Welcome to the Starting Pitcher Rankings for 2025!

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We are live more than a month earlier than last year which helps those diehards drafting through the winter while the living, breathing document aspect of them allows us to keep these relevant all the way through draft season in March. The Hot Stove is positively blazing which has brought about several updates before even going live. Chief among them being a pair of premium lefties joining the AL East.

The updates will come regularly as I fill in the profiles over the coming weeks while also reacting to the news as it happens. We still have an ace who needs to be signed, plenty of trade rumors already in play, and the inevitable out of nowhere trades that we will get at some point this offseason. Feel free to leave comments about guys who don’t yet have a profile, but just know that one is coming. I intend to write up all 200 before we reach Spring Training.

First update is finally here in early-January and they will be much more frequent now that we’re out of the holiday season!

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My body decided to get a nastyyyy flu at quite literally the worst time of the year. I’m finally starting to feel a bit better today so those more frequent updates I promised last time will actually start coming through consistently.

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OK, I reworked the ranking quite a bit instead of just going 1-200+ within each tier. A lot of y’all had been asking for that after the first release, so there you go. I still have lots of profiles coming so stay tuned for those!

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Profiles will continue to flow as we approach March. As I dive deeper on pitchers, rankings will continue to shift. I obviously don’t want to be making sweeping changes to the them in mid-and-late March so y’all can have confidence in them as your drafts come up so I expect the massive swings to slow down after the next couple of updates. I’ve been battle-testing my rankings with multiple drafts recently and that’s been a key driver behind a lot of movement. I had my TARF draft last Sunday (board can be found here, I’m team 4) which is part of the EARTH set of drafts as well as the LABR mixed draft (board) this past Tuesday and both were eye-opening in terms of where I sit with a lot of pitchers.

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More rankings movement, more profiles and unfortunately more injuries. We’re at that time of the year when the injuries will start rolling in with way more frequency than any of us want.

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Mid-March, we are in the thick of it now! Good bit of movement again today as things really start to develop with Main Events starting over at the NFBC. We’ll be through the Top 100 profiles w/the next update, but if you have questions about anyone without a profile yet, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment.

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Another big update here on March 20th because the injuries just won’t stop! Last massive draft weekend before the season starts and then one more draft weekend for those who go right after the season gets going. I’ve battle tested these rankings in several drafts so I made some big moves based on guys I kept passing over at their current ranking and others I’ve been zipping up my board.

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Below are the latest playing time changes for pitchers since Monday, with the Patrick Corbin signing further reshuffling projected starts for the Rangers.

Below are the latest playing time changes for pitchers since Thursday, with the big development being the Rangers scrambling to fill their rotation after injuries to Jon Gray and Cody Bradford.

The splitter’s usage among starting pitchers reached a 14-year high in the 2024 season when it hit a 3.2% usage league-wide. In the past four seasons, no qualified pitcher has taken the top splitter usage trophy away from Kevin Gausman who averaged around 36% usage from 2021 to 2024. Taijuan Walker came close in 2023 when he threw his splitter 33.2% of the time, yet it wasn’t enough to top the king. 2025 seems like the year in which Gausman will lose his crown. Roki Sasaki will be one of the most-watched pitchers in 2025 and according to some, will showcase one of the best splitters in the world. How often he’ll use that pitch remains to be seen. Shota Imanaga (30.6% usage) came close to King Gausman’s mark in 2024. In Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s 90 innings pitched in 2024, he threw his splitter 24.2% of the time. What will happen in 2025? Dare I suggest the league-wide splitter usage continues its growth and finishes at 4.1%? It’s possible. Only 12 qualified pitchers threw splitters in 2024. In this edition of “Know Your Averages”, I’ll bring in any pitcher who threw at least 45 splitters and compare their plate discipline metrics.

Fastballs: Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers
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Below are the notable pitcher playing time changes in the last 48 hours or so. For further detail on the methodology and more recent changes, my first rundown from Tuesday is here.

