2024 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Preview, Part 1
A full, detailed look at the starting pitcher position ahead of 2024 fantasy baseball drafts. We cover my top four tiers in this post, which makes up my top 26 pitchers.
Podcast Episode
Long one here. I talked for 58 minutes about these top 26 SPs, which make up my top four tiers. In this case, there’s more information and analysis in the podcast than in this post, and it’s completely free. So you can check that out on Spotify here:
Other Positions
Intro
We cannot handle the starting pitcher position like we handle the different hitter positions. With hitters, I lean heavily on projections. With pitchers, I don’t.
There are only four categories we’re after with starting pitchers in roto fantasy baseball:
ERA
WHIP
Strikeouts
Wins
Two of which are pretty hard to project (ERA and Wins). With so much variance going into those categories, projections will naturally be less accurate there, but since we know what we’re after and we have a few stats we like very much for evaluating pitchers, I tend to just stick to other stats from the past years rather than what the projections think.
When I say “We know what we’re after”, I mean that you aren’t drafting certain pitchers for certain categories and different pitchers for different categories like you do with hitters. With hitters, for example, I could grab Jorge Soler for power and Luis Arraez for batting average. But with pitchers, I just want good pitchers. There aren’t pitchers that are great for WHIP but bad for the other categories, for example - mostly the four categories are correlated together.
So I prefer just to take a close look at each guy, rank them how I see fit, and then draft off that list. That’s what we’re doing here, so you won’t see the projections at all unless I decide to just spit them all out in order of auction value at the end.
The stats I use most while evaluating pitchers
K%
BB%
SwStr%
Ball%
GB%
You can get a pretty good overall picture of that by looking at SIERA (however, that takes a bigger sample to stabilize rather than the individual stats that are the inputs into that SIERA calculation). I also like to look closely at the pitch mix. I want pitchers with
High Strike% on their fastball(s)
High SwStr% on their secondaries
I talked more about this process here, so check that out - it’s from last summer.
Starting pitcher is a lot of fun, and it’s basically half the game, so we’ll take our time here. We’ll cover the top 350 in ADP or so, which is about 100 pitchers. I won’t talk about them all individually, but we will say a lot of words here.
We’ll do it in two parts to lighten the load a bit, so let’s get it rolling.
Tier 1
Spencer Strider
Our favorite pitcher stat is K-BB%, and simply nobody touches Strider here.
There are the home run problems from last year that ballooned his ERA to 3.86. That’s not nothing, but there was some bad luck on that front. His barrels went for homers 10% above the league average rate. He gave up
22 Homers
1 grand slam
5 three-run homers
4 two-run homers
12 solo homers
He had an average of 0.773 runners on base when he gave up homers, the league average is .52, so you should see some positive regression there. This can be summed up by the fact that Strider’s SIERA of 2.86 led baseball and was a full run below his ERA.
This was too much time spent on one guy when we have like 100 to cover, but now you have my full justification for putting Strider in tier one by himself.
How to Handle Tier 1
That doesn’t mean I love the idea of taking him in the first round. With these six stud hitters (Acuna/Rodriguez/Carroll/Witt/Betts/Tucker) separating themselves from the pack, I want one of them in the first round. If I have a pick outside of the top six, I can see maybe taking Strider, but I still most often will go with a hitter here. It’s seemingly a safer investment, so that’s just a general strategy point.
Tier 2
Gerrit Cole
Zack Wheeler
Corbin Burnes
Kevin Gausman
Luis Castillo
Pablo Lopez
I want to avoid the large tiers here. So there are some guys in tier three who could easily be in tier two, and there are some guys I have lower than the consensus of analysts out there.
I think any of these six could be the overall SP1 this year. Lots of guys could, sure, but in my view, these first seven have a significantly higher chance of it than the rest of the field.
The order of the bullet points is how I rank them, by the way. A lot of people will have Cole in tier one, and he basically is by the ADP:
ADP
Strider: 7.7
Cole: 13.2
Burnes: 24.2
Wheeler: 26.6
Gausman: 29.0
Castillo: 30.2
Lopez: 38.5
Kirby is actually above Lopez, but we’ll get to him in tier three. The point here is that you see the ADP tiers would have Cole in tier one or tier two by himself.
But I’m a little worried about Cole, not gonna lie! We talked about it in the Yankees preview.
