High Efficiency Starting Pitchers
Looking for high efficiency SP targets for quality start leagues and other situations
Merry Christmas! This is my Christmas morning newsletter to you all. I am just so self-absorbed that I have to force my way into your Christmas mornings. I was thinking last night about the alarmingly high percentage of my thoughts that concentrate on fantasy baseball and this Substack and the content and tools and all of that stuff. It’s way too much, man. I have a lot going on in my life with a family and with being involved in some other actually important stuff, and yet the top thing on my mind is like “what can I write or develop next for MLB DW?”
I think that’s partly just the male brain. We aren’t very sentimental; we don’t have a very long-term view of life. I suppose I should speak for myself, but I do imagine that plenty of you can identify with what I’m saying. We’re not typically thinking about what is going to happen next week or next month or next year. We’re kinda just focused on what’s in front of us now. And we want to build stuff, right? I personally can’t do much with my hands. I’ve never had to do a lot of physical labor or learn stuff in that realm, so I don’t know it. And it’s not an interest for me, either. I was at least intelligent and physically capable enough to follow the directions to build my kid’s swingset a few years back, so I’ll continue to hang my hat on that.
But most of dudes still have this desire in us to create, to build, and to provide financially for our families. My corporate job helps with the latter part there, but I don’t feel fulfilled or inspired by the work I do there. I get that all from MLB DW. So while I do need to do my best to step back and get my head off of it more often than I do, I do really appreciate having it in my life to really give me something to work toward. That’s important in life, I think - having something you’re moving the ball toward.
That has nothing to do with Christmas; it was an unplanned chunk of thoughts.
So Merry Christmas to you all. I really appreciate the audience I have here. I hope it’s a great day for you and I hope you’re all at peace and full of joy this Christmas season. And I hope that continues even when we’re not in Christmas, you know? That’s how good of a person I am. I want you to be happy all the time. A lot of the ways we try to achieve that don’t work, so I hope you find the right way. And I believe the right way has a lot to do with the first five letters of this holiday.
My gift to you is some pitcher efficiency data. Exactly what you always wanted!
I will sometimes find myself not paying close enough attention to efficiency and volume in my pitcher write-ups. But this stuff matters in most fantasy leagues. Especially in the quality starts leagues that are still floating around. I’m guessing a lot of leagues have gotten rid of that stat over the last ten years when quality starts have become more and more rare. And yeah, I wouldn’t pick that category if starting a league today. But I started my home league in 2007, so it’s still a category for us today, and I don’t think we’re changing it any time soon.
I’ll summarize the columns so you know what you’re looking at (it’s all from the 2025 season):
TBF = Total Batters Faced
Outs = Outs Made
GS = Games Started
QS = Quality Starts (IP >= 6, ER <=3)
MS = Money Starts (IP >= 7, ER <=2)
PC/G = Pitches Thrown Per Appearance
PC/BF = Pitches Thrown Per Batter Faced
PC/Out = Pitches Thrown Per Out Recorded
QS% = Percent of Starts Being Quality Starts
MS% = Percent of Starts Being Money Starts
I got the “money start” idea from John Laghezza, one of my best friends in the “industry”. It’s like a super quality start. The bangerest of all banger starts.
So let’s rip through some of the elite producers and some surprising names for some of these categories.
Quality Start Rate
There aren’t too many surprises on the list. Spencer Schwellenbach was having just an awesome season before his injury. I’ve drafted him plenty already and I don’t plan on stopping. We have some slight concern about the elbow fracture last year, but it seems like a situation that shouldn’t knock him down too far on boards this year. The guy throws so many strikes while at the same time getting whiffs and strikeouts. It’s a rare thing to find.
Trevor Rogers and Bryan Woo were the only other two to pull off 70%+. Woo filles up the zone with the best of them. He’s truly a one-of-a-kind pitcher. I’m fading him a bit at the ace cost because of health concerns, but there’s not a world where he goes out there as a healthy pitcher and doesn’t put up very strong WHIP and QS numbers.
I’ve said my piece about Trevor Rogers here. I didn’t expect to come out of the Orioles preview liking him, but that’s what happened.
Both of these guys had top-ten strike-earning four-seamers.
