My Top 400 Starting Pitchers for 2024 Fantasy Baseball rankings are live!
Before you dive into 70,000 words of analysis, it’s incredibly important to establish a foundation for how to use these to the fullest. My thoughts on how to draft pitchers for 12-team leagues is not universal and understanding my weights and areas of importance will help you adjust accordingly for your leagues and your preferences.
Without this information, my rankings are useless and you’re going in blind. Don’t do that! You can be so much more than that with little effort.
Good luck! Fantasy Baseball season is here.
How To Use These Rankings
It’s important to take a moment to express my general philosophy for drafting starting pitchers. It remains unchanged from years past in case you’ve heard me say this before. My strategy comes in two parts. First:
- 1. Draft FOUR starting pitchers I trust to never drop during the season
Essentially, you don’t need to get two of the Top 15 starters to excel. Instead, develop a foundation of four starters who won’t be so bad that they deserve a drop. This year, that speaks to the Top 49 starters at the end of Tier 7. It doesn’t mean just get three and call it a day, it just means having three starters allows you to have a foundation, even if it’s not including a top 10 starter. I heavily encourage grabbing four and then aiming to fill up the next two or three within that Top 50 if you can – generally, SP value lies in the middle of the draft, anyway – or at least going ham on the next tier in hopes that one of them sticks to become that fourth early.
- 2. Chase upside & pitchers you can drop early instead of middling decent pitchers
This is I Don’t Draft Tobys in a nutshell and is rooted in how much opportunity there is on the waiver wire in April & May. You need to put yourself in a position to take chances on pitchers early in the season as so many of them hit and become legit foundation starters through the year. Make sure your final pitchers are guys you can move on early in April if it’s not panning out, and if you draft middling arms instead, you’ll likely hold onto a 3.70 ERA guy instead of taking the chance on a true league winner. Don’t be that manager.
Don’t believe me? Here are Starting Pitchers who had a 2023 ADP of #290 or later and could be snagged in your leagues:
And that’s not even including this rag-tag crew containing many pitchers you were able to grab at specific points of the season for legit value:
Now you understand. That’s where I’m coming from with these rankings and it’s important to not treat them as a “Best Ball” ranking – you’re not drafting a team you hold for the full year, instead you’re drafting a team with anticipation that you’re burning and churning at the back-end of your roster. It’s the way you win your leagues.
Early SP Schedules
One element that I often don’t discuss this early when doing rankings is the expected opening weekend schedule. It doesn’t have much of an impact on these rankings, but as we get closer to the start of the year and rotations become clearer after trades, signings, and injuries, it may reveal some late-round targets to sneak in a start or two in your head-to-head leagues that may turn into season-long holds (like Brayan Bello and Tyler Wells in 2023).
First, here are the individual offense ranks:
In essence, we should only be considering being conservative against the Top tier offenses (and maybe some Solid tiers as well), while take a chance here or there against the Poor offenses (I’m sure some will surprise us!). Everything else in the middle is up for grabs.
And here is how the start of 2024 shapes up:
Here are my thoughts on these opening schedules:
- Does Rockie Road actually apply if the Rockies offense hasn’t actually played in Colorado yet? Part of their decline on the road is being used to how the ball moves in Coors and if they aren’t acclimated to it yet, the offense may perform better in Arizona and Chicago than expected.
- These offense rankings were created in October and will obviously change once the season begins.
- I personally love chasing late-round starters who pitch the opening weekend, though my rankings don’t reflect that currently. You can steal a productive outing, then drop them for whatever upside pitcher you were considering who hasn’t pitched yet. It’s just an extra hint of value you can steal at the beginning of the season.
- The Padres and Dodgers are playing a two-game set (each with one game as the home team) in Seoul, South Korea a week before Opening Day. It makes me wonder if there’s a little extra value for having one of these four stud pitchers (possibly Joe Musgrove & Yu Darvish vs. Bobby Miller & Walker Buehler) toss one more start than everyone else.
