MLB starting pitching rankings for the rest of the fantasy baseball season

In setting up these starting pitching rankings that aim to look forward over the rest of the season, a few groups emerged that were a little more interesting than the rest. Each provides a little look into the process of setting this list. Let’s take a look at those groups.

The Hype Youngsters

You’ll see them at the very top of the list — young starters establishing themselves with high-90s fastballs and hard breaking stuff and all the pretty peripherals to support their sparkling ERAs. These pitchers are not all surprises, as they were highly ranked going into the season, and Jacob Misiorowski was my bold prediction for National League Cy Young.

In fact, we talked about these young pitchers often on Rates & Barrels as being a part of the “Hype Seven.” Misiorowski, Cam Schlittler, Nolan McLean, Chase Burns, Trey Yesavage, Emmet Sheehan and Eury Pérez all got high ranks and lots of love going into the season on our show, and one of my personal strategies was to try to get one of them on every team I manage.

It’s worked well so far. Hitting (to various degrees) on six of the seven pitchers with elite upside manifesting into production for more than half of them is a pretty good return despite a fairly high investment.

But Sheehan and Pérez offer a couple of mild cautionary tales. Sheehan is having trouble maintaining his velocity deep into games, and his performance seems tightly tied to the number on the radar gun. He’s allowed 10 runs in 15 1/3 innings when he’s averaged under 94 mph, and nine runs in the other 20 innings in starts so far. Stuff+ is valuable because it’s so sticky year to year, but that doesn’t mean it can’t fluctuate for whatever reason.

And Pérez? Command obviously matters, and it’s not quite there for Pérez and may not be there for Yesavage; we’ll see as he makes more starts. It takes a little more sample size to believe in bad command, and it fluctuates more from year to year, so I tend to gravitate toward stuff — but command still matters.

The Model Beaters

One ERA estimator that doesn’t get enough credit is Skill Interactive ERA, or SIERA. It’s consistently one of the most predictive ERA estimators, and it’s super helpful right now, as most of our pitchers have enough sample size to believe in that number. In this list, it helped me move up some pitchers that I’ve been skeptical of so far. Here’s a quick look at some of them using a few of the predictive models that are important to my ranking workflow. (Remember my mantra: ERA is not predictive!)

Key percentiles for Tough Ranks

PitchersStuff+Pitching+K-BBSIERA

93%

87%

93%

95%

37%

59%

86%

85%

74%

56%

70%

68%

66%

62%

31%

58%

65%

11%

15%

87%

86%

47%

46%

58%

59%

61%

67%

30%

31%

17%

53%

56%

19%

50%

10%

Pitching+ includes command, so this table should capture stuff, command, controlling the zone and some of the ball-in-play results that fuel SIERA. You can tell by the color coding how I felt my way to these rankings, but there are secondary concerns.

Davis Martin, for one, excels in the arsenal metrics over at Baseball Prospectus, where he is in the top 20 percent of the league when it comes to surprising hitters with a large arsenal of pitches with diverse movement profiles. And he has pretty good command. But he also has a long track record of a totally different level of results with the same Stuff+ and Pitching+ in the past, so I still can’t fully buy in.

Similarly, Bryce Elder is doing great things in terms of controlling the zone, and his SIERA and K/BB are excellent, so he’s moving up. But he’s a full three ticks below average in terms of velocity, and I’m not sure I buy that some front-door sinkers and a session with Greg Maddux will change his fate. He’s had hot stretches before that fizzled out and I don’t think we can bank on the sinker and a new cutter being enough to fuel this kind of breakout.

The beauty of the game, though, is that there will always be those pitchers who pull off stretches and beat the models. Gotta love outliers, they’re a special part of the game.

The Struggling Veterans

The outliers on the other side of the ball are also difficult to place, and the work is tinged with sadness. Has the end of excellence come for Luis Castillo, Aaron Nola, Jack Flaherty and Merrill Kelly?

It’s easy enough to make a snap judgment, and nobody wants to hold on to a pitcher too long, but there are bits and fragments of good news that power the usable projections for each.

Castillo is a notoriously slow starter who ramps up his velocity as he goes. His fastball this year matches his numbers last year. Two of his three worst monthly splits over his career are April and May. His K/BB and Stuff+ numbers are a near match for early last year. He pitches in one of the better pitching parks in the league. Most of the projections still have him putting up useful numbers. He’s falling, but if you dropped him in my competitive 15-team league, I’d be looking at picking him up right now.

