2021 First Run Starting Pitcher Rankings
Well, we got a season! It was only two months so it’s really hard to know exactly how much stock to put it into any of it, but here’s my first look. Obviously this is subject to change and will do so quite a bit as the offseason moves forward, but I feel pretty good about this initial look. I decided not to tier it yet as I’m just not feeling confident in the cutoffs, but rest assured that there are several globs once we get past the first 25 or so. I also just labeled pitchers with their current team, we’ll get into free agent stuff later in the offseason.
Let me know what you think in the comments! I’ll have more detailed ranks out shortly after the playoffs.
Note: Pearson, Richards, and Fiers added after initial post. Meanwhile, I had missed Hudson’s TJ.
Way too low on Samardzija IMO
Way too high in mine, lol
Everyone should be higher 🙂 But seriously, interesting that Morton isn’t top 50, Caleb Smith isn’t top 100, and Mike Fiers doesn’t even make the list.
Morton said last year that he would strongly consider retiring after 2020. I’m curious what decision he’ll make this offseason.
Mike Fiers sucks ass.
Bleh! Aren’t there better things to suck?
What’s the typical breakdown in starting pitchers/hitters in the top 100? Also, where would you rank Ohtani as a pitcher?
No Garrett Richards? CMart seems kinda low given that he seemed healthy-ish at the end of the season, just out of whack. As a Covid-19 survivor he’s evidently ahead of ERod (although of course as a pitcher he’s not … and yet still his ’18 and ’19 bullpen performances were good).
Added G Rich
Javier/kikuchi/dunning stick out as too low for me
Gallen (tho I do like him quite a bit)/civale/Alcantara/sixto too high for me.
Lot of agreements tho
Sixto way too low for me. He’s polarizing, but I see a guy who sits 99 who pumps strikes, has good offspeed, and may have shown signs of more Ks with some pitch mix changes. I think he’s a top 10 SP next year if he doesn’t get hurt.
Sixto has never missed enough bats, we did the same thing with May, high GB rate and mediocre K rate is inevitable
IN general I agree with you but it’s also possible he figures out how to hold onto the high GB% and boost his K% and becomes one of the best pitchers in the game. The top 15 in GB% last year among qualified pitchers included Framber, Castillo, Ryu, Nola, Woodruff, Maeda and Bieber, all of whom were above 48%.
Nate Pearson?
I knew there’d be some misses.
He’s been added
I’m curious to hear the rationale on placing Montas so high. Belief that his command from 2019 will return?
Tempted to push Burnes up — if he can improve his command a half-step, he’s a bonafide ace. OTOH the HR% is going to go up, and with it the ERA.
His season was only derailed by the back injury that they allowed him to play through instead of an IL stint and he closed brilliantly. I’m still fully in
Ian Anderson seems…quite a bit low compared to some of the names in the 40-70 range? Are you cool on him for a particular reason?
Kikuchi at #109? He was the 2nd hardest throwing LH SP at 95 MPH, threw three pitches each with a over 10% SwStr for a total 12.1% SwStr and generated 52% GB. He was burned by a 60% LOB, FIP/xFIP was 3.30/3.78.
where would Crotchet rank if he moves to the rotation?
I’m curious if he gets a real rotation shot or just becomes the next Josh Hader
If crotchet moves to rotation he’ll likely start in A+ ball next year
thanks for the response! I enjoyed the list!
Montas at #31 jumps out to me, last year is starting to look like the outlier.
I don’t agree. I think the few starts when his back was clearly bothering him are making this year look bad and if it was a 6-month season, he’d have outrun that blip and made ’20 look plenty like ’19. Still believe in him quite a bit.
He’s scary to me. I think #31 is fair, but the error bars are tall.
Can you link to this article from 2020 so we can see how well you did?
He told me to keep Flaherty instead of Darvish!
RABBLERABBLERABBLE!
