The starting pitcher position is in a near-constant state of flux. That's just the way it goes.
Last offseason, it was all about The Glob, the idea that, outside of a few superstars, there really wasn't much you could rely on at the position. And yet, despite our typical rash of big-name injuries to the position, 2024 was defined by a surprisingly robust middle class at the position, to the point where it actually feels surprisingly deep heading into 2025, as Scott White noted in his first round of SP rankings.
So, before we get to my official State of the Position for SP later this week, I wanted to highlight some of the biggest questions I may not be able to get into in as much depth in that piece, given how many viable names there are at the position. One of the biggest was already, thankfully, answered this weekend when we learned that Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki will be posted to MLB, with the expectation he'll be in someone's rotation on Opening Day. When he'll be worth drafting is, of course, a different question, one I tried to answer over the weekend, so head here for my thoughts on that one.
And for more, keep scrolling:
Seven big SP questions
How early is too early to draft Paul Skenes?
I'll tell you this much: There is going to be someone in a non-zero number of leagues who doesn't just take Skenes as the No. 1 pitcher; he's going to be a top-five pick in many leagues. Don't believe me? It's already happened in at least one completed draft on the NFBC platform since the end of the season, and while I do think Tarik Skubal should end up the No. 1 SP in ADP, I'm not sure he will be. So, if you want Skenes in 2025, you're going to have to make a point to get him. He won't be falling to anyone this year.
And I just can't bring myself to pull the trigger on him as the No. 1 SP. Could he have a better season than the one Tarik Skubal just did? Sure, I can see how that could happen – he had the second-best K-BB% in baseball among pitchers with at least 130 innings at 26.8%, just ahead of Skubal's 25.6% mark, and he did it while being even better than Skubal at limiting hard contact. And he was a generational pitching prospect, probably the best one of the past decade, so it's not like we have a lot of reason to doubt it – he just went out and more or less did what he was supposed to.
But you also have to account for the somewhat limited track record. Skenes was maybe slightly better than Skubal (and Chris Sale) in about 60 fewer innings at the MLB level, and while that doesn't mean Skenes is a fluke, it does mean we should be a bit more skeptical about what Skenes accomplished in 2024 compared to what Skubal did. And, while Skubal does have some elbow injuries in his past, he has also reached the 190-inning mark in his career, while Skenes has maxed out at 160.1 in 2024. Again, that doesn't mean Skenes can't get to 190. But when the talent is as close as it clearly is between those two, I'll go with the guy who has proven he can handle an ace workload.
None of this is a knock on Skenes, and I think you can absolutely make a case for him as both the most talented pitcher in baseball and the No. 1 starter in Fantasy. But if there is going to be someone reaching into the first round to take Skenes, it won't be me.
How good can Garrett Crochet be?
Another reason I don't think it makes a ton of sense to be the one to reach for Skenes is because Crochet is falling, and he might not actually be a worse pitcher. Crochet is the only starter in baseball to post a better K-BB% than Skenes' last season, and it wasn't particularly close – he sat at 29.6%, 2.8% ahead of Skenes; Skenes was 2.8% ahead of Jack Flaherty, No. 7 in that stat. And, while Crochet's ERA was more than 1.5 runs worse, his peripherals were all in the same range, if not slightly better in some cases.
The knocks against Crochet are related to a lack of success at the MLB level, a poor health track record, and, of course, pitching for one of the worst teams in MLB history. The first two are viable reasons to downgrade him, though I do think the upside he showed in 2024 is worth betting on – especially when we keep in mind that the second half of his season was effectively wrecked by the White Sox's handling of him. But there likely won't be any innings limitations on him in 2025, and he's all but certain not to be on the White Sox in 2025, so I'm not going to hold that against him. I wouldn't take Crochet ahead of Skenes or anything. But if you're going to bet on upside at SP, why not do it with Crochet, who is going to go off the board three or four rounds later than Skenes right now?
What do we do with the double-Tommy John guys?
We just watched Walker Buehler really struggle coming back from his second Tommy John surgery, and now we're going to have to figure out how to value four different big-name pitchers doing the same: Jacob deGrom, Shane McClanahan, Spencer Strider, and Shohei Ohtani.
In fairness to deGrom, we did see him on the mound in 2024 for a few starts, and he mostly looked like himself; his fastball velocity was lower than we've seen it since 2019, but he also had a 2.43 ERA and 255 strikeouts in 2019, so I don't know how much we should hold that against him. He struck out 32% of batters in his 10.2-inning sample size and seems like a very good bet to remain one of the best pitchers in baseball in 2025. But there's enough risk from both a performance perspective and a health perspective that I initially ranked him outside of my top-36 starters for 2025. That's too low, I recognize now, but I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to match his top-10 early ADP at the position, so I'm probably out on deGrom.
