he’s always been. None of his pitches aside from his curveball grade out particularly well and his sinker-heavy approach leads to soft contact but not many strikeouts. He used the four-seam less in 2023, which was nice, but the change-up took a step back and the rest of the arsenal and approach was very similar. I’m not sure he’ll be as bad as his 4.23 SIERA suggests or even his 4.01 xFIP, but I think he’s probably a mid-to-upper 3.00 ERA pitcher with a below-average strikeout rate and that’s fine in deeper formats, but I don’t love it.
We don’t know what to expect from Walker Buehler. The right-hander was out all of last season and will now reportedly not start the season on time as the Dodgers look to manage his innings. It’s very likely his innings are closely monitored all season, which limits his accumulation upside, and his fastball had issues with hard contact before he even got hurt. I don’t believe Buehler will be bad, but I think it’s safe to expect some rust and, in limited innings, that scares me a little bit.
The narrative surrounding Lucas Giolito is flawed. In 21 starts with the White Sox last season, he had a 3.79 ERA (4.21 SIERA), 25.8% strikeout rate, 1.22 WHIP, 12.3% SwStr%, and 28.8% CSW. He was then traded across the country to the Angels while also going through a divorce. That kind of off-field context does matter since these athletes are also human beings too. He has reportedly been working with new Red Sox pitching coach Andrew Bailey to fix his mechanics, which he felt got away from him as the year went on. I don’t believe you’re getting an ace with Giolito, but even if you get his White Sox stats prior to the move/divorce then you’re getting a pretty good pitcher at this cost, and I truly think this new Red Sox pitching development team can get more out of him.
When the Rays trade for a pitcher, it usually peaks out interest; yet, Aaron Civale‘s overall numbers didn’t really improve after the trade deadline. However, we did see a minor tweak begin with his slider. Before coming to the Rays, the pitch averaged 83.2 mph with 11 inches of horizontal movement. After coming to the Rays, the pitch averaged 81.9 mph with 12.4 inches of horizontal movement. While he was only throwing the pitch 5% of the time, it had a massive bump in SwStr% up to 13.4%. It also gave up a lot more hard contact, but a mid-season switch like that is never going to be perfect. With a whole offseason to work on the pitch, it’s possible we could see Civale add a swing-and-miss slider to his plus curveball and good enough cutter/sinker combo.
This is a tier filled with pitchers who I believe have considerable upside but have more question marks on whether or not they can reach it. If I feel secure in my rotation heading into this point in the draft, I may skip all of the tier above and focus on these guys, who are some of my favorite later round picks in 12-team leagues.
Triston McKenzie is another pitcher we may have forgotten about due ot injury. You may be surprised to hear his four-seamer had the most iVB of any starter’s four-seamer in 2022, and paired with excellent extension, the pitch has been able to get away with more than the standard 92/93 mph heater. If he’s able to keep the pitch upstairs 60%+ of the time, it’ll jump from its 11% SwStr rate in 2022 to excellent marks. The curve held a massive 22% SwStr rate with an elite 31% putaway rate as it fell off the table when paired with the heater, but there were many games where the pitch refused to find its location. When paired with a slider that needs more separation from the fastball and better command, it made for tough days on the hill.
Cristopher Sanchez was really good last year. I know some of it was due to an easy schedule, but he had a 3.44 ERA and 1.05 WHIP in 99.1 innings. That should get your attention. He also has a filthy change-up that gives him a solid foundation for success against righties. However, his sinker which has tons of arm-side run, is way more impactful against lefties, as is his slider, which he throws to hitters of both handedness but is just an average pitch to righties. Yet, he had these splits issues last year and was still able to produce a really good season. If he can alter his approach to righties with the sinker or add in a cutter, we could see him produce consistently steady results, but even if he doesn’t, he seems to have a pretty safe floor on a good team, so I’m in.
