2025 is looking to be a really fun season for pitching. Why? Because so many coveted arms are returning for their teams. We have seen an epidemic of pitching injuries within the past few years, with the list of Tommy John surgery recipients growing at an alarming rate. Luckily for many of them, there comes a time when they are fully rehabbed and ready to get back on the mound for their team. With lots of injured pitchers comes lots of returning ones, and this is something fantasy managers need to consider.
The landscape for pitching changes quickly, which makes the position one of the hardest to track aspects of fantasy baseball. So much can go wrong while pitching, as throwing 100 mph is not something a human being should naturally be able to do. In addition, there are all kinds of other ways pitchers can get hurt, whether that be from a blistering comebacker or a fall sustained during a post-game celebration. Pitching is an endless cycle of players going down, replacements coming up, replacements going down, etc. It’s tough to keep track, as even the most seasoned of baseball fans experience those moments of “wait, he’s injured?”
Ultimately though, the fun part is that eventually, many of the pitchers we missed seeing in action end up making their triumphant returns. Here are the outlooks for some of the injury bounceback candidates for 2025.
There’s one aspect of pitching that casual fans, hardcore fans, fantasy managers, and MLB front offices love: volume. For several years, Sandy Alcantara was the pinnacle of high-volume run prevention, even earning the Cy Young after putting together an impressively low ERA across nearly 230 innings of ball.
Alcantara has come to spring training fully healthy and has immediately looked at the top of his game again for the most part. The once-hardest-throwing starting pitcher in the majors has hit 99 mph on the gun in spring training, a good sign that he will be ready to make an impact upon returning to more meaningful games. While the volume is unlikely to be there this year, Alcantara is still a nasty pitcher. In addition to the near-100 mph fastballs, Alcantara also has a hard slider and an even harder changeup. It’s velocity, velocity, velocity with Alcantara, which is why even though the volume may be down, he still is likely to give managers some excellent innings with potentially the healthiest elbow he has had in years.
Another aspect that makes Alcantara an intriguing pitcher is the fact that he very well could be traded this season. The Marlins are pretty firmly in the rebuild stage now, which means they could be looking to get some assets out of Alcantara. This could be very beneficial for Alcantara, as he has a higher win chance in pretty much any other organization. If Alcantara gets in a good situation down the stretch, he could be one of the most valuable pitchers in fantasy baseball.
In some regards, this is a very similar situation to last year’s Edwin Díaz. A Reliever of the Year winner who missed the entirety of the subsequent season. However, their injuries are quite different, as Diaz had a lower body injury as a result of a freak accident, while Bautista was yet another UCL injury potentially remedied with Tommy John surgery.
We’ve all seen what Bautsita can do. Not only did he win Reliever of the Year, but he won it despite missing the last month of the season. It was a dominant season, one that probably would be viewed as one of the most dominant reliever seasons in recent memory had Bautista not gone down.
Bautista has one of the highest ceilings as a closer, maybe the highest. It all depends on how quickly he can re-find his footing. There is a definite risk with Bautista as a bounceback candidate, especially with the volatility of relievers. But if he shows even 75% of what he has in the past, he will be an outstanding high-leverage reliever.
Félix Bautista was outstanding in 2023, leaning into absolutely unhittable stuff.
Choosing Jacob deGrom will probably elicit some eye rolls for a variety of reasons. The first is that he technically returned from injury last season, logging three (shortened) starts to end the year for the Rangers. The other reason for hesitance toward deGrom? The assumed likelihood that he gets hurt again.
DeGrom has gained a reputation as being one of the sport’s most injury-prone pitchers. This is a shame, as this now overshadows his reputation as being one of the most talented and untouchable pitchers of all time. Now that he is coming off a Tommy John surgery, he will be pitching with a nearly fully healthy elbow for the first time in years. There is a chance deGrom gets hurt again, but with him being in that Tommy John honeymoon phase, the chances of it being another elbow issue are a bit lower.
While there are questions about volume with deGrom, everything else you could want from a pitcher he has in spades. Not only will he give you strikeouts, a low WHIP, and a low ERA, but he has the potential to lead the majors in all of these categories. We’ve seen what he was capable of during his Cy Young seasons, a level of dominance that few other pitchers in the modern game have attained. DeGrom showcased this in the small sample he pitched in 2024, putting up around a 32% K rate and a 2.3% walk rate. These aren’t just Cy Young candidate numbers, they are the numbers of a high first-round fantasy pick.
