Welcome to The List, where I rank the Top 100 SP for Fantasy Baseball every Monday of the year.
Want an earlier update to The List? Join me on Mondays at 2:00 pm ET as I live-stream its creation each week!
Have questions? My “office hours” are on Playback.tv 10:00 am – 12:00 pm ET Monday – Friday + the aforementioned stream of The List.
Every day of the 2024 baseball season, I’ve been looking at today and tomorrow’s slate of scheduled starting pitchers and ranking their matchups for your fantasy baseball streams.
With just under two weeks left of the season, I decided the most helpful thing I could do is expand my daily rankings to look at each remaining day of the season in one massive reference article.
There’s a lot that goes into this and you can hang out with me on Playback.tv/pitcherlist to talk about the specific ranks as I make them every weekday morning from 10am – 12pm ET. If you have questions about these ranks, please ask during the morning Playback AMA. Those are my office hours as I generally don’t answer comments on the site.
HUGE thanks to Josh Mockensturm for helping put together this week’s tables.
My Ranking Process Outlined
There are four tiers to these rankings with 12-teamers in mind:
Auto-Start – Just do it. Don’t overthink this, start the man. This includes “if I have them rostered, I’m starting them” pitchers.
Probably Start – I’m likely starting these arms, though I recognize there is more risk than we’d like there to be. Either it’s a tough matchup for a good-not-elite pitcher or a weak lineup for a volatile arm. These pitchers have a 50% or greater chance of performing well in my view.
Questionable Start – Think of this tier as “I don’t want to start these pitchers in a vacuum, but you could do worse.” Streamers found in this tier are not pitchers I’m targeting or are sneaky options for deeper leagues. To play it safe with streaming, just start the Probably Start streamers.
Do Not Start – The reward is not worth the risk. Don’t do it. Seriously, these pitchers have a very slim chance of success or sometimes none at all.
Obviously, there will be circumstances where pitchers should move between teams for your situation specifically and these new tiers should act as a little more help than the straight table from last year.
These schedules are going to change.
It’s the biggest concern I have investing the time into a massive article like this as we all know rotations change, injuries happen, starters are pushed back, and rainouts are a thing. It means to take these with a grain of salt, but I believe it’s best to have a plan and adapt rather than starting with no plan at all.
Also keep in mind that my feelings toward some of these starters will be altered by their progression through the rest of the year – for example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Aaron Nola may be limited in their final starts to be preserved for the playoffs, or Reese Olson and Hunter Greene, who are expected to return from the IL and may be worthwhile (or not!) by their final starts. The rankings are fluid through the end of the year and I can only make my best estimate now. Make sure to check out my daily rankings for more help in the final weeks.
For each edition of The List, I have a set of rules to outline my thought process and how to best use these rankings. Please take note:
- This is 5×5, 12-teamer, H2H format focused. It generally is the same as roto as well, but make sure you adjust accordingly.
- Again, these tables are going to change. I’m trying to give a general idea of it, but injured pitchers returning, rainouts, bumped starters, callups, etc. mean the orders are all messed up. It happens, nothing I can do about it.
Pretty straightforward stuff. Let’s take a look at how I’m loosely ranking these matchups for the next two weeks (which, also, will change. These are humans, after all):
Other Notes
We’ve added (OFF) and (SUN) to the tables to help figure out schedules moving forward when things go haywire:
(OFF) = The previous day was an off-day.
(Sun) = This game will be played on a Sunday.
It’ll also help for those hoping to target specific weeks moving forward (Follow the SUN!).
We altered the color code for both opponent strength and Tier label to better suit colorblind individuals. I’m glad every can use this effectively now!
The following tables are color-coded by their tiered ranking (Auto Start, Probable Start, Questionable Start, Do Not Start), NOT by their offensive strength.
Use the links at the top of the article to go a specific date to see my daily rankings for every pitcher.
Good luck!
Atlanta
Cincinnati Reds
Good luck everyone!
I wish you would stick to the normal top 100 list all year.
I think the color coding is off. Teams aren’t consistently the same color.
damn got a lil lazy on us for the championship week
HUGE fan of yours Nick, but what the heck is this. So confusing to look at. Agree with Andreas, wish this could be incorporated into actual rankings. Been following you for years and never really liked the ROS schedules.
I’ve seen enough of your work to speculate that this was/is a version control issue as opposed to getting lazy or even tired. I’d suggest you re-post the prior week’s data and if a huge amount of your time has been wasted by misfortune, your readers will have to do a week without. This abbreviated version doesn’t instill the confidence that we’ve come to expect. I hope there is no personal emergency that (properly) makes my playoff run meaningless.
Timing and content really have been slipping here once Football started. The list is very helpful but this ROS is not. Starts change and get dropped at a moments notice. Just stick with the list please and let us make the decisions on the matchups.
The color code is based on the matchup (pitcher vs team offense). The color isn’t locked into the team.
You’ll see Ace’s facing “Red” offenses but you never bench Ace’s, so the color is green.
I think this is very helpful at the end of the season. With only a week left, I don’t care about ROS. I’m looking for matchups to exploit and stream.
Thanks Nick
Like the logic you put into it, but damn I will say I prefer the actual ranking list, it’s hard to determine who to actually take over someone else. However your information throughout the years has helped ina lot of ways from a fantasy and just knowledge of the game. Keep up the great work.