Gavin Williams is not at all the typical Guardians pitcher. He relies on an elite four-seamer that gets tremendous extension and also above-average arm-side run in on righties. It doesn’t give up a ton of hard contact, but it also doesn’t miss a lot of bats with a 12.3% SwStr%. And therein lies the problem. Williams essentially has two other pitches in his slider and curve since he barely throws his below-average change-up. The slider is a solid overall offering that he can locate in the zone and get swings and misses on; however, he doesn’t use it much against lefties, going instead to the curve which he has less command over. That curve didn’t get hit hard in 2023, but I can’t help just thinking of it as a below average pitch when I watch. I can see a path forward for Williams if he optimizes his four-seam usage but unless that curve takes a step forward, I’m a bit worried about his ceiling.
People have laughed at the Red Sox staff being optimistic about their current rotation, but Kutter Crawford is another pitcher who has a really strong foundation for success. Now that the team overhauled their pitcher development staff, perhaps we see him take a big step forward in 2024? All of Crawford’s pitches grade out well in terms of Stuff+ and while Crawford doesn’t throw overly hard, he has a 94 mph fastball with elite IVB and good extension, and the pitch has performed well. He also pairs that with both a cutter (of course) and a slider that gets whiffs and soft contact against righties and a change-up/curve pairing that works well against lefties. It’s the same kind of solid foundation that we saw from Canning but with possible more upside. Wait, should I now move Crawford over Canning? I dunno, but I think we get 150 innings of good production out of Crawford this year.
Mitch Keller looked elite for the first half of the season and had my buddy Thunder Dan Palyo starting to think about a Cy Young. Then, the wheels fell off, particularly on his new cutter. The pitch doubled in barrel rate allowed in the second half of the year, and the rest of the arsenal couldn’t recover. However, as I’ve said with a few pitchers already, a pitcher losing the feel of a new pitch is not the end of the world to me. It happens often. Keller will now have another offseason to work on the pitch and gain more consistency with it. The reliability of the cutter will also help the sweeper play up more, and I think we could see another step forward for Keller in 2024.
Luis Severino was another Yankee pitcher with a 2023 to forget. Since Severino became a full-time starter in 2017, he had never posted an ERA worse than 3.39, a strikeout rate worse than 27.7%, or allowed more than 41% hard contact in a season. He did all of that last year. While some of it could be due to the fact that he only threw 18 combined innings from 2019-2021 due to injury and then the Yankees cut his season short in 2022 after 102 innings (which he spoke openly about being upset about), the bigger issue is that Severino totally lost his fastball. Despite throwing the pitch 96.5 mph (which is a decent indicator of health), the induced vertical break fell from 17.4 inches to 16.0 inches, so the pitch didn’t “rise” or “run” which means it was relatively “flat” and got hit hard. Considering Severino is already at Driveline this offseason, I feel like it’s a pretty solid bet that he’ll be working to address his IVB concerns, and then the rest of the arsenal should fall into place.
Emmett Sheehan was pretty good in 60 innings for the Dodgers last year, and I believe he has a rotation spot locked up to start the year since the Dodgers have said Walker Buehler will miss the first few weeks. When Buehler returns, the Dodgers could move to a six-man rotation or Sheehan could keep his spot if another of the notoriously fragile pitchers (Glasnow and James Paxton) were to need a break. I also am intrigued by Sheehan’s introduction of the sweeper in late July. The pitch is eight mph slower than his slider and has almost 15 inches more horizontal movement, and while the results were inconsistent in limited usage, I love the idea of Sheehan adding that to pair with his harder slider against righties. Since he has a change-up that misses lots of bats against lefties, there’s a clear path to a big jump for him in 2024.
The case for Edward Cabrera is simple: He’s 25 years old with elite fastball velocity, an electric change-up, and the ability to miss bats with a 13.4% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and 27.2% strikeout rate. We also saw Cabrera’s four-seam take a step forward after a stint in the minors over the summer. The pitch itself has elite velocity, above average extension and arm-side break and average IVB, so if he does keep it up in the zone, it has the potential to be a strong offering to pair with his change-up and could be a difference-maker for him. Cabrera also doesn’t allow a lot of hard contact, but the command is a legitimate concern.