- Then again, it’s possible that your league is not counting the South Korea games. Plan accordingly.
- In addition to this, the Padres fourth matchup is @SFG. while the Dodgers get @ CHC. Both of these act as the normal third matchups, given rotations will reset the week between the South Korea series and opening day.
- ARI, CIN, MIA, CHW, CLE, DET, OAK each have seemingly favorable matchups to kick off the season. Here are a few pitchers who could go by Sunday who and provide sneaky draft value:
- Arizona vs COL (x4): Ryne Nelson or Brandon Pfaadt or an FA signing. Not sure I’d do this.
- Cincinnati vs. WSN: SP #3 will likely be Andrew Abbott, and even though I have him ranked past #100, that’s a tempting opening weekend stream.
- Miami vs. PIT (x4): Consider Braxton Garrett or a possibly healthy Trevor Rogers or AJ Puk.
- White Sox vs. DET: Monitor how this shakes out.
- Cleveland @ OAK (x4): We may see Logan Allen in the #4 spot and that’s awfully tempting.
- Detroit @ CHW: After Skubal and Maeda it’s…? Matt Manning? Casey Mize? Jack Flaherty? Too much haze here.
- Oakland vs. CLE (x4): Everyone? JP Sears, Paul Blackburn, Ross Stripling, Alex Wood, At least one of these will be the talk of the town opening weekend.
At first glance, it doesn’t seem like this strategy is all too helpful for 2024. That said, offenses will change, rotations will shift, and spring brings new excitement. Refer to this table in March.
Alright, let’s get to it now. Remember, these ranks are based on a 12-teamer, 5×5 roto format. Adjust accordingly to your situation.
For those unaware:
- Cherry Bomb = A volatile pitcher who is either super sweet or blows up in your face. There are few middle grounds.
- Toby = A middling pitcher who you can’t decide if they do enough to stay on your team and give you the itch to drop every single day. Named after Toby from The Office. Don’t draft them.
- Holly = The better version of a Toby – essentially a starter who will be in the 21-24% strikeout range with decent ratios instead of the 20% strike rate or fewer of Toby types.
Read The Notes
- This is your reminder to please read these notes as they’ll tell you plenty about my thought process and why I’m ranking guys in a certain way.
- My thoughts have changed since October and even since recording podcasts as recently as early February. I’m sorry for the confusion, truly. It’s something I’ve wrestled with as I’ve done rankings for a decade now and ultimately, it’s better for you, the reader, that my analysis and rankings shift as I get new information instead of sticking with guns from a previous time for the same of preservation. After all, I just want to provide the best rank possible before opening day.
- One more thing. Read the notes.
Thank you for breaking it up into multiple articles. One quick suggestion – would it be possible to list the top 400 as a plain list, so that way if there is a specific picture someone wants to look up, they know which article to go click on?
Came here to post this. I am sure that you have your reasons for breaking it into the individual pages but I mainly care for the list.
I can proof read your guys work if you’re hiring an editor for that. I would also be happy to monitor the comments so stuff like this doesn’t happen?
Tried to reply to Julie Magie on my last comment. Why would your comment box say reply but it doesn’t show that you’re replying on another comment or not on the page?
