| |  | | Friday, November 15, 2024 | | Our State of the Position series continues with the biggest one of them all: Starting pitcher. And it kind of highlights one of the silly things about how we talk about Fantasy Baseball, because treating SP like one single position the way we do first base or even outfield just doesn't make much sense, does it? | | In your standard 12-team, H2H points league, you'll have 60 starting pitchers and a few SPaRPs (Starting Pitchers as Relief Pitchers) in lineups across the league, close to double what you'll be using from any other position. In a deeper format, say, a 15-team Rotisserie league, you're probably going to have 90 starters in lineups at any given time, plus maybe another 40 or so sitting on benches around the league. The scope and scale of what we have to account for with starting pitchers is just on a completely different level than any other position. | Which is why, before I got to my standard State of the Position piece about SP, I wanted to address some other players who I might not get the chance to go as in-depth on this time around, which I did in Wednesday's newsletter. But even with that and another roughly 4,000 words in the rest of today's, there are so many names I haven't even touched on. | | | Heck, when Scott White went 40 deep in his SP rankings article a few weeks back, that still wasn't enough to cover even a third of the names you'll need to know for 2025. Starting pitcher looks deeper than it has in years, and there are going to be drafts – especially in 12-team leagues – where pitchers I legitimately like won't even be drafted. That's a big change from last season when it felt like there weren't enough reliable pitchers to go around, even in a 12-team league. | | Of course, these things tend to be cyclical, and assuming the landscape will look one way just because that's what it looked like a year ago can leave you shorthanded. So, while SP looks to be in better shape this season, that doesn't mean you can just safely assume it will be that way in 2025 – attrition is, more than anything, the defining feature of pitching in 2024, after all. | | So, here's how the position looks right now, as of November 15, 2024. By January, things will look different; by April, even more so. It's a constantly changing position, but it looks to be in good shape right now. That's the best we can ask for. | | Early 2025 Rankings | | | | State of the Position | | | | | | 2024 Starting Pitcher Review | | 2024 top-24 finishers | | | | There are some real surprises here, especially with guys like Rodon and Bibee, who I think were viewed as somewhat disappointing. The thing about SP, more than any other position, of course, is that just staying healthy and being decent can help you finish surprisingly high. But it goes without saying that Jose Berrios was not really ever viewed as anything like a top-20 SP for Fantasy this season, despite his lofty finish here. | | Biggest Breakout from 2024 | | | | There are so many ways you could go with this one, but Crochet has to be it. He hadn't even started a game at any level since 2020, and you had to go back to 2019 to find a start where he pitched into the fifth inning, so the general reaction to him being named the White Sox Opening Day starter was derision as much as anything. That he then went out and looked like one of the most talented starters in the league for 146 innings was one of the most pleasant surprises of the entire season. | Crochet's ERA ended up kind of inflated at 3.58, and he really wasn't useful for Fantasy in the second half, posting a 4.84 ERA in just over three innings per start from the start of July on, but I don't really hold that against him – he was stuck on a miserable team that actively wanted to trade him, and it clearly wasn't anywhere close to an ideal situation to pitch in. Despite that, he finished 2024 as the MLB leader in K-BB% (min. 140 innings), with a top-10 finish in FIP, xFIP, SIERA, and xERA. He also started throwing a sinker in September that looked like a pretty awesome pitch and could give him even more room to grow. | | There are significant injury concerns for Crochet, given the massive workload increase, but I legitimately think his upside might be as high as any pitcher in baseball. He probably needs to be drafted as a top-12 pitcher in 2025, and at least in early drafts, that isn't happening. | | Biggest Bust from 2024 | | | If we're not counting pitchers who got injured during the season, I guess you could make a case for Luis Castillo or Kevin Gausman here, but I'll go with Miller, who dealt with a shoulder injury early but was still healthy enough to make 21 starts between the majors and minors and was almost entirely useless for Fantasy. He was so bad that the Dodgers sent him