Early ADP Tiers: Starting Pitcher, Part 1
Opening up our look at early ADP for SPs!
Other positions covered so far:
I’ve tried to be honest about my starting pitcher season-long projections over the years, and I’ll keep trying to do that. They suck. And I don’t think they’ll stop sucking this year.
For a variety of reasons, pitchers are pretty tough to project. If it’s possible to do a great job at it, I haven’t been able to crack the code.
Even with the best pitcher projections (ATC, probably), I still find it best not to rely on them when ranking/drafting pitchers. There aren’t all that many SPs to worry about in the fantasy game (75-100 usually?), so you can do it without relying on projections. And it’s more fun that way.
I’ve always said that I lean on projections a lot when ranking hitters, but not with pitchers. I think I can #IKB (I know better) the projections when we’re talking about SPs.
That means, no cheat sheet. You’re going to have to really dig into my words here.
I’m going to take my time through this bad boy. We’ll do at least three parts, going through the ADP and trying to make some comments about most of the guys in the given tiers.
Tier One
Tarik Skubal
Paul Skenes
Garrett Crochet
It will be a little sad when Ohtani eventually hangs it up, but it will make the fantasy game a lot simpler. He’s here only because of the hitting. The true tier one is Skubal, Skenes, and Crochet.
I don’t see anybody arguing against that. And I think you can rank them any which way you want.
Tier Two
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Yamamoto is on an island. Sandwiched between Crochet and Hunter Brown.
Yamamoto and Brown can go pretty close to each other, but after his World Series MVP, he’s settled into a tier of his own.
Tier Three
Hunter Brown
Cristopher Sanchez
Logan Gilbert
Chris Sale
Four guys all wedged between 30-35 in ADP. You’re giving up something with each name.
HUNTER BROWN has never had the best peripherals. His 12.5% SwStr% and 46.3% Strike% were pretty low last year. He’s a little bit more reliant on called strikes and soft contact than what you’d like to see. I’m also not sure how he pulled off a 7.7% BB% with a very high 38.2% Ball%. I guess the answer there is that he’s really good at throwing a strike when he needs to.
Hunter Brown Ball% Analysis
Situation … Brown … League Average
Overall: 38% … 36%
With No Balls: 46% … 40%
With One Ball: 36% … 36%
With Two Balls: 33% … 30%
With Three Balls: 21% … 26%
That shows that Brown is very particular with his pitches. He’s looking for chases on the first pitch. He’s not opening up the AB with a pitch the guys can hit. He’s six above the league average ball rate with no balls (#NoBalls).
All of that to say, we shouldn’t nitpick too much. A 20% K-BB% over a full season of work is mighty impressive, and Brown passes all of the eye tests.
CRISTOPHER SANCHEZ is the low man in strikeout rate so far. He was at just 26%. That’s a handful of points below the elite marks in tier one. But he has this 58.5% K%, GB%, and 1.49 WHIP+ that few others match. He’s also young and on a very good team (although if Schwarber peaces out and they don’t replace him, it might not be the best lineup in Philly).
You have some age and health questions with CHRIS SALE, of course, and then LOGAN GILBERT randomly sucked at times last year. He had a little bit of a home run issue (1.37 HR/9) in addition to an injury (131 total innings). Those are the worst things you can say about him.
These guys are all fine SP1s for a fantasy team.
Tier Four
Jacob deGrom
Hunter Greene
Bryan Woo
Here’s your last gasp for an SP1 in a 12-teamer. That just means that we’re 12 SPs (okay, 11 with Ohtani not counting) into the ADP list. But there’s a gap between 12 and 13.
The JACOB DEGROM question returns. I’m putting these names in bold cap italics in lieu of subsection headings, by the way. I’m not trying to scream at you. He was pretty affordable last year. The thought of the risk wasn’t absolutely shredding your intestines up inside when you were grabbing him in the 5th-7th round. But now you’re pulling on him with your 3rd or 4th pick. So there’s a good chance you’d be making deGrom your SP1 if you are drafting him. And is that what you want to do? A 37-year-old with one healthy season under his belt in the last six years?
The HUNTER GREENE situation isn’t a ton different. That guy has ripped more elbow-screamers than anybody the last three years.