Spent a few hours on this. Hope it’s kosher to share, and it all fits…
Spencer Strider
Gerrit Cole
Corbin Burnes
Zack Wheeler
Pablo López
Luis Castillo
George Kirby
Kevin Gausman
Zac Gallen
Logan Webb
Aaron Nola
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Bobby Miller
Cole Ragans
Grayson Rodriguez
Tyler Glasnow
Kyle Bradish
Zach Eflin
Joe Musgrove
Framber Valdez
Kodai Senga
Max Fried
Freddy Peralta
Eury Perez
Tarik Skubal
Logan Gilbert
Jesus Luzardo
Blake Snell
Justin Steele
Sonny Gray
Yu Darvish
Shota Imanaga
Joe Ryan
Bailey Ober
Michael King
Bryan Woo
Chris Sale
Nick Pivetta
Tanner Bibee
Shane Baz
Dylan Cease
Justin Verlander
Chris Bassitt
Brayan Bello
Merrill Kelly
Cristopher Sanchez
Walker Buehler
Jose Berrios
Jordan Montgomery
Carlos Rodon
Nathan Eovaldi
Gavin Williams
Cristian Javier
Ryan Pepiot
Kutter Crawford
Louie Varland
Bryce Miller
Yusei Kikuchi
Luis Severino
Lucas Giolito
Hunter Brown
Aaron Civale
Shane Bieber
Marcus Stroman
Brandon Pfaadt
Eduardo Rodriguez
DL Hall
Triston McKenzie
Nick Lodolo
Edward Cabrera
Hunter Greene
Nestor Cortes
Aaron Ashby
Kenta Maeda
Emmet Sheehan
Jordan Hicks
Taj Bradley
Mitch Keller
Alek Manoah
AJ Puk
Michael Wacha
Seth Lugo
Braxton Garrett
Jameson Taillon
John Means
Tanner Houck
Charlie Morton
Erick Fedde
Trevor Rogers
James Paxton
Ricky Tiedemann
Reese Olson
Garrett Whitlock
Lance Lynn
Kyle Harrison
Jacob deGrom
Max Scherzer
Drew Rasmussen
Robbie Ray
Clayton Kershaw
Dustin May
Paul Skenes
Cade Horton
Sawyer Gipson-Long
Prelander Berroa
Tylor Megill
Mick Abel
Max Meyer
Robert Gasser
Drew Thorpe
Connor Phillips
Joe Boyle
Andrew Abbott
Griffin Canning
MacKenzie Gore
Casey Mize
Jon Gray
Reid Detmers
Chase Silseth
Matt Manning
Clarke Schmidt
Nick Martinez
Jhony Brito
Logan Allen
JP France
Frankie Montas
Sean Manaea
Jack Flaherty
Michael Soroka
Jose Urquidy
Yariel Rodriguez
Garrett Crochet
JP Sears
Brady Singer
Ryne Nelson
Tyler Wells
Chris Paddack
Graham Ashcraft
Ryan Weathers
Wade Miley
Jose Quintana
Zack Littell
Cody Bradford
Dean Kremer
Dane Dunning
Kyle Hendricks
Ranger Suarez
Taijuan Walker
Bryce Elder
Mike Clevinger
Keaton Winn
Ross Stripling
Alex Wood
Kyle Gibson
Hyun Jin Ryu
Adrian Houser
Steven Matz
Andrew Heaney
Patrick Sandoval
Miles Mikolas
Randy Vasquez
Michael Lorenzen
Luis Medina
Josiah Gray
Michael Kopech
Tristan Beck
Martin Perez
Marco Gonzalez
Jackson Jobe
Jared Jones
Royber Salinas
Jacob Misiorowski
Hurston Waldrep
Chase Hampton
Chayce McDermott
Will Warren
Cade Povich
Tink Hence
River Ryan
Kyle Hurt
David Festa
Christian Scott
DJ Herz
Nick Nastrini
Emerson Hancock
Tyler Mahle
Jeffrey Springs
David Peterson
Luis Garcia
Lance McCullers Jr.
