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.
Expected Starters
Paul Skenes (PIT, RHP)
You want Skenes to be SP #1 and I’m sorry, I can’t do that pal. It’s Hal. How would I know your name? You may be surprised to find that Skenes doesn’t have a pitch with a 20% SwStr rate against LHB or RHB, save for a 9% usage changeup to LHB he saved for two-strike counts (it was good! Maybe more next year?). In addition, his four-seamer returned a 12% SwStr rate, not an absurd clip, and allowed 41% ICR to RHB with a 47% ICR to LHB. Wait, that doesn’t seem right. No, it doesn’t.
I can actually explain this – think of Skenes’ four-seamer like a sinker. It moves laterally far more than expected from his arm-angle, making it fall into the barrels of late swings when thrown to LHB over the plate. Here’s a great look at it with “FF” as the average spot the four-seamer lands, while the blue circles are the expected landing spots of heaters from the same arm angle. No wonder it allows more hard contact to LHB and I hope Skenes locates the fastball better in 2025 to take full advantage of its massive lateral movement.
The splinker is the real game changer here. It was destroyer of worlds against RHB with a crazy high 77% strike rate and 18% SwStr rate, acting as both a changeup for those sitting on the fastball and a reliable pitch to throw even when expected. Its effectiveness fell off against LHB due to its zone rate dropping from 51% all the way to 35% for the strangest reason you may already be aware of. Skenes moves on the rubber depending on LHB or RHB. He shifts closer to 3B against LHB, which suddenly shifts his splinker locations more armside and out of the zone. THERE’S YER PROBLEM.
I wish I had better words to say about Skenes’ breakers, too. His slider was tugged gloveside frequently, resulting in a high number of waste pitches and a poor 57% strike rate with just a 12% SwStr rate – alarmingly low marks for a slider paired with 99 mph heat (think of the sliders thrown by Greene, Strider, Jones, deGrom, etc.) – while the curve can be flipped over the plate early against LHB for called strikes, but isn’t the big breaker quite yet.
This isn’t to say that Skenes is destined to fail or that he can’t add these elements to his game in his second season. It’s more to outline Skenes as an unfinished product who has more holes than Skubal and Crochet entering 2025. It feels weird saying that, I know. I KNOW. The last wrinkle for me was the Pirates – Skenes should get fewer wins than Crochet and Skubal, while I expect the strikeouts to dip a touch without the absurd swing and miss pitch of the others. But hey, he’s going to go in the first two/three rounds and y’all know I don’t encourage taking an SP there anyway.
Quick Take: Skenes is obviously dope and makes us feel dope. I think we’ll see a step back in strikeouts as his four-seamer lacked massive whiffs without a stellar breaker to complement. The splinker is so good, though, and at his velocity and overall control, Skenes is obviously a stud arm for the year. Just not SP #1. Or #2. Don’t hate me.
Mitch Keller (PIT, RHP)
I want to give Keller props for improving upon RHB last year. None of his main offerings (four-seamer, sinker, sweeper) resulted in an ICR above 40%, with the sinker continuing to deceive and generate outs and the usually horrendous four-seamer allowing zero homers last year. Zero! In addition, the sweeper isn’t phenomenal with a sub 15% SwStr rate, but it stays away enough to turn those potential whiffs into weak contact and that’s fine by us.
KNOCK. Oh no. Is someone at the door? No, that was another hit given up by Keller to a LHB. All of Keller’s pitches allowed at least a 40% ICR to LHB as he lacks a comfortable approach. The cutter’s 15% usage suggests a bump in 2025 if he can get the pitch further inside, though it didn’t look like a savior pitch last year. The heaters were demolished, the sweeper didn’t work (not a shock) and the curve is a called strike pitch, not a breaker to turn to.
It maps out to a pitcher who overperformed against RHB and continued to fail against LHB. I don’t see the path toward dominance in 2025, sadly, and I have to express caution drafting Keller in 2025. There’s too much to fix.
Quick Take: Keller doesn’t have an arsenal that works against LHB while regression is likely to come against RHB. His 4.25 ERA and 1.30 WHIP could very well be worse in the year ahead and I’d love to avoid it at all costs. There is some value in deeper formats for streaming Wins given his long leash, and I’d leave consideration exclusive for those leagues.
