To prepare my Top 400 Starting Pitchers for 2025 article, I thoroughly review every team’s rotation and write the blurbs you see in February. I usually don’t share these publicly until then, but I wanted to give another benefit to those who support us with PL Pro. Y’all are the ones who keep the lights on for us. Y’all rock.
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Huge thanks to Josh Mockensturm and community member Hanzo for creating these tables for all these players.
Expected Starters
Tanner Bibee (CLE, RHP)
Wow. I’m actually super in on Bibee for once. I’ve been pushing back against Bibee since he showed up based on two factors: His four-seamer is mediocre at best and he doesn’t have solid slider/changeup command. Especially the changeup. That thing hangs up there against LHB and it drives me up the wall. However, something shifted last year – he added a cutter at 2+ ticks harder than the slider and it is glorious. The combination of sliders and cutters to RHB combined for a low 30s ICR with a 20%+ SwStr rate across 38% usage, while the cutter itself handled LHB with ease at a 26% ICR in 15% usage. Use that pitch more, you rascal! Especially with the heater being so ineffective and the changeup failing to get down, leading to a low 15% SwStr rate and 35%+ ICR when it could be so much more.
That cutter really is a game-changer. Giving Bibee another effective strike pitch turns him away from a two-pitch arm to respective handedness, making life easier not just for the heater, but the slider as well. I’d be shocked if he didn’t use it more often in the year ahead while I’ll continue to leave messages on his answering machine about getting the changeup down. Heeeeeey it’s me again. I was worried you forgot what I said in the last message: If it’s slow, make it low!
I love Bibee’s team context in Cleveland (even if it means a few more HR to LHB at home) as he’ll get Wins with the expectation of finding the sixth in every start. His low walk rate makes a small WHIP attainable as well and the whole package is a “good ratios with over a strikeout per inning with 180 IP potential.” So you know, the exact mold of pitcher I target in drafts. Sign me up.
Quick Take: Bibee’s changeup command and four-seamer mediocrity still bothers me, but his new cutter is brilliant and can take another step forward in 2025, allowing for a reasonable expectation for more of the same – solid ratios with more than a strikeout per inning across roughly 180 frames. That’s a fantastic SP #2.
Gavin Williams (CLE, RHP)
Gavin is the perfect example of a pitcher who is on the verge of success without the obvious signs. The man has struggled with control throughout his career, dealt with an arm injury for the first half of 2023, and has yet to display the legit upside we envisioned when he first arrived. I love using Williams as a way to showcase why we shouldn’t use high-level stats and call it a day (ERA, WHIP, K%, BB%, SwStr%, H/9, HOTEL stats), but instead, recognize what causes those stats and see what could change in the year ahead. The solution is looking at the pitcher’s repertoire on its own and connecting the dots with specific stats.
Nick, is this going to be a mini-article inside a random pitcher’s blurb? You betcha. Strap in for the longest blurb in this article.
What stats affect those high-level stats the most? Let’s go one by one and you’ll quickly see how obvious this is:
K% = SwStr% + PAR% (putaway rate). It’s shocking how easy it is to figure out strikeout trends of a pitcher just based on “Oh, his changeup dropped ten points in putaway rate”. Sometimes guys are just less efficient with a pitch in two strike counts more than usual. You need to have pitches that are thrown often enough and get whiffs, too, of course.
BB% = Strike%. If he throws lots of pitches with poor strike rates, he’s gonna walk more batters.
H/9 & BABIP = ICR% + GB% / FB% (and team defense, don’t ignore it!). ICR = Ideal Contact Rate, which is all contact that is good for hitters, not just Hard Hit% and Barrel%. In addition, grounders are going to allow more hits than flyballs, which raise H/9, but does increase HR rates. Team Defense will help understand large differences between ICR vs. BABIP, too.
WHIP = Strike% and ICR%. It’s walks and hits, you can include team defense and GB/FB% too.
LOB Rate = Generally lower if he limits HRs, has a suppressed H/9, and strikes out lots of batters. It makes sense – if you’re a dope pitcher, you’re not gonna allow multiple hits back-to-back as much as others.
HR rates = FB% + Mistakes over the plate with either poor breaking balls or fastballs with poor shape. It’s the least sticky of the lot which means…
ERA = All of it together and not as sticky as we’d like given the impact of HRs. Womp womp.
