Bean Ball

This is part three of a series covering my experience with playing fantasy baseball this summer. The first part is linked here.

Today, we dive into my thoughts about pitchers I liked and disliked going into the draft process. Again, I want to reiterate that this is not a position ranking, but instead players I felt could be good fantasy pitchers for my team, given what I think they will do on the mound this year and where they were going in the draft. Let’s dive in. 

Just like for hitters, I used FanGraphs custom leaderboard to start to look at pitchers I liked for 2026. For this, I once again used 10 stats to sort players, and I used the years of 2024-2025: Innings Pitched, FIP-, GB%+, K%, BB%, K%-BB%, PitchingBot Stuff, Stuff+, Swinging Strike%, and Location+. The first one is pretty self-explanatory, as I want pitchers who I know will pitch for me, especially if I am spending a high pick on them. Grabbing a guy who will pitch most of a full season was something I valued, or grabbing two pitchers who had more injury history but offered some upside. FIP- (fielding independent pitching) is a stat that is predictive of future ERA. It is standardized to make the league average 100, and anything below that is above average, meaning a low FIP- is indicative of a low future ERA. Next are a bunch of rate stats that stem from my philosophy around pitching. I believe a pitcher’s goal is to limit baserunners, which in turn prevents runs. I think an optimal way to do this is to induce strikeouts, which does both of those things, but when you are not getting strikeouts to not let them turn into power output. Groundball%+ (GB%+) shows players who limit these power outputs by inducing groundballs, and like FIP- it is standardized so that the league average is 100, but anything above 100 is better in this case. BB% demonstrates a limiting of baserunners as well, which also falls into my pitching ideology, and the K% offers the other side of that. The next stat puts those two numbers into greater context, K%-BB%, which works in two important ways for me. First, it demonstrates the ability to create swing and miss without sacrificing command, and second, it is a very powerful ERA indicator. The last four work to better understand the type of pitcher that a player is. PitchingBot Stuff (botStf) is a model created by Cameron Grove that models pitch quality on the 20-80 scale scouting scale, and Stuff+ is a model that also measures pitch quality, developed by Eno Sarris and Max Bay, and operates on the same scale as other + stats. That same model also created Location+, which measures pitch location quality in the same manner. 

I am a big fan of Eno Sarris and what he does at The Athletic and Rates and Barrels, and so many of my ideas of what I look for in pitching stem from him. However, I do think that the Stuff+ model has some flaws, something that he too states, and so coupling it with other stats is better. SwingingStrike% gives even more data regarding a pitcher’s pitch quality, especially for strikeout potential. Now that you understand what I am looking for, it’s time to start identifying some pitchers I liked. 

Starters

Given that I anticipated taking a hitter with my first pick and another one with my second, I did not think too much about Tarik Skubal, Paul Skenes, or Garret Crochet, though I think my ranking for the year would go Skubal, Crochet, and Skenes. If, for some reason, any of them ended up on my team, however, I would be very happy. Instead, I wanted to identify the next tier of pitchers who I felt could all potentially be the number 1 overall pitcher this season, and all of whom I felt I could take in the third round. The top guy in this tier for me was Hunter Brown, who combined strikeouts well with an above-average groundball rate. After that, I viewed Logan Gilbert, Logan Webb, and Jesus Luzardo on a similar tier, all with potential to be elite but yet to fully reach that potential. I leaned more towards Gilbert and Luzardo out of that group, however, mainly due to better stuff and strikeout potential. After that, Jacob deGrom, George Kirby, and Dylan Cease all stood out to me as pitchers that could be elite, but all had one red flag in their profiles (deGrom’s healthy concerns, Kirby’s lack of strikeouts, and Cease’s lack of consistency despite strikeouts). Cole Ragans and Chris Sale are both amazing when they pitch, but at this point, I trust their health even less than deGrom’s, so I would only take that risk if I had safer options earlier. I viewed Kyle Bradish to be in a similar spot as those two, but with less of a track record and more health concerns. Next, I had a tier of young pitchers who I thought could take a step forward and outperform their ADP in Eury Perez and Ryan Pepiot. Sonny Gray and Gavin Williams were intriguing options as well, as I think both show the potential to be solid fantasy contributors this year due to their good stuff. The next trio of pitchers I liked was all young players who could take leaps forward into stardom this season: Chase Burns, Jacob Misirowski, and Cam Schlittler. I wanted to leave the draft with at least one of them. Down the board, I liked Zach Wheeler, Brandon Woodruff, and Gerrit Cole as veteran pitchers who could be very good in limited time this year, and if I could get one of them later and stash them on my IL, that would be wonderful. After that, there were many pitchers I thought could elevate themselves from viable streaming options to pitchers I would want to roster, and I planned to draft at least one later and pick up others as the season continued. This tier included Matthew Liberatore, Will Warren, Dustin May, Mike Burrows, Cade Cavalli, and Kyle Harrison. All of these pitchers made some changes to their arsenals and increased the quality of their stuff during the offseason, making them all pitchers whom I identified as potential breakouts late in the draft. The roster construction and scoring format called for pitching, so I especially wanted players at the top of my board. 

Relievers

Relievers and saves are valuable in this format, but teams churn through so many consistently that I did not want to prioritize the position in the draft. Many pitchers can come out of nowhere, teams run closers by committee, and the circle of trust for teams is consistently changing. Cade Smith was an obvious candidate, but he was going way too early for my liking. Johan Duran and David Bednar both were pitchers whom I liked and felt confident in getting consistent save opportunities. There were four pitchers I liked down the board: Griffin Jax, Pete Fairbanks, Ryan Helsley, and Daniel Palencia. If I walked away with one of those four, I would be content even if I missed out on any of the first three, and then I would try to identify relievers during the season. 

This concludes my pre-draft thoughts and players that I liked. I hope to have my draft recap and thoughts up by midweek next week, around March 31. From then, I will move to a weekly format recapping my matchups. Just to clarify, seems how baseball has been played for a few days at this point, all of these thoughts are from before both the season and the draft, which, as you will see, some of my draft prep led me astray come draft day. Overall, I have enjoyed this, and as the season goes on and there is more of a routine, hopefully these can get a little bit better (and maybe more concise). Until next time.