Actually I don’t blame him. Darvish was just the guy who you’d bet on putting a good 2H run together and then making all the people who paid for for that performance the next year look like idiots. Guess the joke’s on me instead 🙂
I did? That’s interesting given how much I didn’t like Flaherty and loved Darvish. When was that?
Gosh I don’t remember. I tried to find it. Does someone else do pitcher rankings here?
To be fair they both were amazing down the stretch last year, w Flaherty being even better.
Yeah… I mean I did have Flaherty over Darvish despite not loving him. It was one of those sticking too close to the pack despite never taking him where he was being drafted. I’ve certainly gotten better about not just ranking someone to be near consensus, but I didn’t commit to Darvish over Flaherty even though I was vocally anti-Flaherty (per his ranking, I didn’t see a meltdown) on the pod and such
Was the MacKenzie gore omission on purpose or did you forget him
Eh, not really worried about ranking guys who haven’t pitched in the majors yet at this juncture.
Assume this is the main reason McKay didn’t make the list?
I’m surprised Stroman is so low at 121. He was 72 on your pre-season list and opted to sit out the year. That’s a pretty big movement with no injury or performance in between the two rankings.
It’s not as big as it seems. The talent disparities in that realm are small, but I can see him moving him as his outlook settles for ’21 (he’s a free agent)
Thanks Paul!
Any foreign league pitchers that could make their way onto this list if they come over to the MLB for the 2021 season?
Hey Paul,
This is Baseballfan150 from your twitch stream. First off, I loved how you ranked deGrom over Bieber, second I’m tempted on trading for Severino in my keeper league but worried about injury risk and giving up too much in a trade. My other SP’s are Snell Civale Rodriguez Kluber Valdez and Walker. I also loaded up on pitching prospects. Manning Gilbert Lacy Lodolo and Schmidt. Do you think I’m fine without Severino?
Thanks
Giolito is a top 10 pitcher. He should be above Castillo. Ks, Wins, innings, good ratios. Dude is a stud.
There’s something about Giolito, at least for me he hasn’t exited “Waiting for him to turn back into a pumpkin”. Maybe because he wasn’t just bad before his breakout, he was Really bad.
I definitely get it, but I look at his numbers and see a guy who was in transition when he made it to the majors. In the minors he was a major groundball pitcher. HIs lowest GB/FB in the minors was 1.56 (excluding his 1 start at A ball in 2016). Then he got to the majors in 2016 and his highest number since then has been 1.31 and last year it was 0.84 so he was actually a flyball pitcher.
Throw in the well-document velo issues his 1st couple years and it’s not surprising he scuffled for a couple years.
I would push up Giolito too. I like the Glasnow rating. Would like these guys as my first two SPS.
Hudson having Tommy John, won’t pitch next year
Beat me to it.
Ty for the heads up, y’all!
I don’t know about Urias. His xstats aren’t very good, and if the short season hurt anyone it’s him. He really needed innings if he wanted to be a contributor in the rotation for a healthy chunk of next season.
Flaherty is my candidate to fall off a cliff next year (not literally, hopefully)
Urias has good pitches, but he hasn’t figured out how to use them optimally. Seems like he goes to a full count on everyone, which leads to too many walks and not enough innings. Teams don’t score off him, but he can’t work deep enough to get wins. He’s 24, so probably one year he’ll figure it out, but it hasn’t happened yet. He’s a guy to keep taking a flier on to hope you catch the big year, but don’t pay for it.
I think xStats are largely overrated in a 6-month season so they definitely are in a 2-month one. I still like Urias quite a bit. I hear you on wishing he had thrown a full season, but I’ll continue to invest espec. bc he’s not overpriced at the draft table IMO.
As you may remember, I wasn’t huge on Flaherty coming into the season, so this 20 rank isn’t so much an endorsement as it is a mark of the uncertainty once we get into the late-teens, early-20s of the ranks.