Take all of that in. You can track all of these things inside the Repertoire section of our player pages and I highly recommend you do so with Gavin as a primer. Now let’s walk through his page and I’ll showcase what I see that gets me excited for Gavin.
The first thing I do? Toggle the L/R split, switch to “All” to view all pitches, and see what he throws against RHB. For Gavin, he throws a four-seamer with a high strike rate, a low SwStr Rate, and high ICR. That’s a bit odd since his four-seamer is really good. It sat 96/97 mph with over seven feet of extension, and as we’ve seen with Garrett Crochet, if you have high velocity with elite extension and sit inside the zone, you can dominate without good movement or attack angle.
Well, what else does Gavin throw? AH. Two pitches, a curveball and cutter, combined for 30% usage (that’s a lot!) with the same horrible strike rate of 53.4%. Welp, there’s your walk problem and your four-seamer inefficiency problem. Batters aren’t challenged with another offering inside the zone, leading them to sit on the heater. But then why do both the cutter and curveball have 40%+ ICR rates if they aren’t sitting on them? Good question. Looking at their strike zone plots below, you can see how the ones that made it into the zone were hung in the middle of the plate. Not great.
The slider does look promising, though. Fewer misses over the plate, 62% strike rate, and a fantastic ICR%, though the SwStr rate is a bit soft. Possibly because he kept it in the zone 45% of the time instead of escaping off the plate, or maybe because it’s not the filthiest pitch out there. At any rate, it seems that Gavin needs to move away from the curve’s heavy usage and shift to more sliders or cutters…if he can stop tugging the dang cutter off the plate. With more of these secondaries keeping batters honest, the four-seamer should also improve, lowering the walk and hit rates.
Let’s move to LHB now. Ayyyy this ain’t so bad! Sure, the curve is still featured way too often (22% usage at another dumb 56% strike rate doesn’t help with walks), but 70%+ strikes with both the four-seamer and cutter?! Legit SwStr rates on both?! Sub 30% ICRs?! Ummmm, that’s the good stuff. Clearly, Gavin should be moving toward a four-seamer/cutter approach and save the curve for the rare two-strike offering and not try to throw it early and risk of getting behind too many batters.
And there you go. The fact that Gavin doesn’t struggle with earning strikes with his four-seamer and has at least one secondary earning strikes against both LHB and RHB has me optimistic that he can improve his walk rate moving forward. His elite mix of velocity and extension is a fantastic foundation and there’s a clear path toward growth in his approach that can grant better results across the board.
You didn’t talk about putaway rates. Oh right! Go to “Count” and take a look at PAR all the way on the right. Notice anything weird? If you select a single pitch type, you’ll see the percentiles for every stat for that pitch type (for LHB & RHB, not the split, FWIW). Gavin’s four-seamer putaway rate was horrible to both LHB and RHB and with a pitch of its caliber, that should rise dramatically should he improve the supporting cast. The man isn’t destined to be a 24% strikeout arm.
I hope that helped y’all understand the process a bit better and feel free to chat more about it during my office hours in the morning via playback.tv/pitcherlist or inside our PL+ Discord.
BACK TO THE ACTUAL RANKING STUFF. Gavin is going past the 200th pick in drafts and I’m so excited to take a shot on this. We’ll know early in the season if the cutter and/or slider is working and if the curveball is taking a step back to open up his full potential. In addition, don’t forget that 2024 was stunted by his early injury, preventing a normal off-season and spring training. Let the guy cook for the season and it’s safe to expect growth to come as he goes 90+ pitches every five days for a winning club. Go grab the man at a price that won’t affect you if it goes south.
Quick Take: Gavin’s four-seamer is primed for dominance and needs something that isn’t his unreliable curveball to take the next step. With a healthy off-season and routine spring, Gavin has the foundation to come into his own and put up legit 25%+ strikeouts with solid ratios. I’m a huge fan of his entering the year.
Luis L. Ortiz (CLE, RHP)
Ortiz’s greatest skillset is his ICR% – none of his four offerings returned a 40% ICR in 2024 – and that could very well continue with the Guardians. I just wish the man earned whiffs with his slider like he used to back in 2022, but alas, he’s not throwing 98+ mph heaters anymore, but sitting 96 mph instead. It turns his slider from Wipeout McGee to Mr. Fine, with its performance against LHB being a major issue – sub 60% strike rate and a 50% ICR. I don’t love chasing Ortiz as a pitch-to-contact arm who can’t eclipse a 20% strikeout rate, though I’m not seeing where we can expect major gains in putaway rate to make a major jump next year, as I’m skeptical his heaters can continue to perform as well next year considering their questionable locations.
