97 days until Opening Day …
We've had a couple of quiet days on the free agency and trade front -- the lates moves have been the Mets' signing of Griffin Canning and the Nationals' signing of Mike Soroke to one-year, prove-it deals, while the biggest news was a non-trade between the Astros and Cardinals for Nolan Arenado – a trade that may still happen at some point. That would be a perfect landing spot for Arenado's value and could push him back into starting 3B territory for Fantasy, so let's hope it does go down at some point in the coming weeks or months. But, even if Arenado had been traded, it's not the kind of stop-the-presses news we're hoping to tackle at this point in the offseason.
It's starting to look like it might be a quiet few weeks on the Hot Stove front, then. So, we can get right to the heart of today's topic. Earlier in the week, I gave you a bunch of early hitter ADP values I like and a few I can't get on board with, and today, we're shifting our attention to the pitching side of things. And, as with the previous group of names, we're focusing on drafts on the National Fantasy Championship platform in the month of December.
But there is one thing I want to highlight before we get started: It's a lot easier to find pitcher values I don't like than ones I do right now. Pitcher pricing is always tougher to crack than for hitters because every drafter's individual philosophy with the position will differ. Some prefer to ignore the position entirely in the early rounds; some will never take an elite closer early; some will prioritize upside at all costs. And those different approaches will lead to widely disparate valuations for players – which is to say, my favorite values might be non-starters for you, while the players I'm fading may fit in perfectly with your approach to team-building.
So, today, we're going with five early values I'm buying into and five I'm selling. That's five fewer total names than on the hitting side of things, but rest assured, I'll have plenty to say about the position in the coming months, so don't feel like you're being short-changed here. When we get back from the holiday vacation, I plan on going in-depth on my pitching strategy for 2025, and I'll have plenty more to say on who I'm targeting and fading then. But here's where things stand right now:
Early Pitcher ADP Review
Favorite early values
Max Fried, SP, Yankees
ADP: 103.8
This could be the result of Fried not having signed until recently, but I'm not sure that explains it – he signed long enough ago that his price should have corrected by now. Fried's price is about 40 picks later than it was a year ago, and while that reflects some apparent slippage in his skills, I think it's probably an overreaction. Fried hit a minor bump in the road around the middle of the summer, corresponding with when he went on the IL with forearm neuritis, a nerve inflammation that otherwise showed no damage. Over a five-start stretch – two before the injury, three after – Fried gave up 18 runs in 25.2 innings, but he had a 2.91 ERA entering that stretch and a 2.39 mark after, which sure sounds like a bump in the road to me.
Fried has a somewhat extensive history of alarming-but-ultimately-not-debilitating injuries, but the Yankees were satisfied enough with his medicals to give him $200 million, and that's no guarantee – remember, they backed out of a trade for Jack Flaherty due to medical concerns. That $200 million is a much greater investment than a pick around 100 overall, so if they weren't scared off, why should I be?
Kirby Yates, RP, FA
ADP: 124.8
I suppose there's a chance Yates ends up signing somewhere he won't be the closer, but I kind of doubt that'll actually happen. As long as he remains on the market, his price will be discounted, and that's perfectly fine by me because similarly talented relievers are going off the board about 75 picks ahead of Yates right now, and that's an easy value to take advantage of. Maybe he signs with the Yankees or Mets or something and ends up a setup man, but if he doesn't, you're getting a guy who should arguably be a top-five closer at a cheaper price than Lucas Erceg and Ryan Walker. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Sandy Alcantara, SP, Marlins
ADP: 161.3
The problem with drafting Alcantara right now is his greatest strength seems likely to be at least somewhat limited in 2024. When he's at his best, Alcantara is the premier workhorse in baseball – he was 20th in the majors in innings in 2023 despite making his final start of the season on Sept. 3 – but in his first season back from Tommy John surgery, it seems fair to assume the Marlins will be a bit more careful with his workload, right?
I think that's what everyone is assuming, and combined with the Marlins' overall poor roster makes him seem like a pretty middling option for Fantasy. But the Marlins haven't spoken much about limiting Alcantara yet, and given his history, it's not as much of a guarantee as you might think. I'm expecting Alcantara to pitch better in 2025 than he did in 2023 – it was his first season with an ERA above 3.19 since 2019, and it's reasonable to assume he wasn't 100% healthy for at least part of the season. Can you still pencil him in for 180 innings and a low-to-mid-3.00s ERA? I think so, and we've obviously seen higher upside from Alcantara than that in the past, including consecutive 200-strikeout seasons in 2021 and 2022. If Alcantara gets back to that level, he's an obvious value here, and I'm certainly more optimistic about that than most seem to be. He's an awesome stabilizer if you've taken some risks with your early pitchers, especially.