Alex Cobb
Brandon Woodruff
Matthew Boyd
Sandy Alcantara
Shane McClanahan
Tony Gonsolin
Ian Anderson
Kyle Wright
Andrew Painter
Vince Velasquez
Mason Miller
German Marquez
JT Brubaker
Kris Bubic
Antonio Senzatela
Deivi Garcia
Owen White
Colin Rea
Huascar Ynoa
Gavin Stone
Javier Assad
Reynaldo Lopez
Ken Waldichuk
Zack Thompson
Jordan Wicks
Hayden Wesneski
Luis Patino
Matt Waldron
Brandon Williamson
Bowden Francis
Adrian Morejon
Alec Marsh
Alex Faedo
Tyler Anderson
Chris Flexen
Paul Blackburn
Jakob Junis
Pedro Avila
Luis L. Ortiz
Bailey Falter
Jake Irvin
Jordan Lyles
Patrick Corbin
Trevor Williams
Ty Madden
Chase Petty
AJ Smith-Shawver
Jack Leiter
Ben Brown
Kai-Wei Teng
Jairo Iriarte
Joey Cantillo
Daniel Espino
Tekoah Roby
Griff McGarry
Mason Black
Wikelman Gonzalez
Carson Whisenhunt
Landen Roupp
Ian Seymour
Jake Eder
Luis Gil
Wilmer Flores
Joey Estes
Mike Vasil
Adam Plutko
Spencer Turnbull
Roansy Contreras
Joe Ross
Naoyuki Uwasawa
Carlos Carrasco
Joey Wentz
Bryan Hoeing
Zach Davies
Eric Lauer
Drew Rucinski
Adrián Martínez
Kenny Rosenberg
Jose Butto
Ryan Yarbrough
Anthony DeSclafani
Michael Grove
Hogan Harris
Austin Voth
Elieser Hernandez
Joey Lucchesi
Luke Weaver
Jaime Barría
Zach Plesac
Kyle Freeland
Cal Quantrill
Austin Gomber
Dakota Hudson
Ryan Feltner
Justin Dunn
Johnny Cueto
Corey Kluber
Noah Syndergaard
Brad Keller
Rich Hill
Jose Urena
Julio Teheran
Chase Anderson
Dallas Keuchel
Jake Odorizzi
Zack Greinke
Yonny Chirinos
Allan Winans
Quinn Priester
Jimmy Joyce
Bryan Mata
Sean Burke
Dominic Hamel
Jackson Wolf
Angel Bastardo
Yu-Min Lin
Julian Aguiar
Justin Armbruester
Freddy Tarnok
Jarlin Susana
Dylan Lesko
Cole Henry
Cade Cavalli
Chase Dollander
Caleb Kilian
Adam Mazur
Blade Tidwell
Simeon Woods Richardson
Clayton Beeter
Sem Robberse
Matt Canterino
Carlos F. Rodriguez
Spencer Arrighetti
Forrest Whitley
Matt Sauer
Noah Schultz
Robby Snelling
Ethan Small
Ronel Blanco
Jose Suarez
Tommy Henry
Slade Cecconi
Bryce Jarvis
Xzavion Curry
Josh Winckowski
Hunter Gaddis
Daulton Jefferies
Lyon Richardson
Kyle Muller
Osvaldo Bido
Cole Irvin
Bruce Zimmermann
Janson Junk
Jackson Rutledge
Drew Rom
Matthew Liberatore
Mitch White
Glenn Otto
Davis Daniel
Touki Toussaint
Jared Shuster
Drew Smyly
Joan Adon
Daniel Lynch IV
Cooper Criswell
Chad Kuhl
Jake Woodford
Kolby Allard
Angel Zerpa
Brandon Bielak
Sixto Sanchez
Cody Morris
Connor Overton
Beau Brieske
Jesse Scholtens
Shawn Dubin
Noah Davis
Ty Blach
Peter Lambert
Landon Knack
Corbin Martin
Mason Montgomery
Cole Wilcox
Keider Montero
Darius Vines
Taylor Dollard
Thaddeus Ward
Josh Stephan
Carson Palmquist
Joe Rock
Michael McGreevy
Cristian Mena
Ky Bush
Carson Seymour
Blayne Enlow
Maddux Bruns
Blake Walston
Dylan Dodd
Tejay Antone
Sean Newcomb
James Kaprielian
Bryse Wilson
Ben Lively
Jonathan Heasley
Tyler Alexander
Luis Cessa
Levi Stoudt
Spenser Watkins
Danny Duffy
Tyler Beede
Thanks Mark, this is exactly what I was wanting for draft day.
Mark W, you’re awesome.
this is all i wanted to see, thank you
Will this list be updated as spring training moves along?