down to Triple-A in September and left him there even though they were absolutely desperate for starters during their run to the World Series. | | Miller was drafted as a top-24 starter heading into the season and rewarded us with just two quality starts all season long, the first of which came in his very first start of the season and the second of which didn't come until late August. Outside of that first start, Miller never really looked right, and I think it's fair to blame it on the shoulder injury. And, for whatever it's worth, he did still rate out very well by the Stuff+ metric, coming in 18th among 170 starters who threw at least 50 innings. | The season didn't go the way anyone hoped, least of all Miller. But you really don't have to squint too hard to see the case for Miller being a nice bounceback candidate for 2025 – in fact, I'm betting on it. | | | | Biggest rankings movers from 2024 to 2025 | | | | In retrospect, it's weird to see that Skenes' ADP before the season was just SP69 – he's probably going to be SP1 in 2025, at least if early drafts are to be believed. He'll rank more like SP4 for me, which hardly feels like a knock on him (though I can't help but feel like I'm definitely going to get yelled at about it at some point). He was the best pitching prospect of the decade, he was dominant as a rookie, and shouldn't have any innings limitations in 2025. | | I still can't quite get my head around Lugo's season. He's a good pitcher, but I have trouble believing he's the ace he pitched, like when his ERA estimators mostly suggest he deserved something more like a high-3.00s ERA. I'm open to the theory that Lugo's kitchen-sink approach to pitching – he throws like nine different pitches – might help him continue to outpitch his peripherals, but that's not a bet I feel super comfortable making based on one standout season. Of course, with an early ADP that puts him outside of the top 40 at the position, you don't need to buy into what he did last season to think he's worth drafting. At that price, I actually might end up with Lugo on a few teams this year, something I would not have guessed during the season. | | Arrighetti isn't going to be expensive in 2025, but seeing as how he went from a total afterthought to a top-60-ish SP, he's still obviously one of the biggest risers this year. And after watching him put up a 2.84 ERA with 63 strikeouts over 50.2 innings in his final nine starts, I'll be very interested in chasing the upside here. He'll need to command his pitches consistently, something he didn't do for most of the first three months of his rookie season. But we have a test case for what it looks like when he does, and there was a lot to like about how Arrighetti closed out the season. There is top-25 upside here, and unlike many young pitchers, Arrighetti heads into 2025 with a relatively clean injury history. If I wait on the position, I could see myself going into the season with Arrighetti as my SP4, and I won't feel too bad about it. | | | | Offseason preview | | Who needs an upgrade most? | | I mean … everyone? There aren't many truisms in sports that are actually, you know, true, but "you can't have enough starting pitching" is one of them. So we'll stick with just five contenders who could most use some rotation help: | - Red Sox – The Red Sox looked like they had solved their rotation issues early on, embracing an analytics-friendly approach that saw pretty much every pitcher on staff eschew their fastball for bendier stuff. Their starters put up a 3.63 ERA in the first half of the season, the seventh-best mark in baseball, but there were clearly diminishing returns on that approach; despite pretty good health, their rotation ERA rose to 4.06 in the second half, with even worse peripherals. The Red Sox have a clear need in the rotation and a glut of position players, with some big prospects coming up, so they seem well-positioned for a big trade – Garrett Crochet would be an obvious fit, as would one of the Mariners guys if they opt to make a trade.
- Orioles – The Orioles were at least one starter away even after trading for Corbin Burnes last offseason, so Burnes' free agency could leave them in a huge hole. There's an obvious contention window open right now and redundancies at several positions, so they should be active in both free agency and trades this offseason. It would be a fairly big failure if they didn't add two impact starters.
- Mets – The Mets kind of pieced a decent rotation together, but there's a clear shortage of impact arms here even before accounting for the possible loss of Luis Severino and Sean Manaea to free agency. And, with Steve Cohen's deep pockets and eagerness to spend boatloads of cash, they should be a player for absolutely every big name on the market.