800 more than Skenes. And, of course, I didn’t say SQUAT about Skenes, but I’ll pick on Hunter Greene. What does that say about me? Well, at least Skenes didn’t go on the IL last year like a little crybaby! Greene ended up at just 108 innings last year (119 including rehab). So there might be some fair durability concerns about him. That’s the only criticism you can make, though. His numbers were terrific. Homey cut three points off his walk rate while posting a career-best K%. Nasty stuff.
And then we have BRYAN WOO, who is nothing like any of these other guys. It’s a [relatively] weak K% at 27% without the Sanchez-esque ground ball daddy (41%). Woo gets it done with supreme command and an arm angle that hitters have rarely seen.
Low and wide like your mamma!!!
There were some durability questions about him before last year. He piled up 187 big league innings, 66 more than the previous year. Guys are injury-prone only until they’re not.
I’m fine with Woo. I’m fine with all of these guys. The high-stakes drafters know what they’re doing. But man, that tier one looks pretty juicy in comparison.
Tier Five
Logan Webb
Blake Snell
Max Fried
Cole Ragans
Freddy Peralta
Joe Ryan
George Kirby
LOGAN WEBB bro! I always said this dude could be a 26% K% guy if he wanted. I’ve always said.
I actually have said similar things. But I can’t prove it. But that’s what he did last year. Toko that lame 21-23% K% and turned it into a marathonesque 26.2%!
And he didn’t walk more dudes because of it. You usually see that as a trade-off. But no, the Webbinator did his thing. He also kept a 54% GB%. Why did it take him so long to do this?
The more important question - can he do it again? Any time you see a sudden spike, you kinda start expecting reversion. And that’s what you should do. Here’s everybody over the last five years who have gained at least four points in a single year (120 IP in both comparison years):
Everybody who has gone from low-20s to mid-20s or mid-20s to high-20s (or beyond) has given multiple points back the next year. And that’s where we find Logan Webb, Bryan Woo, Cristopher Sanchez, and Logan Gilbert heading into 2026. But I’m only picking on Webb! So go back and re-jigger your thoughts on those other guys.
It is different, though. Sanchez added velo, Woo really started ripping off whiffs, and it wasn’t unexpected with him with the youth, talent, and newfound health. Gilbert will probably come back down a few points next year.
Webb is about as safe a bet as you can come by in fantasy. He’s lapped the field in volume over the last three seasons.
That gets him near the league leaders in strikeouts every year, even if the rate isn’t that high. He’s just not a guy you can depend on for stellar ratios.
I’ve already pulled the trigger on BLAKE SNELL as my ace in one draft. I kinda like landing there. I like that he finished the year healthy and will have anothe normal offseason. He also had one of his better command years last season with a 10.2% BB%. He’ll be 33, so he’s getting up there, but if we can squeeze 150 innings out of him with the Dodgers, he’s going to return some huge numbers.
MAX FRIED seemingly does the same thing every year. He had no troubles with Yankees Stadium in his first year in the stripes.
195 innings with a 2.90 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. Incredibly valuable.
COLE RAGANS might be the cheapest guy with true Cy Young potential. His pitcher profile is a thing of beauty.
A 30.4% K-BB%! A 38% K%! A 17.2% SwStr%! A 1.83 JA SIERA! He had the benefit of a small sample, I think, and yeah the injury was ugly. But he got back in the rotation at the end of the year and held up for three outings, which is a good sign. He’ll have a normal offseason, and he’s one of the best in the league at a per-start basis.
And then we get a few less exciting names in FREDDY PERALTA, JOE RYAN, and GEORGE KIRBY.
Shout out to Peralta, I guess. He dropped his ERA to 2.70 last year. His previous three years were all at least 0.9 runs higher than that, though. So it feels like you’re buying high. The 3.59 JA ERA doesn’t inspire me.
As for Ryan, you know I like the guy. He’s THE WHIP STRAT posterboy. But he’s incapable of posting an ERA below 3.25. Simply too many fly balls and home runs. The elite ERA isn’t coming. That’s the only negative thing you can say. Okay no, the Twins sucks. That’s the other negative thing.
Kirby was a top dozen starter last year, so from that perspective we get a discount this year. It was just another 20% K-BB% from the Kirbster.
But wtf is this, a 5.5% BB%? That’s what it cost him to get that K% up to 26%. He had to chill out with the pitches over the plate. The ERA was bloated by a bit of bad luck. A 25% RISP H% is a few points above the league average.
He had a pair of starts giving up seven earnies. I don’t really like to just randomly forgive a guys’ worst starts. But in this case I’m just going to do it because I like Kirby and I’m enticed by this price.