What is your reason for thinking he’d fall off a cliff? His K% increased, his walks and homers were up, but that could just be attributed to the short sample of a season, and the chaotic nature of the Cardinals season in general. Outside of one really horrific start against the Brewers, I don’t seen anything worrisome about his performance. I think he’s ranked about right here. He could be a tick higher, if anything.
Super curious about your thoughts on Eflin.
I’m curious as to how it plays out with all the central-division guys who put up career seasons against easy schedules. I want to see some of them pushed down further (Darvish at 4? Bauer at 6? Maeda at 12?) — but who would move up? Would anybody really want to draft (say) Snell or Nola ahead of Bauer when Bauer was so much better?
Ponce deLeon?
He’s on there
Top 10 pick in explorer leagues
After watching Bieber get lit up by the Yankees, I’m starting to wonder how much the successes and failures of this year can be contributed to facing a limited pool of teams. It isn’t something I expect to be anything more than a case by case situation, but different pitching meta could alter how successful a pitcher could be against another divisions’ hitters. Just food for thought as I expect many to start to digest these unusual statistics.
Stroman seems way too low here.
As a Blue Jays fan, any ranking of Tanner Roark ahead of anyone else is generous.
I came to argue about Lamet but you ranked him higher than anticipated…I think you gave Snell and Glasnow the deserved love (whereas I could see others bumping them a bit lower)…Castillo strikes me as a bit high, though i know he’s a guy of yours. Woodruff could be 10-15 slots lower IMO
Smyly & Means will soar next year, ridiculous stuff upticks if you dig into it. Both were striking out everyone their last few starts. Should be two of the top 5 lefty velo starters in 2020. Speaking of which, Kikuchi might pop as well. I could see a team better with pitching trying to trade for him.
I’m gonna be all over any talented project pitcher the Giants acquire next year. Gausman and Smyly both looked pretty optimized and I think people sometimes forget about the talent in that front office.
Chris Sale at 100 is way too low for me. I know the injuries are piling up but a pitcher with top 5 upside has to valued higher than that. I’m betting he’ll be one of the top 40 pitchers off the board in most drafts.
You do realize he had TJ in late-March and will almost certainly miss at least a couple months, if not more, in 2021. And then, when he returns, there’s no telling how long it’ll be before he regains his old form. He could easily be very inconsistent for however much of the 2021 season he does play.
The list basically has Sale slotted next to Thor, who also had TJ at the same time, and the batch of top rookie arms and (ever so slightly behind) Michael Pineda. That seems reasonable enough. IF he really needs to be moved up all that much at this point, so will most of the others in that batch unless we have good reason to believe Sale will come back on the early side *and* quickly regain nearly all his old form, ie. be a top 15-20 (or better) SP as soon as he returns at start of June.
IF anything, at the moment, seems like Pineda’s a better bet to substantially separate himself from that pack than Sale — of course, that can change as we get closer to next March (and then closer to his actual return date) depending on how Sale’s recovery’s actually going. I’d probably move Pineda higher (maybe into the 70-80 range).
Dakota Hudson should be removed entirely from the list as there’s no real chance at all of him returning as SP. Even a return as RP can’t likely happen until the last week or so of 2021, if that.
And not sure Severino’s month earlier TJ than Sale and Thor is worth the diff in ranking, but I’d slot Pineda ahead of him at this point as well — again, that could certainly change as Severino’s return approaches and it happens on the earlier side…
Yep, you nailed my thinking here w/those guys. Hudson was a mistake as I didn’t realize he got TJ, so I noted it on the sheet instead of cutting him off bc of the reformatting it’d take and I was short on time.
Corbin Burnes stands out as being low, and I know you’re a fan. If you figure his ceiling is something like 3.40-3.80ish ERA with 11 .5 K/9, he has to be higher than guys with similar ERA projections but less strikeout potential (Gallen, Plesac, Wheeler, Fried). Plus he’s done the high-strikeout/low-ERA-and-WHIP thing for about as many innings as Glasnow, who cracks the top 10. I’d personally put him right behind Lamet. What’s holding him back for you? The IL stint?