Maybe the scenario in Cleveland is more helpful than we’re giving him credit for (well, PNC Park to Progressive Field doesn’t help, but more Wins! Yay!) and he can use his flat attack angle to get more whiffs on the four-seamer…though its extreme sink may counteract it too much to jump past a 13% SwStr rate to RHB.
He’s an interesting flier especially if he’s starting opening weekend and gets to pitch against the Royals followed by the Angels and CrySox. However, if he’s the SP #4 or SP #5? That would be the Padres. I’m not taking the chance there, especially with the realistic ceiling being a high-end Toby.
Quick Take: Ortiz has solid hard contact suppression skills but struggles to rack up strikeouts and doesn’t have a clear path to getting more. He could develop into a Toby on a winning club, making him a solid 15-teamer target, but not the ideal 12-teamer pitcher to target.
Ben Lively (CLE, RHP)
Okay. You don’t believe in what he did last year. I don’t believe in what he did last year. But you know what? I reviewed him on stream and I think I shouted “you rascal!” three times as I understood his approach.
Lively doesn’t have filthy stuff. It’s 90 mph heaters without a major whiff pitch and the man needs to be a crafty villain to get his outs and exploit his greatest asset – seven feet of extension. So what does he do? He throws early four-seamers up-and-away and early sliders down-and-away to RHB to set up the sinker coming back over the plate to generate outs. You crafty man! They think these heaters will work like the four-seamer and suddenly they sneak further into the handle of the bat just enough to induce a 31% ICR across 40% usage. Whiffs aren’t there and he’s absolutely relying on Koufax coming through, but I gotta applaud the man for finding a way to survive in the majors. I just wish he was a little better at putting away batters with his sweeper – the pitch averages a 20% putaway rate to RHB across the majors, but Lively’s? A horrible 11% clip last year. That does make me wonder if a 22% strikeout rate is possible…
Now to LHB. This one is even more interesting with Lively sitting away with his four-seamer early, then mixing in sweepers, changeups, and curveballs around the four-seamer until OH SNAP! A front-hip sinker! Half of the sinkers he threw to LHB came in two-strike counts and while it wasn’t the greatest strikeout pitch, it surprised them well enough to induce outs aplenty. YOU RASCAL!
I want to remind y’all that the end result of this approach returned a 3.81 ERA and 1.25 WHIP with a 19% strikeout rate and an average of roughly five innings per start. Sure, he could do the same and become more efficient with the sweeper in two-strike counts, but even then, is this going to get good enough to roll with consistently in 12-teamers? Probably not? I sure hope so, for the sake of the craft of pitching, dangit. It’s cool that a guy can figure out a way to make it work without throwing over 91 mph nor having an element of filth in the tank.
Quick Take: Lively doesn’t have the arsenal to suggest he can do a whole lot to improve upon his 2024 season with a high likelihood of command regression coming in the year ahead. Still, I’ll hold out a touch of hope the sweeper can earn more punchouts as he keeps the same precision, making him a hopeful 15-team Toby.
On The Fringe
Joey Cantillo (CLE, LHP)
The Guardians are still determining their fifth starter and I believe it should be Cantillo. He carries 99th percentile extension (7.5 feet!) which opens the door for success, even at just 92 mph. His changeup has plenty of potential to demolish RHB if he can command it a touch better, while his slider to LHB works wonders akin to typical sliders lefty-on-lefty.
It’s really that simple. Hopefully, Cantillo gets more time to refine his command of the changeup, allowing him to refrain from overthrowing his heater over the plate. There’s 12-teamer potential here and if he snags that job out of camp, I’d be all over him in 15-teamers as a Toby type.
Triston McKenzie (CLE, RHP)
Triston pitched with a torn UCL, opted against TJS, and still managed to pitch sixteen starts last year before a demotion to Triple-A that featured a whole lot of sadness outside of one incredible eleven strikeout game at 94 mph. So here we are now, entering 2025 without much of a clue of his health, velocity, or the Guardians’ intentions entering the season.