- Cubs – The Cubs have Shota Imanaga and Justin Steele , which is a solid start, but the rest of the rotation is made up of depth guys, not difference-makers. Do the Cubs want to be a contender? It seems like they're stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity, and if they went to start taking steps forward, getting another impact pitcher would go a long way. And, from a Fantasy perspective, the very strong Cubs defense should be very good for whichever pitchers they might
- Giants – At the very least, I expect the Giants to be in on Corbin Burnes and Roki Sasaki, as they've been in on pretty much every big free agent in recent years. Whether they'll actually land one of their priority targets remains, as ever, an open question. But when you see names like Landen Roupp and the still disappointing Kyle Harrison in their rotation, it's clear there's a need here.
| | Top impending free agents | | | Walker Buehler, Nick Pivetta, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Charlie Morton, Nathan Eovaldi, Frankie Montas, Luis Severino, Nick Martinez … This list could have been even longer. Are those guys going to change any team's fortunes if they sign them this offseason? Not necessarily, but if they land in the right spot, they could certainly matter for Fantasy. | I wrote about Burnes as one of my " seven big questions" newsletter earlier in the week, and I do still think he has legitimate ace upside and should be drafted as a top-five starting pitcher for Fantasy. I don't think anyone else here realistically has that kind of upside, except for maybe Snell, so let's talk about him. | Snell's early ADP is actually a lot higher than I expected it to be, as he's currently sitting there as a fourth-round pick in 15-team leagues and a fifth-rounder in 12-teamers, sandwiched between Yoshinobu Yamamoto . But here's the thing about drafting Snell: You have to know beforehand whether you have the stomach for it. Over the past three seasons, he has a 2.82 ERA and 1.158 WHIP while striking out 12.0 batters per nine, so there's very little to argue about with the final result. But in each of those three seasons, there has been a point where many Fantasy players at least considered dropping Snell. Inconsistency has been a constant throughout his career, and if you don't have the constitution to keep Snell around for those stretches where he looks totally useless, you probably shouldn't draft him. And, for what it's worth, I'm probably not going to be drafting him at that price, more for the fact that he has only ever thrown more than 130 innings twice, five seasons apart, than for concerns about his effectiveness. | | Trade candidates | | | | We've already touched on Crochet, and the rest of these names are more like rotational fillers for Fantasy than anything else. The one potential exception is Luzardo, who strangely seems like a forgotten man for Fantasy right now. | | I was pretty out on Luzardo last season, writing about him as a bust for Fantasy, but even I'm surprised to see his current ADP is outside the top 350 right now. He's always been a pitcher with a narrow margin for error, but he also had a 3.48 ERA, 1.151 WHIP, and 10.6 K/9 in 279 innings between 2022 and 2023, so we shouldn't forget about what things look like here when they are going well. He is, by all accounts, fully recovered from the back injury that cost him much of his 2024, and I suspect the Marlins are smart enough to let him get back on the mound and show what he's capable of when healthy before they look to trade him. If not, there's still bounceback potential wherever he lands, and if all it costs is a bench pick, I'm going to be making that bet many times in 2025. | | Top 2025 prospects to know | - Roki Sasaki, IFA – You can find my thoughts on Sasaki here, and while I take a relatively negative view of his 2025 redraft value, I do think he's the clear top pitching prospect in baseball and the most likely one to be a difference maker in 2025.
- Jackson Jobe, Tigers – Jobe has the stuff, that's for sure, including a high-90s fastball with near-ideal movement and shape and a couple of high-spin breaking balls. He got a brief taste of the majors at the end of the season, and I wrote a more in-depth breakdown of the profile, with a focus on 2025, so you can read that here. He's had some trouble staying healthy but notably has mostly avoided serious arm injuries so far. He should be in the Opening Day rotation.