I fee like Bauer and Bieber and all central pitchers could change down/up depending on the state of the pandemic next year. I.e if they get to continue to pitch in the central they could move higher then they are now, and if they have to face the whole league they fall. Who knows if baseball will be back to normal next year.
Yeah… although seems like they’d (mostly) fall, not go higher since they (at least Bieber and probably also Bauer) are already so very high up based mostly on this 2020 short season. Their pre-2020 track records would not really justify such high rankings. 2021 just seems like a significant outlier.
I mean Bauer could be the 1 overall player in fantasy next year if he resigns with Reds and they allow him to go every 4 games. If that is the case I’d say he has to be the first overall pick
Should have ranked 169 SPs, Spor…
Maybe it’s me being a nats fan, but Strasburg and Corbin seem low. Would you move Stras up if he comes back and looks healthy?
Mikolas is way too low. He should be healthy in time for Spring Training next year.
His 2019 concerns me. Too many HRs and he doesn’t K a lot of batters, so if his walks even go up slightly, he could fall apart.
I’d probably swap Glasnow & Giolito
Darvish as a top 20 pick is paying for a season he has literally never produced.
Uhhhh, are we just not counting 2020? Depends on your league settings but he was #18 in my league and the number #3 SP on the season.
Top 4 ranking off of a shortened season, pitching against weak hitting teams? No team he faced ranked higher than 16th in wRC+. I’m not buying Darvish.
I guess 2019 2H just didn’t happen? Y’all acting like this is entirely based off ’20 is kinda funny
This is still an INCREDIBLY aggressive ranking based on less than a full season of IP. He’s averaged 150 IP/year for his career and already missed an entire season. Plus he’s 34 and completely lacks the track record of other similar-aged pitchers who often find themselves among the top portion of the rankings. Taking him in the 2nd round isn’t going to win you the league unless he finishes a full season as the #1 SP, but the risk of busting it and costing your position in the standings is way too high to justify it.
Love the work. Agree on a lot. Burnes really stands out as being low. He’s probably top 5 for me, have him a few dynasty leagues and had those level trade offers. Plesac seems 20-40 spots high. I’m one league and We have complex keeper rules and he was a in-season waiver wire guy in our league. Folks passed. He eventually got picked up as a FA. Maybe I’m/this league is just off on his value thou. And, I’m no longer a Kershaw believer. Don’t value him as top 25 guy anymore.
Tyler Anderson should probably be on the list somewhere. Maybe Jaime Barria and Trevor Cahill too given how long this list is…
That Strasburg ranking seems awfully reactionary given he was a universal top 10 pitcher before this season
Darvish at 4 seems a bit heavy handed and considering his age and his last full season was good, but not being overly impressive. I would have some concerns. The benefit of pitching against NL Central lineups also probably factored in a lot of his stats this year.
In fact, any Central pitcher (AL or NL) that had some career years, I’d be very cautious with them. Not saying they’re not top 15 pitchers arguably (Bieber, Bauer, Darvish) but considering the short sample of a season, added with pitching against almost exclusively bad offensive teams, and in the case of Darvish and Bauer, both being so-so in their last full seasons.
Sixto Sanchez and Alcantara are both about 10 spots to low.
Nats are the only team with 3 or less pitchers on the list! UGH! The mighty sometimes fall very fast!
Interesting to see 4 Royals pitchers in the top 100, especially Keller at 52. You buying his 2020 is not more than a mirage? Pitchers with low K rates have a hard time surviving. And his is lower than most.
Why is Paddack so high? Peripherals are just not great and his only great pitch is his changeup. His fastball is just not working as well now, and he seems like a mildly above average guy. I think he’s more in the Davies/Odorizzi tier. His biggest strength is probably his control in limiting walks.