DL Hall was a player I was optimistic on when he was in Baltimore, but I felt it might take a while for him to move back into that rotation. Now that he’s in Milwaukee, it seems like a rotation spot is his, and I love the upside. Hall spoke openly about last year’s back injury causing him to lose velocity on his fastball, which was a blessing in disguise because it forced him to focus on his off-speed. In the second half of the season, the velocity came back, and he had tweaked his slider to be four mph harder while adding drop. The pitch had a huge bump in Stuff+ grades, and I think it gives him another level of upside. We’ve yet to see him put it all together as a starter, but seems to have been the centerpiece of the Corbin Burnes deal, which makes me think the Brewers will give him a chance to show what he can do, and I’m going to have some shares.
Brandon Pfaadt was the darling of March drafts back in 2023, but he came up and was unable to find much success early, primarily because his four-seam gave up so much hard contact, and he didn’t really have another pitch besides a sweeper that he had trouble commanding in the zone. Well, as the season progressed, Pfaadt started mixing in a sinker and reducing his four-seam usage. While the sinker itself is not a great pitch, it induces more groundballs and gives up less hard contact to righties than the four-seam and can allow Pfaadt to set up his sweeper more consistently since he believes the sinker creates better tunneling with his best pitch. Pfaadt also moved his position on the rubber during the season so his pitches would catch less of the plate and give up less hard contact. We saw the changes pay off with a solid postseason run, and while I have some concerns about the arsenal still, I think he has a chance for a solid enough season.
On some level, I want to throw out much of 2023 for Garrett Whitlock since he was on and off the injured list a few times, which caused Boston to shift him into various roles in the bullpen. When healthy, Whitlock is a sinker/change-up pitcher with good arm-side run on both pitches. He frequently attacks with the sinker up and change-up low and uses the change as a key swing-and-miss pitch to lefties. Another major change for Whitlock in 2023 is that he modified his slider from more of a gyro slider to a sweeper with almost eight inches more horizontal movement. However, he also struggled to command that pitch, but I’m willing to give him a pass since it was a new pitch and his innings were so inconsistent that it was hard for him to get a feel for it. f we believe Michael King can be a starter due to previous minor league workload then we should be open to the idea that Whitlock can too since his workload has been pretty close to what King has been putting up recently. The beauty of taking a gamble on Whitlock is that it will be so incredibly easy to know if you should hold him on your roster or cut him. The Red Sox are stretching him out to battle for a spot in the rotation with Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, and maybe Josh Winckowski.
Taj Bradley is enticing, but he also couldn’t put together any kind of consistent success in the big leagues in 2023. His raw stuff is great with a solid four-seamer, a cutter that flashed plus, and a potentially elite curveball. However, he also struggled to command literally all of those pitches at times in 2023. He could certainly get a better feel for them over the offseason, but with Shane Baz coming back, is Bradley even a lock to make the rotation? If he does make it over Zach Littell (which he should), will he keep the spot once one or both of Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen return? The talent is there, but there are so many question marks for me.
I just can’t quit Griffin Canning. I know the injury history is concerning. I know the Angels won’t be good, and I know he’s lacked consistency with his breaking balls, but the arsenal is deep, and he was solid for a long stretch last year. His four-seam isn’t a great pitch, but he started throwing it up in the zone more as the season went on, and it got more whiffs. He backs that up with a hard slider that is his primary whiff pitch, and actually performs better against lefties, and a change-up that can tie up lefties. The curve was inconsistent last year, and he’ll need to get a better feel for it to give him another weapon against righties since the change-up is less effective there. I see a step forward for Canning, but even his floor is a solid pitcher with a four-pitch mix.