Cole:
2021: 51.7% Strike%, 15.6% SwStr%
2022: 51.0% Strike%, 16.4% SwStr%
2023: 49.5% Strike%, 13.1% SwStr%
Plenty of drafters know this and still take him in the second round, and I can’t say that’s a horrible idea or anything like that. He’s been the most reliable ace in baseball for many years now, and he’s still only 33 years old. But the 21% K-BB% and 3.63 SIERA (15th in baseball last year) make him look a lot like the rest of this tier.
What is certain is that I won’t have Cole on any teams this year, since I’m tiering him with five other pitchers that go at least a full round later than him.
The guy that most other people won’t have this high is Pablo Lopez. He has only had one true ace season, so people aren’t quite ready to buy in on him yet. But it was a freaking beauty:
194 IP, 29.2% K%, 6.0% BB%, 15.6% SwStr%, 45% GB%
Since he’s the cheapest of this tier, he’s my favorite, I think.
How to Handle Tier 2
I want one of these top seven pitchers. There are a ton of names I like late in the draft, but a winning fantasy team (depending on league settings, of course) has 5+ really good starters, so getting a couple of late gems isn’t enough. Get yourself an anchor here.
Price-considered rankings:
Lopez (ADP 39)
Wheeler (27)
Gausman (29)
Castillo (30)
Burnes (24)
Cole (13)
I think you start your draft with two hitters at minimum, and if you think you can start with three and still grab Pablo Lopez - do that. But it’s risky. If you miss this tier, I’d advise you to go with two pitchers pretty quickly.
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Tier 3
Zac Gallen
Tyler Glasnow
George Kirby
Framber Valdez
Freddy Peralta
Logan Webb
This is where I start getting tempted to make very large tiers. Tier three could be 20 pitchers deep, but I want to do my best to keep all the tiers under 10 pitchers. So this is where I drew the line.
I do not doubt that some pitchers in tier four will have better seasons than some of these guys, but these six names feel safer than the rest (except Glasnow, who is here because of his absurd upside if he stays healthy).
Innings counts can be a little bit overrated these days when 180 is the new 200, but they do matter quite a bit. A 190-innings guy with a 3.00 ERA makes a big difference on your fantasy team, so we do want to bump up those workhorse guys. And that’s what I’m going for here.
2023 Innings Counts:
Gallen 210
Glasnow 120 (133 counting rehab)
Kirby 191
Valdez 198
Peralta 166
Webb 216
Gallen, Kirby, Valdez, and Webb are all pretty similar here in that they don’t get a ton of strikeouts, but all have strong command (elite, elite command in the cases of Kirby and Webb) and have strong records of success. They aren’t true threats to be the overall SP1 (unless they luck into 20 wins or something like that), but they are safe as safe gets as far as pitching goes.
There is not nearly the same amount of safety with Glasnow and Peralta.
The reason I love Glasnow so much is that I view him as the only pitcher who would have any chance of matching Strider in a theoretical season where nobody got hurt.
His 33.4% K%, 7.6% BB%, and 17.2% SwStr% are just not things you see very often, and now he has an elite offense backing him up. And look, he threw 133 total innings last year, it’s not like he is being asked to add 100 innings to his total this year. He missed time early in the year with an oblique, but he avoided the IL completely and only went day to day one time after returning from that on May 27th. From 5/27 on, Glasnow was third in the league in strikeouts (162) and fourth in the league in K-BB% (25.8%). People downgrade him because of the lack of durability, but to me, he’s in the best place of his career. Throwing 130 straight innings without an issue and then landing a big vote-of-confidence contract with the Dodgers.
Peralta is right there with the league leaders when he’s healthy, and we saw that last year with the 30.9% K% and 7.9% BB%. The SIERA was a little high at 3.86, and that’s because of the home run problem (1.4 HR/9). He does give up a lot of fly balls (43% GB%), and Milwaukee isn’t the best place for that - but Peralta deserves to be here with the 24% K-BB%.
How to Handle Tier 3
We are 13 SPs deep now. With the middle and later-round options that I like, I’m okay with having only one of the top 13 here, especially if the one I have is from the top two tiers. If I miss out on those names, then I’m going to grab two arms from this tier. The idea of starting my pitching staff with Tyler Glasnow in round 4 and then Logan Webb in round 6 is pretty exciting to me. You get the nice mix of game-breaking upside with Glasnow together with the solidity of Webb.
What I’m not going to do is start a pitching staff with Glasnow and then wait several rounds to take another SP.
