Starting pitching – no other position sees fantasy baseball players employ as many different strategies during their drafts. Some people stock up on aces early, while others wait until the 10th round to take their first starter.
However you go about drafting starters, you’ll need to have your tiers set, so you can know how most effectively to use your draft picks. As with outfield, we’re mostly dealing with massive tiers here, because you’re drafting so many players. So, buckle up and let’s dive in.
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The Elite
- Clayton Kershaw
- Max Scherzer
- Madison Bumgarner
- Chris Sale
- Noah Syndergaard
- Corey Kluber
- Jon Lester
- Jake Arrieta
Certainly, Kershaw could be considered in a tier unto himself. But as anyone who has battled serious back injuries knows, they can recur at any time. While he should certainly still be the first pitcher drafted, he now simply leads the elite tier, rather than getting his own super-elite tier.
As for the rest of these guys, any one of them can easily front your pitching staff. Safe, reliable, and outstanding, they all make the first tier.
The Slightly Less Elite
- Justin Verlander
- Yu Darvish
- Johnny Cueto
- Stephen Strasburg
- Carlos Carrasco
- Jacob deGrom
- Chris Archer
Whether it’s injury risk or the fact they’ve had random sub-par years, these guys fall just below the elite level. Still, every one of them is capable of leading your pitching staff and finishing as a top-5 option.
The Very Goods
Enjoy the last of your regular-sized starting pitching tiers, because we’re about to super-size our meals. These guys aren’t quite aces, but offer a great combination of solid numbers (Hendricks, Martinez, Hamels), or potentially elite production that can be had at a discount because of injury-plagued seasons (Greinke and Cole).
And then we have David Price. We got “good” news on Price, but still, there’s a ton of risk there. He’ll likely open the season on the disabled list and elbow injuries are terrifying. Absent a setback, I’d still feel ok about drafting him as a low-end number two starter. Well, maybe not ok. But I could stomach it, given the potential.
The Solids
- Jose Quintana
- Danny Duffy
- Masahiro Tanaka
- Rick Porcello
- Danny Salazar
- Dallas Keuchel
- Matt Harvey
- Rich Hill
- Kenta Maeda
- Julio Teheran
- Aaron Sanchez
- Michael Fulmer
All of these guys are going to be just fine. Sure, Keuchel was abysmal last year, but he’s admitted that he pitched through injury the entire year. And if you’ve been listening to the FantasyPros Baseball Podcast, you’ll know I’m bullish on Harvey returning to form (relatively speaking). I’m not at all concerned about his rough first Spring Training outing. And, believe me, that’s not homer-talk. As a Mets fan, I’m trained to be pessimistic. I’m just certainly buying into him in this range, without question. (But I’m certainly hoping the rest of his spring is less eventful).
The Slightly Less Solids
- Felix Hernandez
- Marcus Stroman
- Steven Matz
- Lance McCullers
- John Lackey
- Aaron Nola
- Kevin Gausman
- James Paxton
- Jameson Taillon
- Tanner Roark
We’re still doing just fine with these guys, as we remain with a nice mix of upside and safety. It’s unlikely that you’re going to look back at whatever draft pick you used to take any of these guys and think, “Man, this really won me the league.” But you also probably won’t think any of them lost you the league either.
The Fallback Options
- Jon Gray
- Vince Velasquez
- Julio Urias
- Sean Manaea
- Jeff Samardzija
- J.A. Happ
- Michael Pineda
- Robbie Ray
- Carlos Rodon
- Drew Pomeranz
- Jake Odorizzi
- Matt Shoemaker
- Sonny Gray
- Anthony DeSclafani
- Joe Ross
- Marco Estrada
- Drew Smyly
The guys in this tier should all be drafted, and you’ll see a lot of them on breakout lists (Manaea, Ray). But none of them fills you with total confidence at this point in the offseason. A big part of building a competent pitching staff is making sure that the bottom part of your staff will show up and give you decent numbers, and you should be able to say that about everyone here.
Also, I believe the test for whether you’re a fantasy baseball analyst is if you can spell Samardzija without looking it up. I’ve finally made it!
The Last Resorts
- Taijuan Walker
- Blake Snell
- Garrett Richards
- Matt Moore
- Jerad Eickhoff
- Jharel Cotton
- Hisashi Iwakuma
- Adam Wainwright
- Gio Gonzalez
- Ivan Nova
- Collin McHugh
- Alex Cobb
- Jason Hammel
- Ian Kennedy
- Lance Lynn
- Tyler Glasnow
- Ervin Santana
- Junior Guerra
- Jordan Zimmermann
- Joe Musgrove
- Dylan Bundy
Here we reach the last of the starting pitchers that you should feel remotely comfortable drafting. There are a couple of exciting names here, such as Snell, Glasnow and Cotton, but mostly, you’re just trying to get by.
Everyone Else
- Jeremy Hellickson
- Trevor Bauer
- Tyler Anderson
- Tyson Ross
- Robert Gsellman
- Zach Davies
- Tyler Skaggs
- Wei-Yin Chen
- Mike Foltynewicz
- Francisco Liriano
- Eduardo Rodriguez
- Mike Leake
- Michael Wacha
- Daniel Norris
- Jose Berrios
Nothing much to say here. Best of the rest. Try not to count on too many of the pitchers from this tier, and hope that the one or two you draft works out.
More Tiers
First Base Rankings Tiers
Catcher Rankings Tiers
Second Base Rankings Tiers
Shortstop Rankings Tiers
Third Base Rankings Tiers
Outfield Rankings Tiers
Relief Pitcher Rankings Tiers
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Dan Harris is a correspondent with FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter at @danharris80.