The cream of the crop. The pitchers who require an early round pick to acquire and they are worth it!

Either of the “Sk Boys” are viable in the 1-spot and I’m leaning toward Tarik Skubal because of the Tigers though still unrelated to my fandom of them. In fantasy baseball, team context matters it’s still clear that the Tigers give Skubal more win potential than the Pirates offer Skenes. Wins are still unpredictable, though, so Skubal could have 12 and Skenes 15 by season’s end… again, it’s a coinflip at the 1-spot.

It is worth noting that Paul Skenes easily has the best ERA in baseball the last two seasons (min. 100 IP) with a tiny 1.96 mark in 321 IP. Only Jacob deGrom (120!) tops his 116 Pitching+ (Skubal, Zack Wheeler, and Corbin Burnes are tied at 116) in that same time. In short, he’s amazing and if he’s your #1 SP, it’s perfectly justifiable.

All the talk of the “Sk Boys” as the unquestioned top 2 guys might be overlooking Garrett Crochet as a viable #1 in his own right. His 2024-25 combined numbers aren’t as strong because his ERA was relatively high for an ace in ’24 (3.58) but his 2.72 SIERA is the best of the trio as are his 33% K and 27% K-BB rates. He’s also the only one of them to deliver a 200+ IP season. Addtionally, the Red Sox were the best of these three teams last year and likely will be again in 2026. I didn’t expect this write-up to go this way but it’s a firm 3-way battle for the top spot. Taking Crochet is every bit as viable as the “Sk Boys”… maybe it’s time to start calling him “Skcrochet” so he’s firmly in the group!

I had Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the lock #4 after the regular season and after his amazing playoff run, that is now consensus. I wasn’t out on some super risky limb so I’ll chill on the back-patting, I was just surprised that it was being seen as a lock 3 and then wide open despite what we had just seen in 30-start season from Yamamoto. He did still only amass 174 IP (28th) and I’m left wondering if that’s about his cap or a step toward 200+.

It’s easy to see the Dodgers having no real incentive to push any starter so they have juice for October to do exactly what Yamamoto just did. Conversely, he was their first 30-start pitcher since Julio Urías in 2022 and both Urías and Walker Buehler in 2021 so maybe he is going to be the one steady workhorse while they massage the rest throughout the year. His pitches per gm went up from 90 to 99 in the second half followed by the exquisite playoff run that saw three counts at 105+ including the back-to-back CGs. Let’s plan for more of the same and be pleasantly surprised if the Dodgers let him in the upper reaches of pitches per game.

Can Logan Gilbert’s 131-IP season be the final nail in the “safe innings” coffin? It’s fugazi, it’s a whazy. It’s a woozie. It’s fairy dust… no, that doesn’t mean I think some rookie has the same IP cap as a Gilbert or Logan Webb, etc… but rather that you’re deluding yourself in thinking that pitchers are inherently bankable. They all carry *extreme* injury risk. That’s no shade on Gilbert, either, as I fully believe in his talent. It was just the repeated refrain that he was a lock 30+ starts.

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Draft Gilbert because he had a 5 pt. jump in K% to a career-best 32% thanks to his 3rd-ranked 16% SwStr rate. The 144 Stf+ on his splitter was far and away the best in baseball and he leaned on it more with a 20% usage rate. I’d also like to be clear that I’m not suggesting there is no value to Gilbert pitching 32-33 starts in all three seasons from 2022-24. It shows Seattle’s confidence in him and makes clear that they’ll let him go when healthy and upright, a right not afforded to all starters. My disconnect came with using Gilbert’s workload as the reason to take him over guys like deGrom and Crochet despite acknowledging that they’d almost certainly be better on a per-inning basis. In today’s lower inning landscape, I just want the most talented arms and I’ll let the innings play out.

I was steering clear of Hunter Greene last year and even shared concerns of a real downside season. I was of course dead wrong and despite his HR rate jumping back up to 1.3, his ERA moved all 0.01 while his WHIP tumbled to a career-best 0.94, albeit in just 108 IP. He’s only reached 150 IP once, averaging just 124 IP over his four seasons, but he made the most of his short 2025 sample thanks to a sharp 3 pt. drop in BB% to 6%. Maintaining that will be key to surviving the homers, assuming he doesn’t improve that issue this year. There is legitimate #1 overall SP upside here as hopefully the 26-year old can stay fully healthy and deliver his first 30-start campaign.

It was a huge breakthrough season for Cristopher Sánchez where both his excellent walk and homer rates held firm while adding 6 pts to his K%. We now have 483 IP of great work from Sánchez (3.00 ERA/1.13 WHIP/18% K-BB) and I think we could see a full season of his 2023 numbers: 3.44 ERA/1.05 WHIP/20% K-BB.

It was an injury washout for Cole Ragans as he managed just 62 IP, but his skills were fantastic (30% K-BB) and neither the 64% LOB nor the .354 BABIP feel like his true skill level so I absolutely expect a performance closer to his 2.52 SIERA than 4.67 ERA.

While Max Fried lacks the premium strikeout capability of his peers here in this tier, he makes up for it with good walk rates and a consistent penchant for limiting homers thanks to his groundball lean. His 0.65 HR9 is 4th in MLB since 2022 (min. 300 IP) thanks to a groundball heavy approach (54% GB is 9th). He did also have a career-best 95.8 mph fastball last year (93.9 career), too, and it’ll be interesting to see if he holds those gains in 2026.

Hunter Brown leveraged some small skill improvements and a tiny .262 BABIP into an ace season. His SIERA dropped from 3.74 to 3.39 thanks to a 3 pt. K% boost and a couple fewer walks (-0.6%). He will likely push closer to his career .299 BABIP but if it comes with a 18-20% K-BB rate, he can front a fantasy rotation.