Jared Jones (PIT, RHP)
Who has an ox-eye daisy near them? I love Jones. I love him not. I love Jones. I love him not. The four-seamer and slider combo should be amazing. It’s 97+ mph heaters with absurd HAVAA, above-average iVB and just under seven feet of extension. He throws them for strikes. He throws them upstairs half of the time. He throws them for dinner time. The slider returns 20%+ SwStr rate (with room to grow against RHB!) and is beautifully spotted back-foot to LHB. It’s the making of an absolute stud.
And yet, the warning signs are yelling at me, mouthless and all. Things were rough in the second half. Jones endured a lat injury and came back without the same demolition with heaters, while his overall command took a step back. It was rough watching him in September as you can feel his confidence dwindling. I can’t shake the idea that Jones doesn’t have pristine command and his heater’s 16+ iVB is here to stay, making it closer to dead-zone than we’d like. I need that 17″+ again, PLEASE.
“Second-half” can also be described for his starts themselves. Jones would often come out like a rocket, blasting 99 mph and 100 mph heaters past batters with a 90 mph slider and leave them shaking their heads. By even the third inning, we’d start to see more 97/98 mph and falling to 95/96 mph by the sixth. That exhaustion carried over to the slider as well, but moreso to his command. Waste pitches would appear, batters would be rewarded for their patience, and all of it was amplified by Jones’ lack of variety. There wasn’t a new sinker or dramatic changeup added the second or third time through the lineup. Batters now saw the same fastball/slider combo and it was easier to hit.
There are some promising elements, though. Fatigue is generally improved in the follow-up season and I wonder if Jones will work on sitting 97 mph for a whole start, saving his 99+ for later in the game when he needs it. Hopefully the adjustment keeps his command in check when he faces batters past the fourth inning.
Don’t overlook a possible arsenal shift as well. His changeup also showed promise as another putaway pitch to LHB (he actually needs helps against RHB, oddly enough), and if he can reduce the mistake sliders to RHB (near 10% mistake rate?!), then I trust the season ahead. Maybe even a sinker to keep a few more guys off the four-seamer? Or a bridge cutter to pair with the slider? (Cutter isn’t as important for Jones, FWIW.)
I’m going to bank on improvement from a stupid good first half, even if I wish I saw Jones get through the adversity in the second half – when rookie pitchers succeed and fail, I generally love them after they’ve rebounded. Mentally overcoming a blow and sticking in the majors keeps them from large stretches of turmoil in the future.
The one stat I keep coming back to? His four-seamer and slider strike rates. With both over 65% to both LHB and RHB, I have faith we won’t see a monstrous walk rate (WHIP shouldn’t be over 1.20!) while the whiffability is still very much present. It’s a foundation many starters dream of and we’ve already seen growth in a curve and change that suggests he can be more than a two-pitch arm in the future. It also means the efficiency we saw at the start (7 of 10 games with 6+ IP!) is not a fluke. I’m a believer.
Quick Take: Jones gave us an explosion of excitement early and fizzled out both during starts and in the second half as he was unable to maintain the same peak for long. The peak is so good that I’m a believer in Jones making the tweaks and changes to extend the peak longer inside games and for deeper into the season in 2025. That fastball and slider are just too good.
Bailey Falter (PIT, LHP)
Why isn’t Falter on the Rays yet? He has elite four-seamer extension from the left side at 91 mph and is missing one piece against RHB and one piece against LHB. That easy, eh? Kinda? Falter has struggled to find a changeup grip that works for him, but hot dang does he need to do everything in his power to find one. He is primed for a legit changeup with his arm action and extension, which would instantly take down RHB with his affinity for high heaters (36% ICR against RHB!), plus a decent curve and slider to get over the plate.
For LHB, it’s mostly the sinker jamming more inside as the four-seamer gets tatted, though the slider needs to land down-and-away a bit more frequently. Currently, Falter struggles to attack with the breaker to LHB (58% strikes) and it’s signifcant problem. Why? That seems okay? Because there’s nothing else. The fastballs have to do all the work with the curve reserved for called strikes early in the count, and you know those heaters are a pair of $5 single AAA battery powered fellas you got from AliExpress. They aren’t gonna get the job done.
Falter will have those starts where the fastball and slider are spotted well enough to get the job done, but he’s a rare streamer in all formats and not to be trusted until a slowball appears…or he’s traded to a new team that will force it upon him. Come on Tampa, we know it should be you.
