Early ADP Tiers: Starting Pitcher, Part 3
Other positions covered so far:
Part 3! I’ve got 20+ more pitchers grouped into four more tiers. They are bigger clumps, and I didn’t talk specifically about each individual guy. But I don’t know, I did okay in this one. I’d say this is better than part two, but not as good as part one.
Let’s get back into it!
Tier 11
Trey Yesavage
Gavin Williams
Sonny Gray
Shota Imanaga
Trevor Rogers
Ryan Pepiot
Drew Rasmussen
Sandy Alcantara
Bubba Chandler
We’ll have bigger tiers on average from now on. This one begins with TREY YESAVAGE. This is an unprecedented (or maybe, rarely precedented) situation. We hardly saw Yesavage in the Major Leagues at all before the postseason, but he put on a show under the brightest lights. He looks really good the whole way through the World Series.
His ADP would be at least 100 picks lower if not for that World Series, I think. But hey, those games count. We’ll get deep into the numbers when we get to the Blue Jays preview. But it’s not like it was a shock. He was a first-round pick with phenomenal minor league numbers. It was pretty clear that he was a top two or three arm in the Blue Jays system all of last season. The splitter is something else. But it feels pretty aggressive to have this guy in the top 150. That doesn’t mean it will definitely be a bad idea. He could very well be a top 20 SP next year, who knows. We just haven’t seen much of him, so the range of outcomes is awfully wide.
A lot of that upside is gone by this point in the draft, and you can see that in the other names clumped together here. GAVIN WILLIAMS also had a nice second part of the season and looked sharp in the playoffs before the Guardians’ early exit. A 3.35 JA ERA with a 20.4% K-BB% in September. Did he figure something out late or just run into positive variance at the end of the year? Beats me, bro! The 12.8% K-BB% for the season sucks, though. He’s not a reliable starter, and that’s the kinda stuff we’re dealing with in tier 11.
My targets here would be RYAN PEPIOT, DREW RASMUSSEN, and BUBBA CHANDLER. The Rays pitchers have this built-in advantage of going back to Tropicana, a pitcher-friendly park. That was after pitching all of 2025 in a hitter-friendly situation in Steinbrenner. A lot of that will be baked into the ADP, but I don’t know, getting Pepiot in the 12th rounder or later feels pretty awesome to me.
Rasmussen doesn’t get enough whiffs for me to really think he has ace potential, but the dude throws more quality strikes than most guys. He had a 6.2% BB% with a great 1.56 WHIP+ last year. He doesn’t waste time or pitches. That will turn into a strong WHIP. I just can’t say much about his strikeout, ERA, or volume upside.
The bet on Chandler is just betting on his secondaries getting a little bit better and him not having those same weird command issues that popped up early on last year. He had no issues with walks in his time in the Majors (3% BB%), but it seems like he’ll be pretty reliant on the four-seamer. That could turn out just fine; it’s an elite pitch, but the secondaries just didn’t look great in that short MLB sample.
Those are my three favorites. But I have to say that once again, we have pretty decent value in SONNY GRAY. There are reasons not to like him, SHOTA IMANAGA, and TREVOR ROGERS, but these guys all really know how to pitch. I don’t think any of them will have a disastrous season if they stay healthy. It’s just a question of what you’re drafting for at this point. Do you want the upside or the solidity?