We should also be fair to Ohtani and note that he didn't actually have a second Tommy John surgery. We don't know exactly what kind of surgery he did have, which is weird, but it seems safe to assume it was some form of the internal brace procedure. We have much less data on what that means than a typical Tommy John, but given that Ohtani will also be coming back from labrum repair surgery in his non-throwing shoulder, I have a hard time betting on Ohtani as anything more than a low-volume No. 3 SP for 2025.
The same is true for Strider, who had that Internal Brace procedure. That should be less invasive and require less recovery time than a full UCL replacement, but the truth is, we really don't know. There just aren't many examples of pitchers having that procedure, especially not pitchers of Strider's talent level. We just don't really know how it impacts both the effectiveness and longevity of a pitcher's career outside of a few examples. If Strider is pitching in Spring Training and looks like himself, I suspect he'll be a No. 2 pitcher in most drafts, even if he isn't ready for Opening Day. But this far out, I think you have to view him more as a No. 3 until we have concrete reasons to be optimistic.
McClanahan's circumstances are both much more clear and much less certain. He's now had Tommy John surgery twice, and we didn't see him on a mound at all in 2024, so we just don't know where he's at. He'll be around 15 months removed from Tommy John by Opening Day, and if he looks good in the spring, I think we'll see some serious helium to his price – possibly to the top-15 SP range. But we've also seen McClanahan at the MLB level for three seasons now, and he only truly pitched like an ace in one of them, 2022, when he matched his 2.54 ERA with a 2.79 xERA, elite strikeout numbers and better control than we've ever seen from him. Outside of 2022, he has an xERA over 4.00, with a K rate in the "good, but decidedly not-elite" range from 25.8% to 27.3%. There's ace upside with McClanahan, but there's probably also a ceiling of around 160 innings, and there's enough performance risk that I don't think I can bring myself to move him any higher than the No. 2 SP range, even if he looks good in the spring.
Which Mariners starter gets moved?
This is another situation where a trade seems absolutely inevitable, and it might have severe ramifications for the Fantasy appeal of whoever gets traded. To see why, let's just look at the home/road splits of the Mariners current starting five in 2024:
Mariners home splits
- Logan Gilbert: 2.49 ERA, 29.8% K rate, 3.9% BB rate, 2.81 FIP
- George Kirby: 3.06 ERA, 25.2% K rate, 3.0% BB rate, 2.46 FIP
- Luis Castillo: 3.15 ERA, 27.4% K rate, 4.6% BB rate, 3.22 FIP
- Bryce Miller: 1.96 ERA, 30.3% K rate, 6.3% BB rate, 2.45 FIP
- Bryan Woo: 2.47 ERA, 25.3% K rate, 2.8% BB rate, 2.70 FIP
Mariners road splits
- Logan Gilbert: 3.94 ERA, 25.2% K rate, 5.3% BB rate, 3.70 FIP
- George Kirby: 3.89 ERA, 21.2% K rate, 2.9% BB rate, 3.87 FIP
- Luis Castillo: 4.25 ERA, 20.7% K rate, 8.8% BB rate, 4.77 FIP
- Bryce Miller: 4.25 ERA, 17.8% K rate, 6.5% BB rate, 4.88 FIP
- Bryan Woo: 3.29 ERA, 18.0% K rate, 2.7% BB rate, 4.04 FIP
It's never quite as simple as looking at a player's home/road splits and saying that's how they'll perform in those destinations forever, but I think it goes without saying that the Mariners rotation certainly benefits from pitching in arguably the best pitcher's park in baseball. And it sure seems like they've leaned into it in a big way, identifying strike-throwers who can take advantage of the fact that hitters seem to struggle to pick up the ball in Seattle. So, while I don't think a trade would necessarily tank anyone's value for 2025, I think you'd have to downgrade whoever gets moved.
If it were up to me, I'd look to move Castillo first. However, his contract (which includes a no-trade clause that expires after this season) makes it less likely the Mariners will get the kind of impact bat their lineup really needs, so I'd guess he stays put. Gilbert and Miller are both coming off career-best seasons, while Woo has some pretty big injury red flags, so moving on from any of those three would make sense for them. And the stakes are relatively high because I do view all five of them as top-36 starters for 2025 as things currently stand.
Can Corbin Burnes still be a legit ace?
Burnes is maybe the most interesting player on the free agent market this offseason. He's a former Cy Young winner who hasn't missed a start since 2021, but he's also about to be 30 years old and has seen his strikeout rate collapse in recent years, from 35.6% in 2021 to just 23.1% in 2024 – basically league average! Is that really the profile of someone MLB teams want to give $200 million to?