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It’s Main Event season!! For the unaware, the Main Event is the high-stakes marquee contest over at the NFBC where everyone competes in 15-team leagues but also in one giant 700+ team league against everyone. If you want to get into the NFBC but don’t quite want to jump into the Main just yet, they have leagues at all sorts of price points to get started. This is not an ad, but I’m a huge fan of the NFBC so I’m happy to gas them up to anyone looking to get into the mix!

Anyway, with the Mains rolling I wanted to take a look at who’s moving up so far. Starting pitching is notoriously priced up in Main Events as teams don’t want to be left short on the mound and as injuries pile up in spring, a lot of managers start to move their favorite SPs up the board. I took a look at the first 3 Main Events and compared SP prices to the Rotowire Online Championship leagues which is a 12-team format that functions similarly to the Main. It’s at a lower price point so there are far more teams, but it has that same overall component that makes these NFBC events so unique.

I broke things down by pick range instead of just looking at the biggest movers overall or else all 15 guys would’ve been from the later rounds. Without further ado, 15 significant SP risers through 3 Mains (there has been a 4th since I pulled the data, but I’d already made my charts and everything so I didn’t get it into the mix):

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Following up on yesterday’s post going over position player playing time changes, we now turn our attention to the pitchers. Unlike hitters, where all playing time is shown in plate appearances, we’re splitting into two tables here. Starters are shown with games started, and relievers are shown with relief innings. When looking at our projections on a player page, you’ll notice that for all relievers, innings and games pitched are the same; that’s just how our projection system works to allocate reliever innings. I’d pay more attention to the innings, since the projected games pitched number will often be higher than the actually-expected number simply to inflate a pitcher’s innings to what we feel is accurate.

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Are you a hitter who can’t time up the fastball? Feeling over-powered? Not having your best day? Just wait it out, the hook will come eventually. Keep that weight back and search for that little bump, that little loop, as the pitch comes towards the plate. Wait on it, wait on it, wait on it….strike! It’s not as easy as it sounds. Of the 115 starting pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2024, 76 threw a curveball. Some of them got blasted; Miles Mikolas, Pablo López, Jameson Taillon. Some of them did the blasting; Framber Valdez, Seth Lugo, Max Fried. Take a look at some finer details below and see if you can find a few pitchers with positive curveball metrics for the back end of your fantasy rotation.

Fastballs: Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers
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Auction day is one of my favorite days of the year. So what to do when you love auctioning, but your first event of the year isn’t for another four days? Fake buy players from auctions that did actually take place! For fun, last week I decided to check out the NFBC average auction values and build a standard 14-player offense for $14. That’s right, every player I selected had to come with an average auction value of just a buck. This week, I’m going to flip over to pitchers, building a $9 staff. Unlike in years past, I’m just going to choose from starting pitchers only and not speculate on saves from relievers this time. Discussing more cheap starting pitching is more actionable than naming a bunch of middle relievers who might net some saves.

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Fastball! Fastball! Inside-fastball!….changeup. It’s almost soothing, isn’t it? The hitter gets some relief from the loud, scary, onslaught of heat to a nice, easy, soft-dropping cambio. But don’t be fooled, that soft-cuddly change of pace can be absolutely devastating. It can send you right back to the dugout looking, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you just whiffed so hard a little snot came out of your nose, you made a loud grunting noise and possibly pulled a muscle in your lower back. Some pitchers utilize the changeup by only throwing it to opposite-handed hitters when they need it. Some throw it with regularity, lulling hitters to sleep. There’s no perfect way to use it, but a decent changeup in a pitcher’s arsenal can be a difference-maker. Let’s continue the “Know Your Averages” series with a pitch that’s thrown in the zone less often, rarely called for a strike, and chased like a rat terrier going after a….well…let’s just get to it.

Fastballs: Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers
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