I used to be a big Nick Lodolo fan, so I don’t want to quit him. There is also a world where he is a better fantasy pitcher than Hunter Greene, which many suggested would be the case two years ago. However, since then we’ve had injury concerns and his command go wonky at times. Now, the injury is not arm-related, which is good to see for a pitcher, but we’ve also yet to see a third pitch really emerge to join the fastball and curve. The four-seam has given up double-digit barrel rates in two straight seasons, so I really think he needs that change-up to take a step forward to make him a safer option because allowing hard contact in that park is a realy big problem. I’m ready to fly Lodolo up my rankings if I see something new in 2024, but I’m losing a bit of faith.
We had a safe tier and then an exciting upside tier and now we have a tier of pitchers who have all produced in the past but have lots of questions mounting.
We know what Nathan Eovaldi can do when healthy. He was tremendous for the vast majority of 2023, but then he got hurt and when he returned his four-seam velocity was down noticeably and the results were much worse. Then he gritted it out in the playoffs, as he does, and looked great. He will go as his velocity goes, but with only two seasons over 140 innings since 2016, we have to wonder just how likely we are to get peak velocity for an extended period. When he’s feeling right, you’ll be happy to have him on your team, but there will be stretches where you’ll want to drop him and not be sure if you should and that will be frustrating.
I loved watching Nick Pollack from Pitcher List, break down one of Taillon’s starts with Taillon himself because it provides a lot of insight from Taillon into what his thought process is for his approach and pitch mix. Taillon mentions struggling with his cutter early in the 2023 season, adding a sweeper instead of more of a gyro slider, and having a hard time finding a rhythm due to injuries. Yet, we saw him make clear changes as he got healthier and found more comfort with his new pitch mix. In the second half of the season, his cutter reduced the barrel rate allowed, he found more comfort with the sweeper, and his curveball stayed low in the zone more, which led to an improved barrel rate. In fact, from July 1st on, Taillon had a 3.57 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 16.8% K-BB% in 16 starts. That’ll play.
Nestor Cortes and James Paxton are in similar boats to me. They have both been pretty good when healthy over the past few seasons, but you also always feel like the start is coming where they’re going to be hit hard. As of now, both of them have spots in the rotation for a good team, and so I think they’re worth drafting at the start of the year to see if they can stay healthy and produce. I feel more confident in Cortes’ innings, but I feel more confident in Paxton’s ability, so it’s kind of a toss-up there.
I’ve kind of fallen out on Cristian Javier. He’s only had two seasons as a traditional starter; one was great and one stunk. Last year, he totally lost the feel for his slider, so his whiff rates fell and it allowed hitters to pounce on his four-seam. But that’s the risk with a pitcher who throws his four-seam/slider combo 88% of the time. The four-seam has elite IVB and misses a decent amount of bats, but it’s not good enough to carry the entire arsenal. Javier needs to find that slider again, but even if he does, he’s still essentially a two-pitch pitcher, and that worries me. Especially with Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers waiting in the wings to return this summer.
Eduardo Rodriguez way over-performed his peripheries in 2023 with a 3.30 ERA but a 4.06 xFIP and 4.26 SIERA. He seemed to find his change-up which led to a bump in SwStr% and the harder version of his slider missed more bats, but he only threw that pitch 7% of the time, so it’s not a real difference maker. The cutter got lit up to a 18.8% barrel rate, and that’s a problem, since he loves to throw it against righties. I just don’t see a consistent swing and miss pitch other than a change-up, and I get wary about relying on guys to improve their strikeout rates when that’s their best pitch. It’s just really hard to do. Rodriguez feels like a solid floor but low ceiling option to me in 2024.
His new teammate, Merrill Kelly is also somebody that has seemed to consistently outproduced his raw stuff. Kelly throws tons of pitches, with a true five-pitch mix, which allows him to keep hitters off-balance because the offering all work relatively well off of one another. He added a slider more in 2023, which had a 21.3% whiff rate, but also allowed hard contact and was only thrown 6% of the time. There will be starts where Kelly doesn’t have enough of his arsenal working and he gets lit up, but I think you’ll look back at the end of the season and see a solid overall line that you can be happy with in deeper formats.