The primary culprit for his drop in strikeout rate is probably the cutter, his primary pitch, which used to be an elite swing-and-miss pitch but regressed badly in the past two seasons – his 19% whiff rate with his cutter was good for just 34th among 44 pitchers who ended at least 100 PA with their cutter. That's bad! But Burnes rediscovered the feel for his cutter in September, got his whiff rate with the pitch back up to 26.3% over the final month, and had 28 strikeouts with just two earned runs in 27 innings over his final four starts. That's a small sample, but for a pitcher with Burnes' track record, it might be enough to buy back in.
It's possible that Burnes' decline continues, and September looks like a memory in 2025. But I saw enough there to buy back into Burnes as a top-five starter for 2025.
Should we bet on a Gerrit Cole bounceback?
I think it's safe to say Cole's 2024 season was a mixed bag, and that continued all the way through the World Series, where he occasionally looked brilliant but also clearly wasn't the same type of dominant pitcher we've gotten used to seeing in the past. In five postseason starts, he had a sterling 2.17 ERA, but that isn't quite telling the whole story (as ERA rarely does) for two reasons. For one, he had that start in the World Series where he allowed five runs, all unearned, as he and the Yankees absolutely unraveled after the first few innings. The other way in which Cole's apparent postseason success wasn't quite as impressive as it first seemed is because he struck out just 22 over 29 innings while walking 10 batters -- a 17.7% strikeout rate and 8% walk rate that would bat at least match the worst marks Cole has ever posted in an MLB season.
The thing is, I don't know how much we should be holding any of that against him. Cole came back from a nerve issue in his right elbow suffered during Spring Training, and there's reason to believe he just wasn't right all season despite being healthy. His velocity was down 0.8 mph on his four-seam fastball, and his slider went from being his second-most used pitch to his fourth, with his less effective cutter and curveball taking on more responsibilities -- and his slider was generally just less effective when he threw it, too. Despite that, Cole was still mostly effective, putting up a 3.41 ERA, 3.59 xERA, and 25.4% strikeout rate.
Given that Cole is 34 and is no longer the high-end starting pitcher with the best track record for health, I don't think betting on a bounceback makes a ton of sense. You certainly won't want to draft him as the No. 1 SP again, and the good news is, you definitely won't have to -- in a slow draft I'm currently doing, Cole was the No. 13 start off the board, and that seems to be where his early ADP is settling, more or less.
I can get on board with that. The skills he showed in 2024 would justify a top-20 SP ranking with a very good team backing him up, and while I'm not betting on a return to pre-2024 levels, it's certainly within the realm of possibility if he gets through the offseason healthy.
Was Hunter Greene's ace turn for real?
I've long been a believer in Greene's, so obviously, I want to believe that what he did in 2024 was for real. He finished 2024 with a 2.75 ERA and 169 strikeouts in 150.1 innings of work, posting not just his first sub-3.00 ERA but his first sub-4.00 ERA in three seasons while throwing a career-high in innings. And, if you are a believer in the value of a stat like xERA -- and I generally am! -- his 3.03 xERA is also the best of his career by a wide margin because he finally fixed his biggest issue: The amount of hard contact he gave up.
But here's the problem: We know pitchers have some control over the quality of contact they give up, but we also know it takes a long time to know when a pitcher's ability to control quality of contact is for real. It's a noisy stat, with plenty of fluctuation from year to year, and Greene had one of the biggest improvements we've seen in recent years, going from a pretty bad .384 expected wOBA on contact in 2023 to an elite .313 mark in 2024.
From 2021 to 2024, we've only seen two pitchers improve their xwOBACON from one year to the next by more than Greene's 0.071 improvement, and only 10 have seen at least a 0.050 improvement from one year to the next. Five of those happened in 2024, and the other five saw their xwOBACON increase by .031 the next season. The best comp might be Dylan Cease, another young pitcher with command and homer issues who put it all together for one blindingly brilliant run in 2022, only to come crashing back to earth in 2023. His xwOBACON went from .383 to .313 to .383 across the three seasons in question -- Greene went from .384 to .313 over the past two seasons.
That doesn't mean Greene is fated to suffer the same fate as Cease, but we should certainly be skeptical about his apparent improvements, especially since they didn't come with other apparent skills changes. His strikeout rate actually fell nearly three points from 2023 to 2024, while his walk rate basically held steady. His pitch mix changed a bit, most notably with the introduction of a splitter he threw 8.3% of the time and a curveball he threw 1.8% of the time, and maybe that's enough to explain it -- maybe the mere threat of that splitter helped his fastball avoid barrels in a way he couldn't before. It's a reasonable hypothesis, certainly.
But skepticism is certainly reasonable, too. And, given that we're talking about a guy who reached the 150-inning threshold for the first time in his career in 2024, there isn't just one reason to be skeptical. Greene finally put together an extended stretch of ace production last season, and we shouldn't entirely write that off. But I'm not buying it at face value. As an upside SP3, he feels like a decent pick, but I don't think I want him as one of the two foundational pillars of my rotation.
