Wow, I can’t believe we’re already a month into the season! A quick refresher on how I put these together. This is a narrower focus than just “rest of season” as I’ll be updating these every month. Pitching is just too volatile to have confidence in a single ranking set for more than 4-6 weeks at a time. The tiers are more important than the numerical ranking as they’ll guide the start/sit decisions more accurately.

I want to be clear that the Must-Starts aren’t automatically the best pitchers, but rather the guys that you can’t sit with any confidence. Do I really think that (spoiler alert!) Sean Manaea is the 27th-best starter for the rest of the season? I have hard time saying that, but there is no circumstance where I’d bench him right now.

• March rankings

Please leave your questions and comments below!

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Check out today’s chat!

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The first month of the season is in the books! It was an exciting month with some incredible breakouts like Didi Gregorius being baseball’s best player while Mike Trout and Aaron Judge picked up right where their 2017 seasons left off. However, you might’ve missed some of the good-but-unheralded performances that are still worthy of attention including a veteran catcher raking, an offseason bargain smacking the ball, and a former prospect on the rise.

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I mentioned on a recent podcast that my updated starting pitcher rankings would be out today, but I’m not quite done so you’ll have to wait a little longer! In the meantime, I wanted to look at some struggling arms and see if there’s any hope. Remember, this time last year saw Jimmy Nelson toting a 5.34 ERA and probably on a ton of waiver wires. From May 1st on, he had a 3.13 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 146.7 innings.

Kenta Maeda (6.58 ERA), Jose Quintana (5.22), Carlos Martinez (4.71), and Justin Verlander (4.60) were a few other arms who emerged from crummy Aprils. Not every quality arm found their footing so it’s far from a guarantee, but a handful of April duds will be gems the rest of the way. Let’s see if we can find some of them and start with a repeat struggler from last year.

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4/29/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host
• @pitcherlist – Nick Pollack, Special Guest

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• Paul and Nick deep dive on Luis Castillo in light of his poor April and disastrous start on Friday.

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4/29/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles

• Xander Bogaerts
• Mookie Betts injured
• Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp hurt
  • Alex Verdugo

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Earlier start time, same great chatting!

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4/26/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles

• Ronald Acuna called up (6:55)
• Jung Ho Kang coming back (24:30)
• Eric Thames tears his thumb (39:39)

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Mike Clevinger had plenty of proponents coming into the season and they no doubt felt that even if his ERA/WHIP combo exceeded last year’s 3.11/1.25 marks, they would at least have strikeouts to fall back on. He’s currently besting both marks with a 1.75 ERA and 1.05 WHIP, but has just a 17% strikeout rate, down 10 points from last year’s 27% mark that sat 14th among pitchers with at least 120 innings. It’s hard to be too mad at the performance with those ratios, but we also know there’s virtually no way he maintains either because he’s not Pedro Martinez. What happened to his strikeout rate?

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Monday night’s Marlins/Dodgers game in LA garnered a lot of attention, as it was the season debut and first ever start for Dodgers uber-prospect Walker Buehler, but his less-heralded counterpart put up six strong innings for the Marlins, too. Jarlin Garcia actually bumped his ERA up with a 6 IP/1 ER outing as he now sits at a 1.00 ERA through 27 innings. He opened the season with six one-hit innings of relief in that Cubs/Marlins 17-inning epic on March 30th, the second day of the season.

He allowed a pair of runs in another extended relief outing, this time four innings at Philly. The Marlins installed him in the rotation after that and he’s netted some insane results: one run on five hits and eight walks with 12 strikeouts in 17 innings of work. Obviously, we know the 1.00 ERA and 0.81 WHIP won’t sustain. But does he have the skills to remain fantasy relevant even as his 99% LOB and .121 BABIP regress?

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