Seth Lugo is another deeper league starter who doesn’t get discussed as much as he should. He had a solid first season as a starter in San Diego and will now be locked into a rotation spot in Kansas City with a great home ballpark for pitchers. Lugo came into 2023 and split his breaking ball into two with clear differentiations between the slider and curve; however, as the season went on, he started to morph his slider into more of a sweeper, which had just a 12.1% SwStr% in the second half, so while it was an improvement from the slider, it wasn’t tremendous as a swing-and-miss pitch. However, it didn’t allow a lot of hard contact, and it allowed the harder slider to play up as well, which gives Lugo six pitches that he can go to. While he will never be a huge strikeout arm, I think that depth of arsenal in that home park will make him a solid ratio target in 15-team leagues.
I just can’t get in on Chris Bassitt. I know he was great last year, but I also know he had just a 9.4% SwStr%, a 4.25 SIERA, a 15.4% K-BB% and gets consistently poor Stuff+ and PLV marks. So we have a pitcher with a deep arsenal of pitches, who certainly knows how to pitch, but he doesn’t miss bats and has below average raw stuff. That’s just too risky of a profile for me to get behind. I feel like it could implode at any time.
Speaking of implode at any time, Charlie Morton continues to ride his curveball into his 40s. The pitch remains elite with a 19% SwStr% in 2023, and he threw it even more, at 43% of the time. However, the rest of the arsenal leaves a lot to be desired. The change-up flashes at times, but he really only uses it to lefties. His cutter is kind of more like a slider to righties, and it was a much better pitch for him in 2023 but it also gave up a 12.5% barrel rate to righties, which is not ideal. This just feels a lot like late-career Adam Wainwright with an over-reliance on one pitch and that scares me.
At the end of 2021, the Rays had Michael Wacha go to his change-up more often, and he saw a huge surge in his results. In 2022, the Red Sox signed him and asked him to do the same, with similarly strong results, and then, in 2023, the Padres moved him into their rotation and had him throw the change-up more than any other pitch. It works for Wacha since it’s such an elite offering, but he doesn’t even get an 8% SwStr% on any of his other pitches. I think he’ll have solid ratios in Kansas City, and he does mitigate hard contact, but I can’t see much strikeout upside and win total upside, which will limit his fantasy value.
Marcus Stroman joining the Yankees is interesting. The park is a touch worse for him, as is the infield defense, but the team context is a little better. I’m also curious to see what they do with his arsenal since Stroman has been a known tinkerer. He has some trouble finding the zone with his slider and splitter, but the cutter is really good and could be a foundational pitch if he builds around it. I don’t think Stroman will be an exciting pick in your drafts, but I think he’ll be a solid ratio pitcher with a good chance for wins and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I had to rank Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw somewhere, but when will they pitch in 2024? Can they stay healthy? I just have so many questions and not nearly enough answers.
This tier is filled with fun late-round fliers but also pitchers who could be in the minors or bullpen by mid-season.
Many people were enamored with Aaron Ashby after he debuted in 2021 and posted a 4.55 ERA in 31.2 innings but also showed off a 97 mph fastball from the left side en route to a 29.3% strikeout rate and 13.3% swinging strike rate. However, Ashby failed to take a big step forward in 2022 then got hurt and missed all of the 2023 season. However, there is enough to like in this profile. In both healthy seasons, his slider was an elite swing and miss pitch, he flashed the ability to miss bats with his change-up, and he also limited hard contact. His command suffered a bit in his second season, but he’s a lefty with plus velocity, two good swing-and-miss pitches, and the ability to limit hard contact who only has to beat out Colin Rea and Joe Ross to win a spot in the Brewers rotation.
This Trevor Rogers ranking is because I’m not willing to give up on 2021. It was such a good season, but the 2022 was a disaster with tipping pitches and losing command and then he got hurt. He’s still only 26 years old and features an elite change-up, when he isn’t tipping it, and a four-seam/sinker pairing that works. Add in the potential in his sweeper, and you have an arm that could still be very fantasy relevant.