Quick Take: Falter has elite extension without the pieces to get the most out of it. His four-seamer lives upstairs at 91 mph and is effective for what it is, but he needs more from his slider, sinker, and a potential changeup to turn him into anything more than a desperate streaming option.
On The Fringe
Johan Oviedo (PIT, RHP)
Yes, we’re all in disbelief that Oviedo threw 177.2 innings in 2023. It also explains the TJS surgery after the season that took him out of 2024 as he hopes to get back into the rotation out of camp. The good news? There’s little competition, save for Bubba Chandler, who may force his way onto the squad after we saw Jones explode onto the scene last year. Assuming Oviedo beats out one of Chandler or Falter, I’ll be curious to see if it’s more of the same or if Oviedo can fix his biggest issue: control. But isn’t that the last thing to return post TJS? …normally, yes. I’M CROSSING EVERY FINGER I HAVE. Thanks, he appreciates it.
It may seem odd, but Oviedo has more skills than your standard “whatever” arm in Pittsburgh. The last time we saw him, Oviedo featured an elite slider that worked well against both RHB and LHB, while displaying a trio of pitches that stayed under a 40% ICR to both sides of the plate. Velocity wasn’t an issue at 96 mph with his heater and it came with – get this – over seven feet of extension. The problem? He can’t locate it, with sinker-esque drop and little-to-no whiffs.
So here’s the situation. If we see Oviedo in the spring and he’s A) Throwing a ton of fastball strikes without damage, B) Still earning whiffs with his slider, and C) Flexes some third pitch that shows promise (is it the curveball again? A changeup? Dare I say a cutter in the low 90s?), then you may want to consider him as a sleeper for your deeper formats. In 12-teamers, you can ignore Oviedo until we get data that shows something has genuinely changed through his TJS-recovery process. I sincerely hope we see a pitcher reborn and taking full advantage of his elite skills (slider, velocity, and extension).
Quick Take: Don’t rule out Oviedo completely as he returns from TJS. His slider was an elite pitch that made us enforce the Huascar Rule, though his 96 mph velocity and 7+ feet of extension open the door for growth toward a promising 12-teamer arm. Don’t expect the development to be there out of camp, though, and label him as a dark horse sleeper for NL-Only leagues.
Names To Know
Carson Fulmer (PIT, RHP)
Fulmer has a full pitch mix and he tries awfully hard to spot everything exactly where they should be (well, maybe not the four-seamer as much), but nothing is exceptional, save for a changeup that he can’t quite land where he wants to. There is a world where he can find six innings of production for a stretch if he’s landing all of his pitches exactly how he wants to, though it’s too small of a hill to stand on after slogging through all the mud. I can’t even see my house from here. You rent a ground floor apartment. Yeah, and it’s MINE. You may see Fulmer grab a spot if the Pirates aren’t ready to call up Chandler or Harrington or Burrows or anyone, and I’d be surprised if he was given an extended runway in this rotation.
Joey Wentz (PIT, LHP)
Wentz had a fair number of “starts” (some real, some as an extended follower) in 2023 and was reserved for long(ish) relief in 2024, which makes him a possible starter at times in the year ahead. Wentz’s greatest skill is nailing his cutter against LHB, without a whole lot else going for him. The same cutter is fine against RHB, and so is the changeup, and so is the curve…with the four-seamer lagging far behind to both sides of the plate. If Wentz lines up against a LHB-heavy lineup while stretched out to over 75 pitches, there’s an intriguing stream to be had, but otherwise, you’re yelling at Joey in the third to grab the vehicle and head home. Huh? GRAB THE CAR, SON. WENTZ IS DONE. Is…is that a football joke? What have I become.
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 Cards for additional data I couldn’t find elsewhere.
Bubba Chandler (PIT, RHP)
There’s a case to be made that Chandler is the #1 SP to target in redraft leagues. The signing of Jack Flaherty added more competition for Jackson Jobe to crack the rotation out of camp, while the Pirates (currently) have Bailey Falter and Johan Oviedo slated as their SP #4 and SP #5. If Chandler appears in camp flexing his mid-to-upper 90s heater with control inside the zone + a dotted slider away to RHB and a lateral changeup away to LHB. This isn’t your WHOA! absurd starter, however Chandler’s command and consistency is refined relative to what we normally see, making me more confident in Chandler to retain 12-teamer value should he get a rotation spot. I see a reliable Holly throughout the year when he arrives given his heavy strike rates and above average fastball & slider. The biggest question is his ability to take down LHB with the changeup (and maybe the slider) and I look forward to seeing him figure it out this year.