Nola’s stuff is up this year, but his command is down. He’s had a rapidly developing problem against lefties these past two years. Theoretically, at least, he should have enough to work with against southpaws. The Stuff+ model says his fastball and curveball are still above average against lefties, at least. He’s throwing his other pitches 40 percent of the time versus lefties. Should he be throwing them less? Or is he just a slight tweak away from being useful again, if not dominant, as the projections suggest? Some projections see a mid-4s ERA, so he’s at least droppable without regret in shallower leagues, and hopefully his ranking reflects that.

The cases for Flaherty and Kelly are more borderline, but in the right park and against the right team, they can still probably return some value. The nature of pitching is such that they could still fire off a string of good starts.

I’ve put all the extra numbers I look at into the Google doc for subscribers, along with a couple of Stuff+ goodies, including platoon splits on pitch types and minor-league Stuff+ numbers. As always, injured players and prospects have their own separate tables at the bottom of the article. Good luck!

Team ARI ATH ATL BAL BOS CHC CHW CIN CLE COL DET HOU KCR LAA LAD MIA MIL MIN NYM NYY PHI PIT SDP SEA SFG STL TBR TEX TOR WSN

Try changing or resetting your filters to see more.

It’s a little weird that Paul Skenes’ Stuff+ is just a little above average for a starting pitcher. But he’s lost some velo, and there was the rap coming out of college that his pitches didn’t have ideal shape. The way the Pirates’ ace is combating any potential problems there is ideal, though. He’s dialed down the fastball, replacing those missing four-seamers with sinkers, splitters and changeups. The way he plays the splitter and changeup off each other is remarkable — and we’re starting to see other pitchers try to mimic the two-changeup approach. Because it’s working.

While the sinker lost a little velo, Cristopher Sánchez is throwing his slider and changeup at the exact same velocities that he showed last year — and velo is not just important for fastballs. The strikeouts are still there, along with the great ground-ball rate and the miniscule home-run rate. Ground-baller pitchers often have poor WHIPs though, because grounders go for hits more often than fly balls, and that’s the only thing to watch here.

Chris Sale has turned back time on his fastball, averaging a speed so far he hasn’t seen in 15 years. He’s also nearly doubled his usage of the sinker and changeup. He’s doing whatever he can do to take just a little pressure off of his dominant four-seam/slider combination, and, of course, it’s working. You could make an argument for him as high as No. 1 on this list, but his health history is a drag you can’t quite forget.

This year’s numbers for Jacob deGrom are almost a perfect match for last year’s. He seems like he’s settled into this late-career vintage. But a couple of injury scares have already popped up for the Rangers’ ace, and though they’ve been resolved without disaster so far, they just serve to point to the only thing nervewracking about rostering him.

Ace, ascendant. With the best projected strikeout rate and the third-best projected ERA, supported by the best SIERA and the best strikeout-minus-walk rate among starting pitchers, Jacob Misiorowski could have a case for being No. 1 on this list. But there’s some risk in the bulk because he hasn’t yet topped the 130-innings pitched mark, and also because he throws a dang 95-mph slider.

He may not be hitting right now, but Shohei Ohtani is pitching up a storm. He is showing stuff that’s about as good as he’s ever thrown, while he’s cleaned up his command and become a dominant six-pitch pitcher. Because of his injury history, and the way the Dodgers run the rotation, he probably won’t crack 145 innings this year, though. Only one starter cracked the top 15 last year with that few innings pitched, and Ohtani has “only” been the seventh-most valuable starting pitcher so far this year. Picking the nits or a legitmate value drain? You decide.

Despite averaging over 95 mph on the fastball, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s fastball has never been loved by the stuff numbers. So he dialed them down, and the stuff numbers loved that idea. Why? Because he’s throwing it less. By throwing the cutter and sinker more, Yamamoto is upsetting the hitter’s ability to keyhole anything hard — they can’t just see velocity and assume four-seamer. It’s a little more of a junk-forward arsenal than the other guys at the top of this ranking, but the results are speaking for themselves.

The widest mix he’s ever thrown. Some of the best velocity he’s ever shown. Dominating for the Yankees, who should rack up wins for him. Why isn’t Max Fried higher? Strikeout rate. He’s below-average there, and hasn’t really been a standout in the category, ever. That’s fine! He has excellent command and a great arsenal, and has been consistent in his results. It’s just that strikeouts are still a category in almost every league.

The only weird thing about Cam Schlittler’s debut last year was that his highly rated cutter and curveball didn’t get the whiffs you’d expect. When I asked Schlittler about that phenomenon this year, he said that the hitters just hadn’t proven they could hit his fastballs yet. Which they haven’t, as you can tell from the nearly sub-.300 slugging on the four-seamer and sinker combined. But now he’s getting the whiffs on the cutter and curveball anyway, and he hasn’t even really leaned into his breaking ball usage yet. There’s another couple tricks in his bag if the velo starts to drop. He looks like a star with staying power.