Price-considered rankings:
Glasnow (ADP 41)
Gallen (39)
Webb (63)
Kirby (36)
Peralta (57)
Valdez (62)
Tier 4
Max Fried
Grayson Rodriguez
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Logan Gilbert
Tarik Skubal
Aaron Nola
Joe Ryan
Blake Snell
Kodai Senga
Bobby Miller
Eury Perez
Jesus Luzardo
Zach Eflin
Players here that I considered for tier three:
Fried, Rodriguez, Skubal, Gilbert, Nola, Senga, Yamamoto
But there is a question mark with all six.
Fried (health after last year)
Rodriguez (he wasn’t very good for half the year)
Gilbert (has been more good than great in his career)
Nola (K% down last year, was mediocre for fantasy in 2021 and 2023)
Senga (BB% at 13% for half the year last year)
Yamamoto (we’ve never seen him before)
There’s still plenty of ace upside in this tier. The pitchers I could easily see being tier 1-2 guys next year:
Fried, Rodriguez, Yamamoto, Skubal, Senga, Miller, Perez, Luzardo
So that mostly explains their presence here. Then you have guys like Gilbert, Nola, and Eflin who probably can’t be an SP1 this year, but have strong track records of being very, very solid pitchers.
The guys I like the most here relative to cost:
Ryan: 29% K%, 5% BB% last year. All he needs is one year getting some HR/FB luck and he’ll be fantastic. And for some reason people just don’t like the guy (ADP near 100)
Miller: Upside could be taken away if they go with a six-man rotation or hold his innings back a bit, and he did only have a 23.6% K% last year, but as we have talked about several other times - his arsenal is otherworldly.
Perez: There are innings questions here, but he posted a 28.9% K% and 16.8% SwStr% last year. He could be a tier one guy in 2025 if we can believe 180+ innings is possible (I don’t think that’s possible in 2024).
Fried: He’s never been a fantasy ace with the lower strikeouts, but the wins and ERA have always been great with him, and he’s pretty cheap this year often going after round five.
The guys I’ll probably let someone else go after unless they fall a lot:
Snell: 13.3% BB% last year. I know that doesn’t matter as much with him and his 31.5% K%, but he’s still not a good WHIP pitcher and he [probably] won’t be pitching for a new contract again this year.
Senga: Everybody has forgiven him for his 13% BB% in his first three months, but I have not! I have trouble trusting guys that are so dependent on a splitter.
Eflin: I project the K% to come down and the BB% to come up. Not that there’s not room for movement there, but yeah, this guy was not a useful fantasy starter until last year, and I need to see more than that to draft him as a top-two starter on my team.
I am going to get pretty in-depth on each guy in the podcast. So for more information, check that out.
How to Handle Tier 4
We are now 26 pitchers deep, that’s about 2 pitchers for each fantasy team in a standard league. I would say “keeping pace” is a good way to approach it this year. So if you’re in a 12-teamer, get 2-3 of these top 26. There is a wave of SPs a bit later where I really want to go crazy at, so we don’t want to overdo it at the top. I want to have a really solid offense built by the time we get there, but that doesn’t mean put all your eggs in that basket.
In a 10-teamer, I’m probably going to get three of these top 26, and then take a few rounds off until we get to the real hot zone that we’ll talk about later. But it goes without saying that if any of these guys we like falls a round or two past ADP, you have to consider pulling the trigger no matter who else you’ve drafted. Don’t pass up Grayson Rodriguez at pick 80 just because you already have three pitchers, for example.
My price-considered rankings:
Ryan (ADP 92)
Gilbert (66)
Fried (64)
Miller (77)
Perez (79)
Luzardo (84)
Rodriguez (69)
Yamamoto (51)
Skubal (53)
Nola (52)
Snell (66)
Senga (69)
Eflin (87)
Getting starting pitcher right is probably the most important thing we can do in the draft, so I want to take my time here. I’m going to cut it off here, record the podcast while this is fresh in my mind, and then do part two next week. We’ll probably get this done in three parts.
So check out the podcast above, I’m going to expand on some thoughts and give you more numbers on stuff.
Ranks So Far
Strider (T1)
Cole (T2)
Zack Wheeler
Corbin Burnes
Kevin Gausman
Luis Castillo
Pablo Lopez
Zac Gallen (T3)
Tyler Glasnow
George Kirby
Framber Valdez
Freddy Peralta
Logan Webb
Max Fried (T4)
Grayson Rodriguez
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Logan Gilbert
Tarik Skubal
Aaron Nola
Joe Ryan
Blake Snell
Kodai Senga
Bobby Miller
Eury Perez
Jesus Luzardo
Zach Eflin