Jake Mailhot’s 2023 Ottoneu Starting Pitcher Rankings

With the rankings for position players complete, I’ll turn my attention to the mound, starting with my rankings for starting pitchers.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP

I really like the format of Chad’s ranking so I’ll try and emulate them a bit here. Here are few more notes about my process:

1. Tiers > Ranks. While these players will all be technically ranked ordinally, the tier they’re placed in really matters. The order within the tiers doesn’t matter as much, though that isn’t to imply that the players within each tier are interchangeable either.
2. Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection.
3. P/IP is the basis. Points per innings pitched is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating pitchers in Ottoneu but there are plenty of factors that will affect a player’s ranking outside of their raw projection. Injury risk, projected playing time and role, age, and future value are all things that need to be taken into account when evaluating pitchers.
4. Dollar amounts are pre-inflation. The dollar amounts assigned to each tier are pre-inflation but are easily adjusted for your league context.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on the position below and discuss a handful of players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

Pitching is always tricky to evaluate. It seems like there are always breakout pitchers who made a tweak to their arsenal or are suddenly throwing 95 after an offseason trip to Driveline. There are always the established options who can be reliable, but pitchers break down more often than any other position. That means investing a large portion of your salary cap into your pitching staff will always carry some amount of risk.

To be fair, there’s great reward if you choose to pay up for the best pitchers on the market. There’s about 25-30 guys who are projected to cross the 5 P/IP threshold and a handful who might even get up to 6 P/IP. The risk is so much greater in these higher tiers; the best pitcher on the planet has thrown just 156.1 innings over the last two years. They were extremely high quality innings, but it’s an open question whether those few innings were worth the high market price deGrom commanded.

Luckily, if you choose to pass on the best pitchers on the market, there’s a large middle tier that you can build a perfectly productive pitching staff with. There’s probably 40-50 guys in this group that have good projections but won’t break the bank to roster. Some of them even have the upside to push into the higher tiers if things go right in 2023. This is where I like to build the bulk of my staff.

Once you’re past those top 70-80 pitchers, you’re getting into the lower tiers where all sorts of warts and question marks abound. Here, you’re simply searching for potential breakouts and bounce backs. There are a bunch of pitchers in these lower tiers who will give you bulk innings without good ratios. These guys will provide consistent points but their ceilings are usually capped pretty low; they’re good options if you need to mitigate some of the risk you might have taken on with some of your higher priced pitchers.

The other nice thing about playing in these lower tiers is that you can churn through pitchers pretty quickly if they’re not working out. Chasing after the newest breakout or surprising rookie is much easier if you don’t have to jettison a higher priced player to open up a roster spot. There are always guys on the waiver wire who will be useful for your team during the season, the trick is to quickly determine which ones to pursue because they’re actually productive and which ones to pass on because they’re getting lucky or on a hot streak.

Three Guys I Like More than Chad
Cristian Javier – Javier finally received the opportunity to pitch out of the rotation on a full-time basis and he produced a breakout season for the Astros. He struck out nearly a third of the batters he faced in the regular season and was nearly unhittable in the postseason. He excels at generating whiffs with an elite fastball that he regularly locates at the top of the zone. But unlike some pitchers who suffer from a home run problem when they try to elevate their fastballs, Javier manages to avoid barrels too. Just a third of the balls put in play against him were hard hit and just 7.2% of them were barreled up last year. That’s a pretty incredible pair of skills and now he doesn’t have to worry about his role moving forward.

Garrett Whitlock – Like Javier, Whitlock’s usage in 2023 should be much clearer; all signs indicate he’ll spend the entire season in the rotation after getting bounced to the bullpen after suffering a hip injury. I wrote about Whitlock’s potential as a starter last spring but here’s the tl;dr version of it: he possesses three pitches that generate elite results and developed a changeup as a third pitch last year to help him work through lineups multiple times. There is some injury risk here — his hip still isn’t right and he might miss Opening Day as a result — but if he’s healthy and spends the entire season as a starter, he should produce fantastic results for your squad.

Patrick Sandoval – Sandoval’s fastball has been the one thing holding him back from truly ascending to join the game’s elite pitchers. He possesses one of the best changeups in baseball and pairs that with a devastating slider. On July 2, he started throwing his sinker more often and reduced his usage of his four-seamer. His strikeout rate ticked up, his walk rate fell, and his ERA and FIP both improved. You can read more about this shift in pitch mix in my deep dive from last summer.

Three Guys I Don’t Like as Much as Chad
Gerrit Cole – For Cole, everything comes down to his alarming home run rates. He’s still running fantastic strikeout-to-walk ratios and possesses one of the most dominant pitch arsenals in the game. Unfortunately, he’s been increasingly prone to allowing a few too many dingers since joining the Yankees. His HR/FB% over the last three years is 15.8%, the third highest in baseball among qualified starters. It’s a big reason why his xFIP is nearly 40 points lower than his actual FIP during that period and why it was 70 points lower in 2022. Home runs are pitcher killers in Ottoneu and I’m pretty weary of Cole for that reason alone.

Sandy Alcantara – Alcantara turned in a phenomenal season last year to rightfully earn the NL Cy Young award. Unfortunately, a lot of his value in Ottoneu last year came from his league leading 228.2 innings pitched. That kind of workload is nearly unheard of in the modern era and it really helped him outpace his peers in raw points. But when you look at his peripherals, specifically his strikeout rate, he’s clearly a step behind the best pitchers in the league. You can pay for his bulk innings in the hope that he pushes past 200 IP again, but that seems like a risky bet considering how often pitchers breakdown. On a pure rate basis, Alcantara sits behind the pitchers in the highest tier.

Robbie Ray – Ray’s issues mirror Cole’s; he was one of the two pitchers who ran a higher HR/FB% than Cole over the last three seasons. To make matters worse, he dealt with a drop in fastball velocity last year which affected his entire repertoire. The good news was that he maintained the gains in control that allowed him to win the Cy Young in 2021, but his overall performance took a dip after joining the Mariners. Like Cole, it really all comes down to his home run rate and the significant damage it will do to his ability to produce consistently in the format.