Nolan McLean is a stud. Against righties, he strikes out nearly 40 percent of the batters he sees against a 4 percent walk rate. Just ridiculous numbers. The only worry has been what he does against lefties, since his best weapons (the sinker and the curveball) are better against same-handed hitters. Not surprisingly, McLean’s walk and strikeout rates are worse against lefties. They’re still pretty good! Maybe there’s nothing at all to worry about here.

Dialing down the use of the slider and replacing it with more of his revived second changeup has cost Logan Gilbert a few whiffs and strikeouts. It might still be the best way forward for him, though, because his breaking balls never really scored all that well by most models. The two-changeup approach is pretty innovative in today’s game, and pairing that with the best extension in the game on the fastball means that hitters have to make decisions sooner. Theoretically, at least, Gilbert should allow fewer homers and have better results on balls in play going forward, which should shave a bit off of his ERA. (And he’s always a WHIP stud.)

Peak Spencer Strider is a comp here. Chase Burns is throwing the fastball and slider over 93 percent of the time, but they are so dominant (and so resistant to platoon splits) that it’s working. Why worry about future problems before they’re here? He’ll eventually need other pitches. He may run into some injury issues as he sits 98 mph on the fastball. Can’t this wait till he’s old? Can’t we live while we’re young?

This is the most diverse Dylan Cease’s arsenal has ever been. As a Blue Jay, he’s throwing sinkers, curves and changeups over a quarter of the time, something he’s never done before. That’s taken some pressure off a model-pleasing fastball that he’s often had to throw in hitter’s counts. Pair that with inconsistent command, and you get some of the ball in play numbers he’s had in the past. What’s weird is that the new pitches haven’t fully fixed the batting average on balls in play, but they have helped him reduce the homer rate. More homers going forward could be how he regresses. The worst any projection system expects from him going forward, though, is a 3.75 ERA, with tons of strikeouts.

George Kirby has only an average strikeout rate for his career so far, so it would be unreasonable to expect a standout rate going forward. He’s a little like Max Fried in that regard. A larger mix, with great command and great results, without great K-numbers. Command numbers are usually less tightly correlated year to year than stuff numbers, but we’ve seen enough from Kirby to know that he has some of the best command in the game. It’s a super-high floor even if the ceiling probably doesn’t include the top 10 because of the lack of strikeouts.

There’s always a little bit of a question hanging over a Bryan Woo start. Can he really keep doing this while throwing fastballs over three-quarters of the time? He’s a righty who throws two fastballs and a slider with only the very occasional changeup. But he does play those two fastballs off of each other with great command, and that one slider is actually two sliders that he can once again use to play off of each other. It’s a deceptively wide arsenal with great command. Stuff-based projections like him about a half-run better than the rest of the projections, so that’s something to consider if you think this ranking is too high.

Mr. Fastball. Drew Rasmussen after his third elbow surgery is nearly 90 percent fastballs, but it’s working. Each of those fastballs has above average velocity and each also shows a distinct movement profile that has been associated with good outcomes in the past. It’s tempting to wonder why he won’t throw the curve, slider and change more, and whether his predictabilty will hurt him eventually, but he has enough command to play the three fastballs off each other, and we’re starting to have other pitchers with similar approaches that are also showing sustained success.

It was just one game, and only three innings at that, but Blake Snell showed us a lot when he came back. He sat 95.9 mph on the fastball, and all of his secondaries had more movement than they did last year. The slider was back. Maybe he fixed what was ailing him. He is always a risk to go back on the IL, but he could certainly pump out another 90 to 100 innings of low 3s ERA ball from here on out as the projections suggest. When he’s healthy, he immediately becomes a top option. Since 2022 began, he has a 2.82 ERA with 12 K/9. Those numbers are from less than 500 innings over four-plus seasons, but still.

Those that were aggressive on a pitcher coming back from major surgery are being rewarded, so kudos if you took the plunge on Zack Wheeler. Under the hood, though, there are a few signs that this isn’t quite vintage Zack Wheeler. He’s settling in about a tick lower on the fastball than he was before the surgery, his Stuff+ is the worst since we started tracking that metric and his swinging strike rate (which becomes meaningful very early) is at a four-year low. He still has excellent command of two really good fastballs, and so he seems likely to put up a good ERA. But the strikeout rate will likely be at a six-year low, and not the asset it has been recently.

