2025 Early ADP Movers - Starting Pitcher
Comparing early SP ADP to last season to find buy-low SPs for 2025 fantasy baseball drafts
I’m in my second early draft, another 23-round Gladiator draft on NFBC. In this one, I was the first team to take a closer. I drafted Emmanuel Clase in the third round. That would be a crazy thing to do in a “normal” fantasy draft, but this style is full draft-and-hold. No benches, no waivers, no trading. If you come out of the draft without saves, you have no chance of catching up.
That start has me behind the pack in starting pitching, so I’m looking for some SP values.
One quick way we can filter to some potential values is to compare the ADP from last year. Most of the time, there’s a very good reason for a pitcher’s decline in ADP. But sometimes, the dip goes too far. I’m here to pick out those ADP decliners and isolate at least a handful of names I think are too cheap after a disappointing 2024 season.
Zac Gallen
2024 ADP: 40
2025 ADP: 1152024 Pitcher Rank: 12
2025 Pitcher Rank: 41
*Pitcher rank includes relievers
A lot of people talk about the “World Series Hangover.” I don’t really believe in that, but I’m wrong about a lot of things. The one thing that is definitely true is that Gallen threw a ton of innings in 2023. He racked up 210 in the regular season and then piled on 33 more in the postseason.
That was 59 more innings than his previous season. He essentially threw an entire starter’s worth of innings plus a reliever’s worth.
Does that explain some of his decline in performance in 2024? I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. Some comparisons:
Zac Gallen 2023 → 2024 Stat Movement
K%: 26% → 25.1%
BB%: 5.6% → 8.7%
K-BB%: 20.4% → 16.4%
SwStr%: 12.5% → 11.5%
Ball%: 35.5% → 38.0%
He lost a point on the strikeout rate, but the biggest different was the loss in command. His walk rate shot way up to 8.7%, worse than the league average. That was after a 6.6% mark in 2022 and that 5.6% mark you see in 2023.
That’s certainly out of character for Gallen, so it would not be surprising at all to see him get that back down under 7% next season. He’s just 29 years old, so we don’t have to worry too much about his age.
I’m very much interested in taking the discount on Gallen with the hopes that he will get his normal command back in 2025.
Kevin Gausman
2024 ADP: 28
2025 ADP: 1542024 Pitcher Rank: 5
2025 Pitcher Rank: 54
I am much less excited about this one because Gausman seemed to lose a ton of skill in 2024.
2023 K%: 31.1%
2024 K:% 21.4%2023 SwStr%: 14.3%
2024 SwStr%: 11.7%
You rarely see a ten-point loss in strikeout rate suddenly come back the next year. Gausman wasn’t completely healthy in 2024, clearly, but he was healthy enough to make 31 starts and throw 181 innings, so I’m not going to buy into the excuse that the loss was completely because of lack of health.
The good news is that his four-seam fastball was still terrific at earning strikes in 2024.
1,513 pitches, 9.3% SwStr%, 55% Strike%, 25% Ball%
That 55% Strike% was sixth-best in the league among qualified starting pitchers (Wheeler, Crochet, Joe Ryan, Ryne Nelson, Pablo Lopez). That provides a good foundation, and if he can keep that going in 2025, there is a very good chance of at least a moderate bounce-back.
The issue with the heater was that it got smashed when hitters did put it in play:
13 HR, .388 xwOBA, 13.6% Brl%
That 13.6% Brl% was the seventh-highest allowed on a four-seamer. What we know about barrel rate allowed is that it’s not very sticky. We should absolutely expect him to improve in those marks above. And that’s very good news for his ERA.
The key to Gausman’s arsenal is the splitter. And that pitch was much worse in 2024 as compared to 2025.
Kevin Gausman Splitter Performance
2023 SwStr%: 22.2%
2024 SwStr%: 16.6%2023 Strike%: 45%
2024 Strike%: 38%2023 Ball%: 43%
2024 Ball%: 45%2023 GB%: 57%
2024 GB%: 52%
A splitter will always return a higher ball rate. It’s a pitch that is usually thrown below the strike zone for the purpose of generating chases. I say that to make the point that the 45% Ball% is high but not a huge issue for this particular pitch type.
The problem is the loss of whiffs. Hitters put the splitter in play on 16% of its offerings, which was up three full points from 2023.
By SwStr%, Gausman’s splitter went from being elite to being a bit below average.
His slider has never been a good pitch for him. It’s fair to say that for Gausman to get back to the 2023 form, he will have to make significant gains on the SwStr%.
Can he do it? He will be 34 at the beginning of the 2025 season, so he’s past the prime years. We have seen plenty of SPs have success into their mid-30s, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.
My guess is that he lands somewhere in between 2023 and 2024. I think it’s more likely that he’s the 2024 guy again rather than the 2023, but some positive regression is likely - and it’s very good to see that he didn’t lose much on the four-seamer.
So far in early drafts, on average, 41 SPs are being drafted before Gausman. That means if you keep pace with the rest of the league, you can have Gausman as your SP3 or SP4. That’s not a play I want to make every single time, but I do think it’s a value worth taking a shot at.
Luis Castillo
2024 ADP: 29
2025 ADP: 752024 Pitcher Rank: 6
2025 Pitcher Rank: 28
We aren’t seeing a huge value on Castillo this year, but he’s more of an SP2 than a clear SP1 this time around.
After two years of posting a 27% K%, that mark fell to 24% in 2024. He did have a corresponding gain in walk rate, going from 7% to 6.5%.
There’s nothing glaring in the 2024 profile. He was still pretty solid:
SwStr%: 13.1%
K-BB%: 18%
xwOBA: .306
SIERA: 3.79
I don’t think Castillo is likely to compete for a Cy Young Award again. He’ll be 32 for the 2025 season, and the best SIERA of his career is short of the lite levels (3.35) - so he’s never really been a bonafide ace.
What you do get from him is solid production and a clear injury history. He’s made at least 25 starts every non-2020 season since 2017.
Castillo is how I started my staff in the draft that inspired this post. That’s not my ideal outcome, but I plan to fire away at two more SPs pretty quickly, and I think taking a few of these earlier-round values helps you catch up to the teams that got an ace in the first three rounds.
Jesus Luzardo
2024 ADP: 84
2025 ADP: 3302024 Pitcher Rank: 35
2025 Pitcher Rank: 98
I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Luzardo’s early ADP. I don’t think it will stay like this, and he’s an extremely risky pick in a league where you can’t drop him, but man - talk about a discount.
It’s not as though Luzardo wasn’t completely awful last year, he was;
12 GS, 67 IP, 21% K%, 8% BB%, 13% K-BB%, 4.99 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 4.33 SIERA
If I thought he would be a 13% K-BB% and 4.30 SIERA pitcher next year on top of these potential injury questions, he’d be an easy fade. But I can’t get away from the upside.
Jesus Luzardo SwStr% by Year
2021: 14.1%
2022: 14.5%
2023: 15.0%
2024: 14.5%
He has swing-and-miss stuff. That part of his game did not go away even last year while everything else was falling apart.
The command has long been short of pristine, but his 36% Ball% and 8% BB% last year are pretty good in conjunction with that many whiffs.
There’s a workload question, to be sure. We’re looking for at least 150 innings from our SP selections, and that would be a +90 on what he did last year.
There are many, many safer options than Luzardo. But I’m pretty interested in taking a shot or two on him while he’s this cheap.
I’ve got to wrap this up. I’ve included some more names (without extra analysis) and an early draft resource with stats, projections, and ADP comparisons below the paywall.