The MLB starting pitcher rankings I got right (and wrong) in 2024: Sarris

First things first, there were plenty of wins in the preseason pitcher ranks this year.

And it wasnt just Seth Lugo .

That was an easy pick, a light investment based on the fact that he was a good starting pitcher going to a park that would suppress homers and a division that would offer some good matchups.

Other wins were easy, like Tarik Skubal (No.

6), who was projected to be the top pitcher in the league and ended up that way.

Zack Wheeler (No.

3) and Corbin Burnes (No.

2) were easy ranks.

Advertisement Midway through the rankings were maybe more impressive calls.

Ranking Logan Gilbert 12th, slightly ahead of the crowd, and having him end up fourth was right on the nose.

And even though their seasons had some ups and downs, the rankings were almost exactly correct on Kutter Crawford (No.

61), Nestor Cortes (No.

50), Cristopher Sanchez (No.

55), Michael King (No.

25), and Bryan Woo (No.

35).

For the most part, these were younger pitchers who had the tools to be good and put them together in a way that the market didnt quite expect.

Putting Shota Imanaga (No.

32) on the radar early ended up being the right move, and other breakouts were maybe a little predictable given their small sample production in the past.

Luis Gil (No.

85), Garret Crochet (No.

87), Tanner Houck (No.

93) and Bowden Francis (No.

108) all made my preseason rankings and were all top-50 pitchers by the end of the year.

Jared Jones (No.

84) was on those preseason rankings, too.

This might be where using something like Stuff+ which is maybe the most powerfully predictive statistic in the tiniest of samples gives these rankings a leg up.

It also gives us a good place to look for sleepers next year.

Other wins include some surprises for those who have followed along with my ranking style.

Somehow, I was more than 20 spots higher than the market on Jack Flaherty (No.

81), whose velocity and smaller mix gave me concern.

He really improved by upping that curve usage this season.

Clarke Schmidt (No.

90) had tried my patience with his early ups and downs, but my March ranks were still more than 15 spots higher than the market.

I tried to rein in my enthusiasm with Bryce Miller (No.

34) and was only 12 spots higher than the market, and then he ended up a top-25 pitcher for the year.

Then there are the rankings that were right by being pessimistic, which isnt as fun, but just as important.

I was nearly 50 spots lower than the consensus on Eduardo Rodriguez (No.

96), Reid Detmers (No.

100), and Lance Lynn (No.

123), who all had seasons to forget.

My skepticism on Walker Buehler (No.

64), Frankie Montas (No.

111) and Triston McKenzie (No.

74) ended up being warranted.

My ranks would not have pushed you to draft Chris Bassitt (No.

49) or Mitch Keller (No.

56) at their prices this year, and though I had Kevin Gausman fairly high, putting him at No.

11 against the market (No.

5) might have steered you away there too.

Advertisement All of this is enough to keep feeling like this is a valuable effort.

But the misses are more interesting.

The misses could perhaps teach us some lessons.

Over-exuberance on young pitchers Bobby Miller (No.

17) was my biggest miss on the year, one of the biggest in a while.

He had everything he needed big velocity, good shapes on his pitches, a wide mix, decent enough command and yet none of it came through this year as he had an ERA over eight .

While Im mostly leaving out injury calls from this column, I do think his shoulder, adductor and forearm issues this year were the culprit.

If we get some good health news over the winter, I may have some shares of Miller again at discounted prices.

I still believe theres a good pitcher in there.

But without more of a track record, it was too aggressive a ranking.

The same could be said about Eury Perez (No.

47), Edward Cabrera (No.

60), Keaton Winn (No.

88), and maybe even Yoshinobu Yamamoto (No.

10).

Theres a way to be early on a young pitcher without pushing them so far in the ranks that they have to be good to deserve the price.

Ill still be aggressive on young pitchers, but at the top of the rankings, I may be a little more careful, given those are expensive misses to make.

Overreliance on the market Im a human being.

I see other rankings.

I see what the market is doing.