Joe Ryan’s new curveball is looking like the best breaking ball of his career, and that’s significant. He’ll always be a fastball-forward guy with his surprising ride coming from a low arm slot, and his splitter is a good pitch, but he’s tried every breaking ball under the sun and seems to have settled on the sweeper and the curveball, which both have slugging percentages under .250 right now. Will that continue? Stuff+ says they’re great pitches, and so his stuff-fueled ERA projection listed here is the best of any system.

He’s not likely to keep the ERA under 3.00 all year, not as the weather warms and the league sees him more often, but otherwise Braxton Ashcraft looks as legit as we thought he was pre-season. He’s maintaining a high-90s fastball, the curveball is still one of the best in the league, and he’s learning how to fold in the sinker and slider in order to keep hitters guessing. He can manipulate the curveball to give it a couple different shapes, and he pitches in a great home park. The odd stumble here or there is just a young man learning. The only thing to worry about here is an extensive injury history.

Early on in his return from injury this year, Shane McClanahan wasn’t going deep into games, was having trouble maintaining his velocity and lacked command, particularly of his slider and fastball. That masked the fact that he had made real strides on improving his changeup. Now he’s 21+ innings into a scoreless streak in which the command has improved, the velocity is sticking around all game and his true four-pitch mix is shining. The fastball isn’t what it was when he was at his peak, and he’s still an injury risk, but there’s every reason to believe he can maintain a mid-3s ERA with a 25 percent strikeout rate while he’s on the bump this year.

Kevin Gausman is a legend. A two-pitch pitcher with one of the best splitters of all time, he’s had great longevity and is super important to the Blue Jays. He’s not higher in the ranks because he only has about an average strikeout rate over the lsat three years (and is projected to continue on that level) and is a risk for a high-ish threes ERA because of the higher home run rate and the related aforementioned small arsenal. Last year he was the 23rd-best fantasy starting pitcherand seems likely to end up around that spot again this year. Metronome.

There are a few concerning things under the hood with Freddy Peralta. He’s never thrown the slider less as a starter, for one. He’s also lost a tick on the fastball. But the fastball is still getting good results, and the changeup is working much better than the slider, and he’s still got the curveball — so it’s maybe not his most dominant mix ever, but it’s a good three-pitch mix in a great pitcher’s park. He’ll be fine, albeit at a lower strikeout rate, most likely.

Oh look, another pitcher who has added shapes to his fastball and had great success as a result. Over the last two seasons, Gavin Williams has perfected his cutter and increased his sinker usage, and that’s taken pressure off of his well above-average breaking balls, as well as given him more options to throw when he’s behind in the count. The command sometimes deserts him, but with this new arsenal he’s still able to find ways to keep the game from getting out of hand — usually. Hopefully the fact that the last two games weren’t great and he dialed down his cutter usage in those outings just means he needs to bring that pitch back in to re-capture his success.

It’s easy to see how longtime Stuff+ darling José Soriano has turned that stuff into great results this year. Ramping up his fastball and splitter usage has forced hitters to cover entirely new parts of the strike zone. Dealing with a more diverse set of movement profiles has also led to more whiffs. The reason Soriano isn’t higher is that he’s still projected for a mediocre WHIP, and it’s hard to argue against that given his currently small batting average on balls in play (that’s sure to regress some) and the poor Angels defense behind him.

Injured pitchers w/ approx. returns

PitcherInjuryReturn?Return Rk

Shoulder

> 1 wks

Elbow Strain

> 1 wks

Back

> 2 wks

Knee

> 2 wks

Tommy John

> 2 wks

Shoulder Inf.

> 2 wks

Tommy John

> 2 wks

Pectoral

> 2 wks

Back

> 2 wks

Adductor

> 2 wks

Elbow

> 2 wks

Elbow

> 3 wks

Elbow

> 3 wks

Hip

> 3 wks

105

Elbow?

> 4 wks

Elbow

> 4 wks

Elbow

> 4 wks

Shoulder

> 4 wks

Shoulder

> 4 wks

Quad

> 4 wks

105

Shoulder Strain

> 5 wks

Tommy John

> 5 wks

110

Elbow

> 6 wks

Elbow Surgery

> 6 wks

Tommy John

> 6 wks

Knee

> 6 wks

Elbow

> 6 wks

Forearm/Thumb

> 6 wks

Elbow

> 6 wks

Shoulder Strain

> 7 wks

125

Elbow Surgery

> 8 wks

Tommy John

> 8 wks

Tommy John

> 8 wks

Elbow Surgery

> 8 wks

Flexor Strain

> 8 wks

100

Wrist

> 8 wks

125

MLB starting pitching rankings for the rest of the fantasy baseball season

Tags: