Our Best in Baseball series is back with its FINAL installment before we have our first major league action of the season! Tomorrow, the Dodgers and Padres square off in Seoul, South Korea for what best qualifies as a “soft launch” Opening Day for the 2024 MLB season.
Today, we’re finally returning to what makes this website great: the pitching. Specifically, we’re looking at the five best starting rotations in the league from top to bottom. It’s a difficult job considering how much talent there is in the league, but someone’s got to do it, right?
One important distinction is that we need to consider things at face value right now, which means health is unfortunately a factor when creating this list. This means that teams like the Rangers and Yankees unfortunately don’t crack the top five when they might normally have (get well soon, Gerrit Cole).
One final note: we all love pitching here at Pitcher List, but if you want the best breakdowns on every player, the best place to look by far is Nick’s top 400 list from February. There you’ll get more information than you could imagine on pitch mix, splits vs. RHB/LHB, and so much more. Give it a read before your draft to get the best info on all the studs and potential breakout candidates for the season.
Without any further delay, let’s get to our five best rotations in baseball!
Projected rotation:
The Mariners not only have arguably the most talented overall rotation from their first through fifth starter, but their starting five is one of the youngest in the league as well. The headliner here is of course Luis Castillo, the 31-year-old ace who is one of the most proven workhorses in today’s league. The 197 innings in 2023 were a career-high for Castillo, and he did this while managing a 3.34 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, and 27.3% strikeout rate. With those stats across that many innings, Castillo is sure to help your ratios and strikeout totals throughout the entire season. There will always be a couple of starts where the command isn’t just quite there, but MORE.
Behind Castillo is a plethora of young stars with chances to ascend, as George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo all fall between the ages of 24 and 26. Oh, to be young… Kirby’s stats were the most impressive of the group in 2023, boasting a dazzling 1.04 WHIP in just his second season in the majors. The strikeouts weren’t entirely there (just 22.7% last season), but with such great command, he finds ways to limit baserunners. Gilbert, meanwhile, also had an impressive 1.08 WHIP but posted the highest home run rate of his young career, thanks in part to a less functional four-seamer. Still, as far as No. 3s go in the league, Gilbert is about as good as it gets and has plenty of upside. Finally, we didn’t quite see a full season of action from either Miller or Woo in 2023, but we got a good enough sample to understand that both of these young studs have a high potential thanks to some dominant fastballs. As Nick points out in his detailed writeup, Woo has the superior secondaries when compared to Miller, perhaps making him a slightly safer option from a fantasy perspective, but both have the makings of promising young starters with room to grow. Altogether, this is probably the only rotation in the league where I feel solid about all five options in the rotation. There’s upside galore alongside lots of relatively stable floors, and that’s enough for me to confidently place this staff at the top of our list.
Projected Rotation:
Sometimes, life just isn’t fair. Case in point: the Atlanta Braves. How on earth are they allowed to have the league’s best lineup AND one of the best pitching staffs? Signing young stars to long-term extensions and developing your players well certainly helps… maybe we need to do a top-five front office rankings sometime.
So anyway, the Braves rotation is really solid from top to bottom. I don’t need to tell you that Spencer Strider is one of the best in the league (and could be the best, period, with Cole’s injury), despite a higher ERA than we would have liked to see in 2023. The WHIP was still great at 1.09 and the strikeout rate of 36.8% is preposterous, but it is just a two-pitch mix, which likely leads to the increased number of homers and the higher ERA. Behind Strider is Max Fried, who we really just need to stay healthy in 2024. Fried is potentially the best No. 2 in the league if he can stay on the field, with an elite ability to limit baserunners (and runs) thanks to a varied pitch mix.
With that strong of a one-two punch, the Braves still have a solid supporting cast behind their two aces. Charlie Morton turned 40 this year, yes, but he still managed a solid ERA and plenty of wins in 2023. The WHIP was quite scary at 1.43, thanks to an 11.6% walk rate, so there is certainly reason for concern. Chris Sale has a similar goal as Fried for 2024: just stay healthy! We saw flashes of his nastiest stuff during his time with the Red Sox in 2023, and being with the Braves this season certainly raises his chances of getting wins. The fifth starter job seemed up in the air until this morning, when Bryce Elder was optioned to AAA, allowing Reynaldo López to claim the job to start the season. López has a solid heater and will be given his chance to succeed. This group has the upside and the firepower to be the best in the league, but the floor is lower than the Mariners rotation, earning the Braves the No. 2 spot on this list.
Projected Rotation:
I’m still holding out hope that the Phillies make a last-minute push to sign either Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery and go all-in for a World Series run, but as things stand, the Phillies still have an excellent rotation with solid options at the top and upside at the bottom (seems to be a common theme for good rotations, huh?). Zack Wheeler is the headliner for this group, boasting one of the most dominant fastballs in the game, especially against righties. I truly believe that Wheeler is somehow still underrated amongst fantasy communities and has one of the highest floors in the game with the kind of elite upside to be the overall SP1 this season and win a Cy Young. His walk rates, strikeout rates, and WHIP have been incredibly stable despite a high workload these last few seasons, and there’s no reason to believe that should take a turn for the worse.