- Andrew Painter, Phillies – Painter looked like he was going to make his MLB debut as a teenager in 2023, and he'll be just 21 in Spring Training when we expect him to compete (at least!) for a spot in the Phillies rotation. Painter pitched in the Arizona Fall League as he works his way back from Tommy John surgery, and reports were mostly positive out there – his fastball sat around 97, featured his full four-pitch mix, and he struck out 12 while walking two in 13 innings. He probably won't throw more than 130 innings in 2025, but they could be 130 very good innings.
- Chase Dollander, Rockies – Dollander is destined to be a "Better in real life than Fantasy" pitcher because of the team he plays for. He might be a top-20 prospect in baseball, but it's just hard to get excited about anyone pitching for the Rockies, who have had just four seasons in the past decade with an ERA below 4.00 over 150-plus innings. Dollander might be the most talented pitcher the Rockies have had this decade, but it's still asking a lot for him to be much more than a mid-rotation arm for Fantasy in a best-case scenario. Stupid Coors Field …
- Brandon Sproat , Mets – Sproat's momentum stalled out a bit when he got to Triple-A. Whether that's because he was "figured out" or just ran out of gas at the end of his first pro season is an open question, but it's an important one because Sproat's ascension was incredibly rapid – he went from a 4.66 ERA as a Senior at Florida in 2023 to absolutely dominating High-A and Double-A. He has good pitch characteristics, but command has been an issue for him at times, and given his stumble at Triple-A (7.53 ERA in seven starts), I would imagine the Mets might want to see more from him before he makes his debut. But a good spring could certainly change that.
- Bubba Chandler, Pirates – The Pirates might have the most talented young trio in any rotation on Opening Day when Chandler presumably joins Jared Jones and Paul Skenes. He took a gigantic step forward in 2024, throwing 119.2 innings with a 3.08 ERA and 31% strikeout rate across Double-A and Triple-A while refining his command and his changeup. The Pirates might have three top-30 pitchers this time next year if Chandler lives up to his potential.
- Tink Hence, Cardinals – If he can ever stay on the mound, Hence might have impact upside, and he showed that with a 2.71 ERA and 109 strikeouts in 79.2 innings over 20 starts at Double-A in 2024. Hence's slider is a weapon, and he pairs it with a couple other viable secondaries and a mid-90s fastball, but he just hasn't shown he can hold up to a starter's workload yet. He'll probably have to dominate to start 2025 before he gets the call, but the Cardinals seem likely to have an opening for him whenever he's ready.
- Noah Schultz, White Sox – Schultz stayed on the mount in 2024 and was one of the biggest breakouts in the minors, reaching Double-A as a 20-year-old, where he had a 1.48 ERA and 29.4% strikeout rate across 16 starts. He didn't throw more than 67 pitches in a start in 2024, so it seems unlikely he'll make the leap to the majors without showing more in the high minors. But it should be a first-half-of-2025 thing, assuming health.
- Quinn Mathews, Cardinals – Mathews was absurdly dominant all season right until the point when he reached Triple-A, where he gave up 12 runs in 16.2 innings to close out the season. Even then, he still struck out 22 batters, part of his minor-league-leading 202 over 143.1 innings – and most importantly, held onto his velocity gains deep into the season. Mathews should at least have a chance to crack the Opening Day rotation and won't have the inning concerns typical of pitching prospects, so he should at least be a candidate for a late-round pick in most leagues.
- Chase Burns, Reds – Burns has yet to make his professional debut, but as a soon-to-be 22-year-old who dominated in college, he should be a pretty fast mover. Whether that means he has a chance to make an impact in 2025 will probably depend on how aggressive the team is with his assignment to begin the season – if he starts at Double-A, we could see him in the majors by mid-season. He's more a name to watch than a name to know for Opening Day.
- Cade Horton , Cubs – Horton made it to Triple-A this season, but he struggled when he was healthy and missed much of the season with a shoulder injury, so he probably isn't an option for Opening Day. There's a lot to like here, but he probably needs to prove himself in 2025 before the Cubs really consider him.
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