Let’s see what’s up during the spring. I’m not banking on McKenzie suddenly appearing and acting like the last few years have been lost in a coma, though it’s not out of the question we see McKenzie looking spry again and the Guardians give it a shot. His exceptional iVB with solid extension gives him a shot, especially if the curve and slider are finding strikes once again.
Slade Cecconi (CLE, RHP)
The Guardians acquired Cecconi in the deal that sent Naylor to Arizona and I’ve seen a bit of chatter about Cecconi being inside the rotation and acting as a sneaky play. I’m not quite seeing it myself. There isn’t a whiff pitch in the arsenal, nor does he carry an above-average four-seamer. There are whispers that Cecconi will look different this spring, which I’ll certainly react to when I see it. Until then, I’ll hold back optimism and let someone take the chance. I really don’t see 12-teamer relevance without a major overhaul.
Logan Allen (CLE, LHP)
Take Cantillo and make him worse. That’s Allen, unfortunately. His sweeper gets whiffs but few strikes to LHB, the changeup isn’t stellar against RHB, and the heater is middling. There are days when all three pitches come together gracefully, though I’d hate to bank on that with any regularity. Expect Allen to get some starts across the season when the Guardians are searching for an arm, when you notice and promptly ignore it.
Names To Know
Shane Bieber (CLE, RHP)
Bieber underwent TJS in April last season, putting him on a timeline for July or so. Feel free to add him as an IL stash, but I must insist you don’t hold on too tightly if you need that IL spot in April or May. Bieber isn’t worth losing a roster spot for months given we have no idea of his quality once he does return to the rotation. I’m optimistic he’ll help your teams down the stretch, but it’s not a sure thing and I’d much rather have players on my squad who give me present value for months than the chance of solid production down the road.
John Means (CLE, LHP)
Means is rehabbing from TJS again after his first procedure was a failure with his elbow hurting shortly after returning. I feel horrible for the guy, but the hope is for him to return by August/September and show us something fun to get excited about for 2026. The ideal is a legit changeup, a decent four-seamer up, and a pair of breaking balls to create a low WHIP arm, a fair number of strikeouts, and a questionable ERA if he can limit the HRs. You can pretty much ignore him until the summer, though, as there’s no guarantee he’ll actually pitch this season in the first place.
Vince Velasquez (CLE, RHP)
Oh snap! Mr. DUB! (VV y’all.) Velasquez underwent TJS and missed all of 2024 and the Guardians extended an invitation to spring training so he can Show Me What You Got. I wonder if we’ll see the slider-heavy approach that brought shocking production for a brief moment in 2023 and maybe that heater is back to 94+ again…? Sorry, I got carried away. If Velasquez earns the #5 spot and is sporting that slider a ton, he does break the Huascar Rule, but could be a valuable arm in 15-teamers. Just a thought.
Kolby Allard (CLE, LHP)
DRALLA! You’re here now? Good luck with your invitation to spring training. I’ve been impressed at your resilience in the majors despite, um, you know.
Relevant Prospects
Thanks to MLB.com and Eric Logenhagen’s work at FanGraphs for many insights into these prospects. I also used our PLV Minor League Player App for additional data I couldn’t find elsewhere.
Parker Messick (CLE, LHP)
Messick is the one Guardians prospect pitcher I can see making any sort of impact this year after returning a 32% strikeout rate with an 8% walk rate in Double-A last season. Sadly, I don’t have updated reports on what he’s doing to earn those marks, but once he makes it to Triple-A, I’ll have a much better sense outside of last January’s reports of a stellar changeup and low 90s fastball without great breakers. If the Guardians are running low on depth, take a look at Messick’s Triple-A marks inside our PL Pro Apps and hope the intrigue is there.
Michael Kennedy (CLE, LHP)
Acquired in the same trade as Ortiz, Kennedy is a southpaw with low 90s velocity and a great slider as he’s working to improve his changeup across his second full season in professional ball. It’s possible he jumps to Double-A and gets a moment in the bigs this year, though it’s a clear “wait and see.”
Braylon Doughty (CLE, RHP)
Drafted out of high school in 2024 by the Guardians, Doughty isn’t expected in the bigs until 2027 at the very earliest. Ignore him for 2025 redrafts y’all.
Daniel Espino (CLE, RHP)
He’s still hurt and may miss the whole of 2025. Sigh. Poor fella. There was so much excitement. There’s no way the Guardians fast-track him until he shows some sort of durability.