Having that kind of fastball is such a boost for efficiency. It’s one of the first things I look for when evaluating a pitcher - do you have a fastball you can get a bunch of strikes with? I’m not sure Rogers ends up near 58% again next year, but it’s hard to imagine it dropping 3+ points, and that gives him a very nice floor as a starter.
Some of the surprise names we see in this section:
Brandon Walter: Crafty Astros lefty who was great for them last year. But unfortunately, he’ll miss the 2026 season after having Tommy John surgery.
Parker Messick: We’re big Messick guys here at MLB DW. He’s not never going to flirt with 200 strikeouts, but the guy throws quality strikes and has a knack for keeping the ball off the sweet spot of the bat. In almost 400 pro innings, he’s given up just 34 homers (0.78 HR/9), and he held hitters to a .280 xwOBA last season on 625 pitches thrown. He posted this great quality start rate with a .359 BABIP. There’s room to improve.
Money Start Rate
Your league won’t have a money start category, but doesn’t get a little bit aroused when a pitcher on their fantasy team rips off seven innings of sub-three run ball?
Here’s everybody over a 20% money start rate:
There aren’t too many surprises on the list. If you’re ripping off multiple starts like this, people are going to know your name. A handful of names pop, though:
Emmet Sheehan: Sky is the limit with this kid. All of his numbers looked so, so good for the Dodgers last year. The ADP is pretty cheap because there are questions about how many starts there will be for him in that loaded Dodgers rotation. But nobody has any ideas that LA will be getting 100 starts from the combination of Glasnow, Snell, Ohtani, and Sasaki. I imagine Sheehan finds more than enough work to put up an awesome fantasy season (a freaking 2.65 JA SIERA in 72 innings last year!).
Jose Soriano: This guy takes you for a ride. High highs, and low lows. And at the end of the year, it’s usually a pretty horrifying WHIP. But this 97mph sinker of his gets hit on the ground 74% of the time. He gave up 12 homers in 31 starts. Even with a higher walk rate (11%), he can be hyper-efficient with all of the ground balls. He’ll walk a guy and immediately erase him with a double play. This is a guy who went 7+ innings nine times last year. Only seven pitchers did better than that.
Dean Kremer: The Orioles added Shane Baz to the mix recently, so Kremer will have to do a little more to win a rotation job. But he had some nice outings last year despite his 4.19 ERA.
Jacob Lopez: I think it was mostly luck for him last year. He had this brilliant run of starts early in the year that was never going to hold up. He finished with a bad 37.7% Ball% and a 12.9% SwStr%, so it’s not great. That plus his fly ball heavy ways in Sacramento… dangerous stuff.
Andrew Abbott: He just continues to beat the metrics. He’s a fly-ball lefty with a lower strikeout rate in the Great American Ballpark. But he’s mad it works to this point. The 33.8% Ball% and 6.3% BB% help the efficiency, and the one thing you can say about fly balls is that they do turn into outs at a very high rate when they’re not flying over a fence.
Pitches Per Outs
This is arguably the best stat to measure efficiency. We could look at pitches per batter, but yeah, a one-pitch home run allowed isn’t very useful to us. We want to focus on the outs. We want OUTS, and we want them FAST.
There’s a mix of good and bad pitchers on this list. One way to come up with a good PC/Out mark would just be to throw meatballs (we see you, Kyle Hendricks). Some guys know they won’t strike the guy out, so they just cut right to the chase and get a ball put in play quickly. And something like 70% of batted balls will turn into outs.
So the guys you really want to look at here are the ones who are also posting decent strikeout rates. And when you do that, not many surprise names remain. Brandon Woodruff was extremely good while healthy, but I don’t think he’ll be healthy much. Shota Imanaga can be quite efficient, but the strikeout ability really shrank in 2025, and this is another very high FB% guy. His ERA will suffer for that. Zack Littell gave up a ton of homers last year (1.74 HR/9), but he didn’t put many guys on base for free (4.2% BB%). He can get pretty deep into games and provide valuable starts to his teams when the ball stays in the confines. But I wouldn’t want to touch him for fantasy purposes with the 17% K%.
So that’s it. The data is yours to explore. Merry Christmas to you and your families. God bless!