But, of course, you don’t want to draft pitchers in the first round, as they’re way too unpredictable. This is especially true with 36-year-old pitchers who haven’t pitched even 50 innings in the past two seasons.
It’s time for the Lucas Giolito renaissance. We’ve been wanting to see it for years, but all the pieces finally look to be coming together.
Giolito signed with the Red Sox last year following an up-and-down season where he pitched for three different teams. Despite having a hitter-friendly ballpark, the Sox have done a surprisingly great job with pitching development. Everything looked to be coming together until it was announced that Giolito would miss the season due to needing a procedure on his elbow.
Giolito is back and ready for the newly rebuilt Red Sox rotation. This is a team that is going to need him to perform, as they are banking on their new look rotation stealing the show and giving them an edge in the brutal American League East.
The Red Sox are a perfect fit for Giolito, especially considering he isn’t a high-velocity guy. Rather, he leans into his two main secondaries a lot, his changeup and slider. The changeup, in particular, has been a highlight pitch. When he’s healthy, Giolito has shown that he can have a 20% swinging strike rate on the pitch. Even in a difficult 2023 season, the change-piece had great metrics behind it.
Even in a down year, Giolito’s changeup produced great results against it.
Shane McClanahan’s return from injury leads to a bit of a tough dilemma for fantasy managers. Where do you draft such a high-quality pitcher, knowing that there’s a good chance he will be coddled a bit upon return?
McClanahan looked really solid in his first spring training outing. He hit 99 mph on the gun, got a strikeout with a nasty changeup, and got out of a bases-loaded jam. What makes McClanahan exceptional is that while he has that insane velocity with the four-seamer, he isn’t afraid to lean into the soft stuff. In fact, he’s had starts where he’s leaned into his secondaries for 85% of his pitches. It will be interesting to see if the “slower” stuff still has the bite to it, as his rotation-mate Shane Baz lost some of the potency of his slider following Tommy John surgery.
The Rays plan to have McClanahan pitch around 150 innings. This puts a cap on his ceiling in fantasy leagues, which will ultimately harm his value. However, few pitchers are capable of giving innings as good as McClanahan’s, which is something to keep in mind. This is the ultimate quality-over-quantity pick, with the promise that we may see both from McClanahan in the following seasons.
Drew Rasmussen is another player who, similarly to deGrom, did make his return last year. He injured his elbow early in the 2023 season, which resulted in an internal brace procedure. Unlike deGrom, however, Rasmussen is an interesting case, as he pitched primarily out of the bullpen last season.
Few players fit the mold of a “Tampa Bay Rays high-end starter” like Rasmussen. He was originally viewed long-term as a reliever, but the Rays stretched him out and began to rely on him as an innings-eating run-preventer.
Rasmussen looked incredible out of the pen last season, with his fastball velocity sitting a tick higher than when he last pitched. This is likely due to the reduced role, however, this shows that he is still capable of throwing exceptionally hard. The results were really good, with a low ERA, WHIP, and a stellar strikeout rate.
In Rasmussen, you have a pitcher who has proven to still “have it” coming off a third elbow procedure. Whether “it” means the ability to start, though, is a different question. The Rays are going to look long and hard at Rasmussen in the spring, as there is a world where he can become a top-3 starter in a pretty solid rotation. There also is a world where the Rays decide that he should ultimately stick around as a high-leverage bullpen arm, in which case you may have to move off of him quickly.
We held our collective breath last year as Joe Ryan went down in August with a shoulder injury. Shoulder injuries are scary and often lead to long-term absences. Luckily, it seems like Ryan dodged that fate, and the game is the better for it.
We know Ryan is a pitcher with a very high ceiling. His flat fastball makes for plenty of swings and misses, especially when he does what you’re supposed to do with a flat-angle fastball and throws it in the upper part of the zone. It also honestly feels like cheating to call him a “bounceback” candidate, as he put together a very valuable season last year up until his injury. The main concern with Ryan that has tanked his value is his tendency to give up long balls. These often come in bunches and have tanked his seasons in the past (2023 especially). The lower WHIP means that
Ryan is a great candidate to truly break out coming off an injury. He will provide strikeouts and an excellent WHIP, with the potential to earn wins for a Twins team looking to bounce back after a disappointing 2024.
Joe Ryan was exceptional in 2024, with underlying numbers suggesting he can be even better.