Louie Varland was a fantasy darling last year because his pitches pop in stuff models. However, he really popped once he moved into the bullpen. The four-seam has great extension and can be a good whiff pitch, but also got hit hard last year because Varland doesn’t really get it up. He also has a solid cutter and a slider that should be better than it was. His performance in the bullpen could cause the Twins to leave him there, but if he wins a spot in the rotation, I think there’s upside for a good year.
I’m a Chase Silseth fan because I believe in his new slider. After a stint in the minors, Silseth came back up and was throwing his slider four mph slower and with six more inches of drop, almost like a sweeping curve. While his second half sample size was a small one (after being hit by a comebacker in a scary moment), the new slider had a 1.74 dERA and 16.7% SwStr%. It he continued to get comfortable with it during the offseason that would give him a potential plus pitch to go along with splitter that showed good swing-and-miss potential but lacks consistency. That’s a solid foundation with a chance to raise his floor if he can land on a good usage approach for his four-seam and sinker. He’s just 23-years-old, so I think we should expect growth, and I don’t see why the Angels wouldn’t keep him in the rotation.
Kyle Harrison had tremendous Triple-A numbers and had good success in his brief time with the Giants, but it feels a bit flukey. His fastball lacks much extension or IVB but he does run it in on lefties well. I’m just not sure there’s a great approach for it currently with righties since he doesn’t like to get it inside there so far. His curveball is also a weird tweener pitch that grades out well but allowed an 11.5% barrel rate last year. I’m just not sure there is a deep enough arsenal here to have sustained success at the MLB level and the Giants love to piggyback their starters, so how many innings will he throw?
People want to avoid all Oakland pitchers, but JP Sears is actually kinda good. At least, his sweeper is. The pitch is a true swing and miss offering and doesn’t give up a lot of hard contact, so Sears just needs to set it up. Unfortunately, his four-seam isn’t great and his change-up also seems to lack consistency. However, Sears was pretty good against righties with that three-pitch mix, and I think further growth on the sweeper would help him against lefties as well. I’m not fully bought in, but I do see some pieces that I like here.
Cade Horton is one of my favorite prospect pitchers this year. He has electric stuff that carried him through three levels last year, including 27 innings at Double0A, where he posted a 28.4% strikeout rate. He’ll be 23 years old over the summer and, as a college pitcher, has enough experience under his belt that I think the Cubs will be aggressive in promoting him. Considering Jordan Wicks and Kyle Hendricks are holding down the last two spots in the Cubs rotation as of now, I don’t think it’s crazy to see Horton in the big leagues early if he has a good spring training.
I’m confused by Andrew Abbott. When I watched him last year, I felt like he shouldn’t have had the success he did. The underlying metrics seem to agree with a 4.56 xFIP and 4.33 SIERA compared to his 3.87 ERA. But he also dominated Double-A and Triple-A and posted a 26% strikeout rate in his 109.1 big league innings, so something he is doing is working. There are far too many pitchers in Cincinnati right now, which makes me less confident in his innings total, but I can’t sleep on what he’s done on the mound so far.
Listen, I won’t quit Reid Detmers. You can’t make me. But I will put him far down on this list. I still dream on him finding more consistency with his curve and slider to allow him to rely less on his four-seam, and then he also introduced a change-up at the end of last season, which was a solid pitch that adds depth to his arsenal. He’s still just 24 years old, and I think the Angels will give him as many innings as he can handle, so maybe this is the year he puts it all together?
The final tier is some less exciting pitchers than Tier 14 but all pitchers who I think have another level in them then they showed in 2023.
At one point, Matt Manning seemed like the prized pitching prospect in the Tigers system, but injuries and a lack of development have quieted that a bit. Still, Manning has been pretty successful in his limited MLB innings over the last two seasons with a 3.43 ERA season in 2022 and a 3.58 ERA mark in 2023. His four-seam have elite extension and great approach angle, but it has mediocre velocity, so he needs to start getting it up in the zone more to get more whiffs. If he can do that, there’s something here because Manning has a tremendous slider that he pounds the zone with an induces tons of weak contact. The downside is that even that pitch doesn’t miss bats, and the rest of the arsenal hasn’t developed. Still, with some better four-seam usage, I could see Manning being a steady ratio contributor in deeper leagues for an improving Tigers team.