Spencer Arrighetti, SP, Astros
ADP: 219.2
Typically, drafters tend to get too excited about second-half breakouts, but that isn't happening with Arrighetti. Part of it, I think, is that unless you were paying close attention deep into the dog days of summer, you might not realize how awesome he was because Arrighetti finished the season with a 4.53 ERA and an extremely ugly 1.41 WHIP. But the light started to turn on for Arrighetti in early July, and then things really clicked starting in August, as he put together a 2.72 ERA with 67 strikeouts over his final 10 appearances, covering 53 innings (one of those was a relief appearance in his final appearance of the season).
Arrighetti has several very good swing-and-miss pitches, with his curveball, sweeper, and changeup all sporting whiff rates north of 37%, and getting himself into situations where he could batters away with those pitches is the key. And the problem there is his fastball and cutter are probably his two weakest pitches, so he needs to command them well to get by. When he does that, Arrighetti has huge strikeout upside, and while I understand being skeptical that it'll work out as well as it did over the final few months, if all it costs is a pick outside of the top-200, I don't really see any case against drafting Arrighetti.
Jesus Luzardo, SP, Marlins
ADP: 442.65
This time a year ago, I was pretty much out on Luzardo; now, I can't imagine there will be a league where I won't at least try to draft him. That'll happen when your ADP goes from inside the top 90 to outside the top 400, I guess. It's possible Luzardo is just completely finished as a competent major-league pitcher, of course – that'll happen with pitchers, especially ones who have dealt with plenty of injuries like Luzardo has. But when a player's value collapses this much in the span of one year without a significant arm injury, I'm going to bet on at least some level of a bounceback.
Remember, between 2022 and 2023, Luzardo put up a 3.48 ERA and 1.15 WHIP with 10.6 K/9, and if he gets anywhere close to that level again for even a couple of months, it's going to pay off when he's barely going to cost a final-round pick. And, while it appears that trade talks between the Marlins and Cubs have fallen apart, it still seems pretty likely that Luzardo will be moved before the start of the season; if not, well, let's not forget that they traded Luis Arraez in early May last season, so they aren't exactly shy about making an aggressive move if they want to. The point is, Luzardo seems very unlikely to spend most of the season with the Marlins, so I'm not even going to hold that against him at this point. It's all upside now!
Biggest fades
Paul Skenes, SP, Pirates
ADP: 10.7
It's not that I don't like Skenes. It's that I can't buy him as the clear No. 1 starter in Fantasy, and that's what it looks like he's going to be drafted as. Is he better than Tarik Skubal? I think that's a reasonable position to take, certainly – after all, among pitchers who threw at least 130 innings last season, he led all pitchers in ERA and xERA while finishing second in FIP and xFIP to two different pitchers, and he was also second in strikeout rate and K-BB%; Skenes was also third in WHIP. You can make a very strong case that he was the best pitcher in baseball already as a rookie, and I don't really see any reason to think he'll be anything but a standout.
But the truth of the matter is, we just don't know what Skenes will look like when he's asked to throw 180 innings in a season. He's just never done it before – his 160.1 last season were the most he's ever thrown in a season. We just saw Skubal put up ace numbers over 192 innings in 2024, and he did that while getting even better as the season went on, with his FIP dropping to a microscopic 2.28 from July 1 on. Skenes might be able to accomplish something similar in 2025, but I'll take the guy who has already done it – not to mention Zach Wheeler, the pre-eminent workhorse in the game these days – rather than reaching for Skenes in the first round.
Garrett Crochet, SP, White Sox
ADP: 33.4
Part of why I have trouble justifying the price on Skenes is that Crochet was arguably better than him in 2024, and he's going two rounds later! So, why would I be out on Crochet's price? Well, for many of the same reasons, though in Crochet's case, we also did see him struggle at the MLB level as the season went on. That happened amid incredibly difficult circumstances, as Crochet faltered in the second half while the White Sox limited him to basically four innings every time out. It's easy to see how that could mess with a competitor's mindset, especially on a historically bad team, so I don't want to hold that against Crochet too much.
But it's there; it happened. And it happened with a pitcher who had thrown just 88.2 innings total in his previous four seasons before getting to 146 last season. Crochet looked like he might be the best starter in baseball – he was the only one with a higher strikeout rate and K-BB% than Crochet – but he's now being drafted with that expectation as the No. 6 SP off the board. It's just too much to pay for someone with this level of uncertainty.
