2024 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Preview, Part 2
A full, detailed look at the starting pitcher position ahead of 2024 fantasy baseball drafts. We cover tiers 5-7 here in part two.
This preview is sponsored by The Ticker Screen, a brand-new company selling ticker screens that show scores & schedules for all sports, it goes right on your wall and looks fantastic. They sell in two widths: six feet and eight feet. Check out TheTickerScreen.com for more information and to save $100 on your pre-order!
Podcast Episode
52 minutes here talking through it. Check that out if you’re more into listening to stuff, or if you want the goods without paying!
Other Positions
We covered tiers 1-4 in part one (link above), which got to my top 26 SPs. Today, we are on part 2 of 3, and we’ll handle tiers 5-7, 41 more SPs. The podcast is free for anybody who wants to get all the details. It will cover most everything here and probably some extra detail as well. I never know where things are going to go on that pod, but I went into some extra detail on some guys in part one, and it was FUN - so I’ll likely do it again here.
Tier 5
Justin Steele
Joe Musgrove
Cole Ragans
Bailey Ober
Hunter Greene
Michael King (late addition, I missed him at first)
Chris Sale
It’s a bit of a mixed bag here, but mostly we’re talking about established big leaguers here.
Steele/Musgrove: Not upside arms, both guys on the older side (Steele is 28, Musgrove is 31) with K% under 25% last year, but they now have established records of success in the Majors, and both guys have impeccable command (5.0% BB% for Steele, 5.3% for Musgrove). We like safe arms in the fantasy game, and that’s dwindling quite a bit at this point, so it’s nice to lock in Steele or Musgrove as an SP3 for your team.
Ober: I view him similarly to Steele and Musgrove, but we can’t say he’s established. Between AAA and MLB last year, he made 31 starts and threw 167 innings, so the workload was there. He also had a very nice 20.3% K-BB% and a fantastic 15.2% SwStr% with a 33.2% Ball%. That’s really exciting stuff. So while he’s probably not a 200 strikeout threat, I view him as a safe innings eater who should put up strong ratios, even while being just one year removed from spending time in the minors.
Ragans/Greene/Sale: These are the high-risk, high-reward guys. Ragans was one of the most dominant pitchers in the league down the stretch last year, but it’s just hard for me to buy into it given his prior history. We all know the story with Sale, he’s still an ace when healthy, but he hasn’t put together a full season since 2017. As for Greene, he’s going to have to stay healthy, improve on command, and get a bit lucky in HR/FB stuff to have an ace season, but the path to it is there. I just can’t help but love a guy with a K% above 30%, and that is who he has been in his Major League career so far.
How to Handle Tier 5
I am quite often buying one of these guys as my SP3. This is the beginning of the part of the draft where I hammer SP. I’m disappointed with how expensive Ober is (ADP 158 and climbing…), but in an ESPN or Yahoo home league situation you can probably get him a lot cheaper than that.
Hunter Greene is one of my favorite breakout SP picks, and he goes around pick 140. If I’m building a safer team, I’m okay with taking Musgrove around pick 110, but more often than not I’m skipping him and Steele in favor of these younger higher-upside arms.
It’s okay to skip this tier if you’re going to attack tier 6 aggressively (which I recommend), but to repeat myself - I want 2-4 arms from these two tiers, so be very vigilant here and dive in when you need to.
Price-Considered Ranks:
Ober (ADP 158)
Greene (137)
Musgrove (106)
Ragans (107)
Sale (161)
Steele (106)
More on tiers five and six strategy in the next section.
The full post is for paid subs only, so become a paid member today to get this full post along with everything else I do. Check out the about page here for more information.