We’ve dreamed on Chris Paddack before and, to a certain extent, I’m ready to do it again. Paddack may only have thrown five innings last year, but the fact that he was able to come back and pitch suggests he’s had a fully healthy offseason to work on honing his pitch mix with a Twins organization that has seen a number of their starters use Driveline to improve their arsenal. He currently has a spot in the Twins’ rotation, and I’m willing to take a gamble late that he’s in a plate that can optimize his above-average IVB on the fastball and solid change-up. Could he learn the sweeper that Pablo Lopez brought in last year? That could be fun.
Clarke Schmidt is another pitcher with some concerns but a spot in a starting rotation for now. Against righties last year, Schmidt was a pretty good pitcher, with a .236 batting average against and a 25% strikeout rate. That’s because righties had a tough time with his sweeper/cutter combo, and the sweeper posted solid whiff rates while the sinker did just enough to keep hitters honest. Yet, against lefties, he got pummeled with a .303 average against and just an 18% strikeout rate. The sweeper has a 17.1% barrel rate allowed to lefties and he brings in his curve against them, but it doesn’t do much. Certainly the Yankees also know this and they’ve come up with an offseason plan for Schmidt to improve against lefties. If he can, I think he can be a solid fantasy arm.
Remember when Andrew Heaney was the next ace and the best bargain in all of fantasy baseball? Yeah, me neither, but now that people have forgotten all about him, I’m intrigued. With Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Tyler Mahle all injured, Heaney will be in the Rangers’ rotation to start the year. While 2023 wasn’t great, I think there is enough that remains in his arsenal to think it was just a blip. His SwStr% against lefties was over 4% worse than against righties because his slider command really struggled in two-strike counts. That feels like an outlier to me. However, his four-seam and change-up combo created a decent amount of whiffs against righties because he has great VAA and pounds the top of the zone, something he does far less against lefties. He is just a two-pitch pitcher against lefties, so he needs to get that slider ironed out, but we’ve seen him be dominant with that pitch in the past, so I think he can find it again.
Ah, Sean Manaea; one of the only pitchers who could sign into a starting job and have me think, “I mean, yeah, sure, I guess.” My former Catcher’s Corner compatriot Sami Akleh has always been a huge Manaea guy, and even he’s fallen a bit out of love of late. We know the lefty went to Driveline after the 2022 season and came back pumping mid-90s, but he seemed to lose that as a starter for the Giants until they moved him to the bullpen and he found it again. The slider and change-up are both inconsistent so he needs that fastball velocity to remain useful in fantasy, so you’ll know really early on if you should buy back in or not. If he shows good velo in spring, you could be looking at a low 4.00-ERA season with decent strikeouts in a pitcher’s park with a solid lineup. I’ll take that this late.
OK, I cheated at the end here with two pitchers, but this is really about whoever wins the fifth spot in the Toronto rotation, and I think both Alek Manoah and Ricky Tiedemann deserve some love. Yes, Manoah was a trainwreck last year, likely struggling with the pitch clock and also with a vague arm injury that led to him getting injections at the extended spring training site. Still, the Blue Jays claim he’s had a great offseason, and this is a 26-year-old who dominated the minors and was tremendous in both 2021 and 2022 in the major leagues. Would it be so crazy if he found that success again? That’s not a bad gamble to take this late in drafts; however, if you’d prefer to bet against Manoah, then Tiedemann would be the other option for the fifth starter spot. The Blue Jays likely want to limit his innings this season, but he did pitch more than five innings during his AFL action, so he’s shown he can do it, and if Manoah isn’t ready to take the fifth spot in the rotation than the Blue Jays may not have the luxury to hold Tiedemann back anymore. The lefty prospect has some command and workload concerns, but he also has elite stuff and would be worth a gamble this late in drafts.