Mike Burrows (PIT, RHP)
He had a cup of coffee in 2024 and it could spell some time in 2025 when the Pirates need an arm for a spot start or longer. I’m not in love with what Burrows brings to the table, sadly. The slider seems to be the star of the show, with a four-seamer that has surprising horizontal break, but lacks vert, impressive velocity, or extension. The changeup can be a pretty offering as well and there is a curveball loosely in the mix as well, making this a package that doesn’t quite excite. Don’t expect whiffs with the heater (hopefully ground outs if he can jam it inside to RHB…good luck with LHB!) and hope the slider + changeup can do the rest.
Braxton Ashcraft (PIT, RHP)
Looking at the data of Ashcraft’s five Triple-A games, I’m not impressed enough to circle Ashcraft for the year ahead. His four-seamer is below-average and will be the source of pain in the majors, with his stellar slider as the savior of his arsenal. He’s a strike thrower as well, which may mean Ashcraft may have to turn to the slider more than usual once in the bigs, possibly utilizing his low 80s curveball frequently. I like the two breakers, I just wish the 95 mph four-seamer didn’t have 6.3 extension (blegh), 15″ inches of iVB (blegh), and a steep 0.6 HAVAA that sets it up for demolition. I should note, there is a changeup in the mix as well, though it’s easily the fourth pitch and will likely be reserved for 10-15% usage against LHB with limited success.
Thomas Harrington (PIT, RHP)
When Harrington arrives, he’ll have a chance every night to give you production, but be careful. He’s a strike thrower with 92/93 mph as his foundation, hoping to surprise with its horizontal movement to set up a legit changeup that dives straight down at a 10 mph discount. There’s a gloveside cutter and more gloveside sweeper to grab strikes and hopefully some whiffs, while the big over-the-top curve is sparingly used as a mix-up pitch. If a velocity bump comes his way, I’d be more intrigued – that cutter at 89/90 instead of 87 mph could be a phenomenal pitch, while the four-seamer needs a little more juice to get him out of Koufax territory. His efficiency makes him more streamable than other young arms when he gets his shot, but don’t expect the world.
Anthony Solometo (PIT, LHP)
He’s an odd one. Solometo sits 90/91 with a funky Bumgarner-esque delivery and it’s unclear if it can continue to be deceptive to RHB as he scales the ranks. There is a changeup, cutter, and slider in there as well, and I’m cautiously optimistic he can perform in Triple-A if he’s able to add a touch more velocity to his heaters. The odd release may work in his favor from the left side, allowing his arsenal to perform better than expected, especially breakers at the back foot of right-handers. It’s a bit of a gamble on development here and I’m curious what data we get when he hopefully moves up the ranks this year.
Hunter Barco (PIT, LHP)
He’s a crafty southpaw with the two secondaries you want to see: a legit slider to take down LHB and a proper changeup for RHB. Unfortunately, the heater is at a middling 92/93 mph, though there are signs of solid command that came through in 83 strikeouts and 22 walks across 66 IP of A+ and AA in 2024. Another season of a leap forward may have Barco getting some time this year and I’ll be paying attention when he does. A legit slider and change from the left side with a heater above 92 mph can work in the bigs, and that’s assuming he doesn’t show gains this season.
Levi Sterling (PIT, RHP)
He was drafted 37th overall in 2024 out of high school at 17-years-old. So, he won’t pitch in the bigs this year? Absolutely not. He’s already 92/93 mph at such a young age, though, and he’s projected to push those marks further in time with a trio of secondaries that could get polish as well. Who knows, let’s tackle this again in, I dunno, three years?
Zander Mueth (PIT, RHP)
He’s 19-years-old after getting drafted out of high school in 2023 and still has work to do. He’s in the low-to-mid 90s with a big slider from his low slot and is still working on his changeup. The hope is that he can become a strong sinker/slider arm with more velocity over time, though it’s hard to tell with such limited development thus far. He’s at least another year away from making any sort of impact in the bigs.