Speaking from personal experience, Aaron Nola isn’t always the most fun arm to roster in fantasy, and 2023 had perhaps the most extreme highs and lows for Nola yet. The long ball was Nola’s biggest weakness last season, allowing tons of hard contact and surrendering 1.49 home-runs-per-nine-innings. That’s a home run every six innings for those of you doing the math at home. Nola is still a true workhorse and should manage over 180 innings again in 2024, but he’ll need to limit the home runs to be his best self.
Of the remaining starters, Cristopher Sánchez is certainly the most interesting of the bunch. You know what you’re getting with Taijuan Walker (a perfectly fine back-of-the-rotation arm) and Ranger Suárez is vulnerable to righties but still produces stretches worthy of streaming value (the 1.42 WHIP still scares me, regardless). Sánchez, on the other hand, showed a lot of promise in his first time as a starter, producing a 3.44 ERA and 1.05 WHIP in just under 100 innings of work. He’s a riskier pick and could certainly take a step back this year, but I like Sánchez’s chances to become a reliable arm for this Phillies team and earn plenty of wins.
Projected Rotation:
This might be a slight overreaction, but I am loving the look of this Padres rotation with the addition of Dylan Cease. Cease had a spectacular 2022, with a 2.20 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 30.7% strikeout rate, but came back to earth in 2023 with a 4.58 ERA and 1.42 WHIP. The strikeout rate was still a solid 27.3%, so there are still reasons to be optimistic about Cease’s prospects – it’s just a matter of figuring out which version of him we’re going to get. I’ll be rooting for him to return to that dominant 2022 version of himself.
Aside from Cease, there’s a lot to be optimistic about with this Padres rotation. Joe Musgrove had one of the more bizarre injury seasons in recent memory in 2023 but should be good to go as the staff’s strongest arm from Opening Day, even if he isn’t the official Opening Day starter. Speaking of that, Yu Darvish is starting to get up there in age, but was also dominant as recently as 2022 (a common theme with this staff, huh?) and can still be a solid option for your fantasy teams, even if the strikeout rate isn’t as high. Michael King is also an arm worth keeping an eye on this season in his first year operating as a starter. During his time with the Yankees, King was primarily a reliever and turned in impressive stats last season (2.75 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and a 29.5% strikeout rate). There’s reason to be optimistic about King’s promotion to the rotation as long as he gets the workload. Finally, joining King in the trip to San Diego from the Juan Soto deal is Jhony Brito, who impressed in spurts as a spot starter in 2023. The strikeout rate isn’t quite there, and he may have benefitted from a favorable BABIP, but his four-seamer shows promise and Brito will get his chance to become a full-fledged starter in 2024. There might not be a true, bona fide, Cy Young candidate at the outset for this team in 2024, but there are a slew of promising arms looking to either return to form or take that next step as a full-time starter. I’m all in on this group to exceed expectations in 2024, which earns them the No. 4 spot on this list.
Projected Rotation:
A little thing to know about me: Kevin Gausman’s splitter is probably my favorite pitch in the bigs. Some things in this world just simply don’t make sense, and the movement on that splitter is one of them. What you’re getting from Gausman won’t be a surprise (I’m not concerned about the injury at this point)–tons of strikeouts across 180+ innings of work with a few blips on the radar that come from his four-seamer getting drilled from time to time.
If you were in a Quality Starts league last year, Chris Bassitt was likely one of the better values you could find, as his 24 QS tied for the league lead with Gerrit Cole. Even in a standard league, Bassitt’s 3.60 ERA and 1.18 WHIP across 200 innings means you probably found plenty of success with him and earned a decent chunk of wins. He’s a rock-solid No. 2 pitcher for this rotation.
Dare I say that both Yusei Kikuchi and José Berríos exceeded expectations last season? Kikuchi posted career bests in ERA (3.86) and WHIP (1.27), thanks in large part to a reduced walk rate, while Berrios regained his footing after a tumultuous 2022. I’d be hesitant to pick either of these players in a fantasy draft, but for a real MLB rotation, you could certainly do worse for your No. 3 and No. 4 starters. I’m expecting at least one of these pitchers to continue on a trajectory to be a more stable option–let’s hope they both can succeed.
With Alek Manoah still taking some time to find the stuff he had in 2022, it seems that Bowden Francis will be the team’s fifth starter to begin the year. Francis pitched 20 games of relief last season with a sparkling 1.73 ERA and 0.83 WHIP, meaning there’s a real upside to be had here in a small sample size of 36.1 innings. Obviously, the smart move is to be hesitant here, but if Francis looks good early in the season, make sure you pick him up before your competitors get the chance.
So there we have it–our top five rotations heading into 2024. It wasn’t easy to narrow this list down, and there are definitely a few teams I wish I could have included on this list. The Dodgers, for example, probably DO belong on here, with Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Bobby Miller forming a formidable three-headed monster at the top of the rotation, but I opted to exclude them because of injury risks for Glasnow (as well as Walker Buehler) and the growing pains that sometimes come with transitioning from international ball to the MLB for Yamamoto. That’s the beauty of baseball, though–nobody’s rankings are ever going to be identical.
Oh, one last thing–happy Opening Day, everyone. We made it.
Play ball!
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