Jacob deGrom, SP, Rangers
ADP: 43.8
Look, you know the drill here: Over his past 265.1 innings of work, Jacob deGrom has a 2.10 ERA, 0.75 WHIP, and 13.9 K/9, which is basically elite closer production. It's also basically an elite closer's workload, as deGrom has thrown those 265.1 innings over the span of five seasons, failing to throw more than 92 innings in any of those seasons. Of course, in that 92-inning season, he was the No. 3 pitcher, per FanGraphs' Auction Calculator, and that's not even accounting for the value of whatever the replacement for deGrom in your lineup contributed. If he does that again, he justifies this cost, even if he doesn't hit 100 innings, right?
Well, it's not quite that simple. Much of deGrom's value in that specific season came from a 1.08 ERA and 0.554 WHIP, and I don't think it should be particularly controversial to say that's unlikely to happen again. In 2022, he had a 3.08 ERA and 0.75 WHIP and was the No. 34 pitcher, so there's absolutely no guarantee that deGrom will be that valuable again. Especially since, you know, four years have passed since 2021, and deGrom has dealt with a ton of injuries, including Tommy John surgery. He's being drafted as if he's still clearly the best pitcher in baseball, and I just can't guarantee that.
With deGrom, Crochet, and Skenes – though Skenes to a lesser extent, given his lack of injury history to date – you're making a bet that these guys' upside is so much higher than anyone else in their range that it just overcomes whatever workload risk they bring to the table. And they might be! But it just isn't how I want to build my pitching staff these days. I'm fine taking on risks with my pitchers, but not with my most valuable picks. With these early-round picks, I want to lock in (as much as possible, given the fragility and volatility inherent to basically every pitcher) volume and dependability. Given the history of all three of these pitchers – not to mention how hard they throw – it just doesn't seem like a good bet to me. I'll take my risks in the 200s and 300s, thanks.
Felix Bautista, RP, Orioles
ADP: 56.6
Elite closer prices tend to be inflated a bit in these very early drafts because people tend to prioritize the role certainty those pitchers bring to the table, which is why Bautista's price is even more difficult to make sense of. I mean, in theory, he absolutely belongs here – he's the presumptive closer for a team that is likely to win 90-plus games, and the last time we saw him on the mound, he had a 1.48 ERA and 110 strikeouts in 61 innings of work. He was as good as any closer in the game.
It's just … we don't know if he's that guy anymore. We can – and clearly are – assume he will be that guy again, but we just don't know. He is coming back from Tommy John surgery and, by all accounts, is healthy right now. But he hasn't thrown a pitch in anger since August of 2023, and we just don't know what he looks like right now. If Bautista is healthy and pitching like himself, he's going to be well worth this price. But is that an absolute guarantee coming back from the injury? I'll feel a lot more comfortable about this price when he's pitching in the spring and looks like himself. Until then, I can't justify it – I'll just wait for Kirby Yates 70 picks later!
Roki Sasaki, SP, FA
ADP: 75.8
There's a lot to like about Sasaki. He's one of the most talented pitchers to ever come over from Japan, and he might be the most talented pitcher in the world who has never thrown a pitch in an MLB game. His only other competition for that lofty superlative might be Phillies prospect Andrew Painter – Sasaki, and Painter are No. 1 and No. 2 in Scott White's top pitching prospects list, and Painter is coming back from Tommy John surgery and doesn't have a guaranteed role in the Phillies' rotation yet, so I think it's fair to give Sasaki the edge there. And potentially a pretty significant one – though I do think Painter is going to see his value climb significantly when we get to the spring, and he's pitching for a rotation spot.
But as talented as Sasaki is, this price is way too aggressive. His numbers from Japan are eye-popping, but as I've written about elsewhere this offseason, they look a little less impressive in the context of the league-wide offensive outage NPB has been dealing with in recent years. And Sasaki, like Skenes and Crochet, hasn't proven he can handle the 150-plus-inning workloads we're typically asking of pitchers as a minimum in this range of drafts. In fact, Sasaki has never thrown even 130 innings in a season, and he has been limited to just 33 starts over the past two seasons while dealing with a variety of upper-body injuries. Sasaki's velocity was down about two mph last season, too, a pretty big red flag for any young pitcher's profile.
I do think Sasaki deserves to be the top pitching prospect in the game and likely the first pick in any First-Year Player Draft this season. And his upside should make him a valuable player even in re-draft leagues – a top-100 pick, probably. But I can't justify a top-20 SP price for a guy who hasn't proven himself at the MLB level, especially not one with the red flags Sasaki brings to the table.