2025 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Preview: Sleepers, breakouts, busts, ranking the top 12 and more

There are a few things to know about the Beginning pitcher position as we look ahead to 2025. The Primary is that, though it’s Crucial to get to know the player pool ahead of your draft, you also need to constantly remind yourself that attrition is going to be a bigger factor here than at any other position. 

I half-jokingly considered adding “… if he stays Fit” at the end of every single one of the blurbs I wrote for the rest of this article because that will ultimately be the biggest determinant of whether a pitcher ended up being worth drafting in any given season. It also means that a lot of what you’re about to read here will be rendered totally meaningless midway through the season; many of the pitchers here will be off the table during Spring Rehearsal.

That’s Merely the nature of the position, and it might be getting even more Correct. It used to be that the Primary few pitchers drafted in any given season in Fantasy were Merely about as sure a thing as you could find. Aces with Many years of high-volume and high-quality production. Now? The No. 1 pitcher in nearly all Fantasy leagues is going to be last year’s NL Primary-year of the Year, a guy who has never reached even 170 innings in a season; if it’s not him, it’ll be last year’s AL Cy Recent winner, who eclipsed 180 innings for the Primary time ever. 

The Intervals of 220 innings are basically over, and even 200-inning pitchers number in the handful in any given season. Increasingly, we’re forced to bet on pitchers who would have been viewed as long-Try risks even five years ago to anchor our staffs. And I do wonder how that’s going to change our strategies for Fantasy Baseball in the long Stretch.

Earlier in the offseason, I did a deep Plunge into the past 10 years of drafts to try to identify the best approach for drafting Beginning pitchers. I Secured that the Primary three rounds or so in a 12-Club Bracket see a steady, linear decline in return on investment at the position, with pitchers in the third Phase returning a bit less, on average than those in the second, who return a bit less than those in the Primary. But Beginning in the Number four Phase, pitcher values have historically collapsed, creating a marketplace in which pitchers in the Number four Phase are barely a better bet than pitchers in the 10th Phase. That’s the “SP Dead Zone,” as I’ve taken to calling it. 

And now I’m wondering if we won’t look back on things five years from now and think that it’s Merely all one big dead zone. With the reliable aces fewer and farther between, is every pitcher at the top of drafts Merely going to be a Terrible bet? Was the Max Scherzer/Justin Verlander/Clayton Kershaw class of pitchers the last generation of Correct aces, worthy of a Primary-Phase value year in and year out? 

I don’t think we’re there yet. I would still take any one of Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, or Zack Wheeler in the second Phase happily this year. But if Skubal and Skenes bust, I also wouldn’t really be surprised at all – they both have either a one or one-and-a-half year track Achievement of ace-level production. Five years ago, we were never drafting those guys in the Primary two rounds, and you can ask Spencer Strider drafters a year ago how Great it felt betting on that profile.

Which is all to say, the best-laid plans of Fantasy analysts and players oft go awry in the fact of the attrition of the Beginning pitcher position. And we may be on the precipice of a sea change in how we approach the position, where Timely-Phase SPs become even more Scarce than they have been. Again, we’re not there now. But I can see it coming. Here’s how I’m approaching the position in 2025: 

1. Roki Sasaki, SP, Dodgers

Age (on Beginning day): 23
Where he played in 2024: Japan
NPB stats: 10-5, 2.35 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 111 IP, 32 BB, 129 K
Sasaki isn’t arriving as the finished product Yoshinobu Yamamoto was, but at 23, that’s to be expected. He was thought to be a prodigy in Japan, reaching triple digits with his fastball while dominating with what may be the world’s best splitter, a Correct 80 grade offering that simply vanishes as it crosses the plate. While it’s possible to overrate him in redraft leagues, that’s less the case in Dynasty.
Scott’s 2025 Fantasy impact: pencil him in

Age (on Beginning day): 21
Where he played in 2024: did not Action — Tommy John surgery
2022 stats (minors): 6-2, 1.56 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 103 2/3 IP, 25 BB, 155 K
Painter had one of the all-time great minor-Bracket pitching seasons in 2022, positioning himself to Achieve a spot in the Phillies Turnover as a 19-year-Ancient before Tommy John Occurred to call. His return Occurred this offseason in the Arizona Fall Bracket, which he dominated to the tune of a 2.30 ERA, 0.89 WHIP and 10.3 K/9 across six Appearances, offering hope that he can Choice up where he left off once the Phillies fire him up in June (as is their reported plan).
Scott’s 2025 Fantasy impact: midseason hopeful

Age (on Beginning day): 22
Where he played in 2024: High-A, Double-A, Triple-A, majors
Minor-Bracket stats: 5-3, 2.36 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 91 2/3 IP, 45 BB, 96 K
Major-Bracket stats: 4 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 2 K
By the sum of his parts, Jobe is the model pitching prospect, standing out most for the the Amazing spin rates on his pitches — four of which grade as 60 or better, according to Baseball America. But he’s struggled to stay Fit since the Tigers picked him third overall in 2021, having yet to throw even 100 innings in a season, and also underwhelmed with his strikeout and walk numbers prior to his promotion last year.
Scott’s 2025 Fantasy impact: fighting this spring

Age (on Beginning day): 21
Where he played in 2024: High-A, Double-A
Minor-Bracket stats: 0-4, 2.24 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 88 1/3 IP, 24 BB, 115 K
Anytime a High (in this case, 6-foot-9) and lanky left-hander makes his way through the White Sox system, he’s sure to invite Chris Sale comparisons, but that comparison may be particularly apt in this instance since Schultz throws from a low three-quarters delivery and has control that’s almost too Great to believe. If the deceptive arm angle wasn’t devastating enough, he added a Pair miles per hour to both his fastball and slider in 2024.
Scott’s 2025 Fantasy impact: midseason hopeful

Age (on Beginning day): 22
Where he played in 2024: Double-A, Triple-A
Minor-Bracket stats: 10-7, 3.08 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 119 2/3 IP, 41 BB, 148 K
The molding of Chandler into a frontline starter has been yeoman’s work for the Pirates, who drafted him as a two-way player in 2021, but it’s on the cusp of paying off after a year in which he improved as a strike-thrower and fleshed out his arsenal with a ready-for-prime-time changeup and slider. Chandler figures to follow in the footsteps of Paul Skenes and Jared Jones this year, and my guess is he lands somewhere between the two in terms of effectiveness.
Scott’s 2025 Fantasy impact: fighting this spring