And so sometimes Ill put a guy somewhere just because I cant put this guy lower, can I? There was nothing my numbers liked about Jordan Montgomery (No.

41), Trevor Rogers (No.

76), Taijuan Walker (No.

131), or Kyle Hendricks (No.

137).

Even Bassitt and Merrill Kelly (No.

44) were uncomfortable ranks with projected ERAs in the high fours.

I wouldve had them all lower if I didnt have an eye on the market at all.

The good news is that I was lower than the market on all of them, so they probably didnt hurt too many fantasy team owners who used my rankings.

The bad news is that by putting them where I had them, I cost myself the ability to rank other pitchers more accurately.

Next years rankings may have some bigger disagreements with the market when it comes to pitchers that my model just doesnt like.

Trust the process, as the saying goes.

Advertisement Too negative about credible veterans? Ironically, in a season that counted Lugo as a win, and just after highlighting some veterans that I shouldve been more negative on than I was, there was also the prerequisite number of fairly boring veterans with good seasons that I missed out on.

I had Jameson Taillon (No.

99), Ranger Suarez (No.

109), Sean Manaea (No.

91), Michael Wacha (No.

121) and Nick Martinez (No.

135) too low for where they ended up all of them were top-40 pitchers by the end of the season.

There is a way to describe these five pitchers succinctly though: They all had below-average but not terrible stuff (91 Stuff+ as a group), with good command (103 Location+), and threw at least four pitches regularly.

Although Location+ is less predictive and predictable, its tempting to put some weight on that in the ranks next year.

But look above again.

Those six veterans who had bad seasons that I listed in the previous section? They had below-average but not terrible stuff (88 Stuff+ as a group), with good command (102 Location+), and most of them had large arsenals too.

Its the type of bin thats hard to project before the season begins, but once they show theyre having a good season, maybe they should move up the ranks quickly.

And clearly, your fantasy team should have one or two of these pitchers on it just make sure its at the right price.

A year too early? There wasnt a single starter who qualified for the ERA title and was 24 or younger this year, which is a comment on how pitchers are developed these days, but also might say something about how hard it is to put together all the parts and be successful right out of the gate.

There are some misses I might still be interested in for the 2025 season, at a reduced cost, because they might put it together a year later than I expected.

Gavin Williams (No.

51) didnt have a good season, but his stuff ticked up as the season went on, and he generally has an interesting group of pitches with two good breaking balls, a decent cutter, and a fastball that can be good when it combines the good shape and the good velocity.

Casey Mize (No.

83) doesnt have a good feel for spin, but he pushed the velocity on his slider near the end of the season and that could produce a good enough breaking ball to make what should otherwise be a strong arsenal hum.

Shane Baz (No.

59) had an ERA under three in the second half and might be good even with the move away from the Trop this coming summer.

None of the three cost enough to kill a fantasy team, but they were misses nonetheless.

A word about injury Heres the table of the 10 biggest misses when it comes to my rankings against their end-of-season results.

Thats four injuries, and probably two more who were affected by injury.

There will be more on the injury effect and how we can better assess that risk in next years rankings, but theres increasing evidence that we are OK at judging the pitchers with the least injury risk, and that theres then a bucket with everyone else where its virtually impossible to figure out how much theyll pitch.

These four injured pitchers probably count as ones you wouldnt have given an A health grade going into the season, given their past injuries.

I wasnt so far off the market on these, but maybe they deserved to be pushed down a little bit.

In other words, Jacob deGrom is going to be a tough rank this coming season, again.

Advertisement I have a sympathetic ear to those who just dont want to draft anyone with injury risk.

But the reality of the situation is that almost anyone can get injured, and at some point you have to draft and hope for the best.

As much as avoiding the hardest-throwing pitchers seems like it might be a good idea, there were a fair amount of injuries on the other side of the fastball velocity leaderboard , too.

Completely avoiding injury risk seems impossible.

(Photo of Tarik Skubal: Jamie Squire / Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.