2025–26 Free Agent Preview: Starting Pitchers
Fantasy-First Thoughts on This Year’s Class of Arms
Last time, we took a fantasy-first look at this year’s free agent hitters. Today, we’re doing the same for starting pitchers.
Note that Tatsuya Imai isn’t included here due to my limited familiarity with NPB.
Also, one more preview is planned before signings pick up, which will cover this year’s free agent relievers.
Dylan Cease, RHP, Age: 30
Cease is one of the most durable starters in baseball, with 32+ starts in each of the past five years. The challenge is figuring out what kind of results you’ll get.
His ERA has swung all over the place, and a lot of that comes back to BABIP and strand rate. When both line up, he looks like an ace. When they don’t, it gets ugly.
The inconsistency starts with his command. Since 2021, only Blake Snell has a higher walk rate among pitchers with 500+ innings. The pair has similar underlying profiles during this time.
Except Snell’s ERA is consistently better.
The fastball is the main issue. Cease throws it a ton, but he doesn’t command it well. That puts even more pressure on his slider, which has been the best pitch in baseball by Statcast run value in two of the past four seasons.
He’s racked up 210+ Ks every year since 2021, which keeps the floor solid for fantasy. But unless a new team can help expand or reshape his pitch mix, the ratio volatility isn’t going away.
Framber Valdez, LHP, Age: 32
Framber isn’t as flashy as Cease, but he’s been the steadier fantasy option. His elite ground-ball rate makes him less reliant on strikeouts, and from the start of 2024 through July 2025, he had a 2.78 ERA and 1.11 WHIP with 310 strikeouts in 310 1/3 innings.
Then came the collapse — a 6.05 ERA and 1.55 WHIP across his final ten starts.
It wasn’t a velocity drop, and there were no significant shifts in pitch usage. Public pitch models flagged some command issues, but his luck metrics (BABIP, LOB%) also took a hit. So this could be noise.
He also had the “cross-up” moment that raised some questions about focus during a playoff push. But based on his track record since 2020, I’m chalking it up to a rough stretch unless we get more evidence.
Framber isn’t a fantasy ace, but he’s returned solid value in three of the past four seasons thanks to his durability and efficiency. Assuming he lands with a decent team, he should be a mid-rotation anchor again in 2026.
Ranger Suárez, LHP, Age: 30
The crafty lefty broke out as he transitioned to starting in 2021. And while his velocity and ratios took an expected dip once he became a permanent member of the Phillies’ rotation, he has continued adding pitches and mixing up his repertoire.
As he enters free agency, he has five offerings that he throws at least 15% of the time, and he locates all of them well.
The comp I keep coming back to is Max Fried, but at a lower velocity.
And that’s the concern as he enters his 30s. Suárez’s velocity fell to just over 91 mph last season, and he still hasn’t thrown more than 160 innings in a season. He also averages fewer than a strikeout per inning.
The skills are there, but the fantasy returns haven’t followed. He’s probably more valuable to the organization that signs him than to us.
Michael King, RHP, Age: 31
King finally got a full year in the rotation in 2024 and made the most of it, finishing with 173 2/3 innings and peaking in the second half with a 2.15 ERA.
He opened 2025 with a 1.50 ERA and 43 Ks in April. It looked like he was headed for a huge payday. Then came the injuries. Knee and shoulder issues cut his season short, and he didn’t even make it to 75 total innings.
His velo held up, but the “stuff” took a hit. His four-seamer, in particular, got crushed. Only Nestor Cortes and Austin Gomber gave up a higher slugging percentage on the pitch. Lefties hit him hardest.
If his 2025 struggles were injury-related, and he’s healthy this spring, he could bounce back fast. He’s not a lock to stay healthy, but few pitchers are. There’s still upside here if the price drops.
Brandon Woodruff, RHP, Age: 33
Woodruff’s late-2023 shoulder surgery felt severe enough to wonder how much he had left.
He didn’t return until July 2025, but when he did, he was excellent: a career-best strikeout minus walk rate in 12 starts.
Still, not everything was back to normal. His swinging strike rate and velocity dipped, and the pitch model characteristics weren’t as strong as they used to be. That 3 mph velo loss is especially notable since Woodruff throws so many fastballs.
What stood out was the command. He had it with all four pitches, including a cutter he introduced after coming back. That gave him three legit hard offerings (four-seamer, sinker, cutter), and it helped him stay effective even with the velo drop.
He’s always been a fantasy ratios guy. That didn’t change. And now that he’s shown he can succeed without his peak stuff, there’s even more confidence in the short term, with some upside if the velocity returns.
Shota Imanaga, LHP, Age: 32
Imanaga’s surface numbers took a hit this past season as his ERA rose from 2.91 to 3.73. Most of his underlying metrics also slipped.
Still, he delivered a sub-1.00 WHIP thanks to excellent control and a .219 BABIP, which was the lowest in a 140+ IP season since 2021.
That probably isn’t sustainable.
He’s a low-velocity lefty with a declining strikeout rate and a limited arsenal. Unlike someone like Suárez, there’s no real pitch depth or strong ground-ball lean to balance it out.
The Cubs and Wrigley helped the profile. If he signs elsewhere, it’s hard to stay in.
Zac Gallen, RHP, Age: 30
Gallen was a full-blown fantasy ace in 2022 and became a reality ace after Arizona’s World Series run in 2023. He threw 243 total innings that year.
In 2025, he stayed on the mound (192 IP), but the results weren’t the same. His K% dropped for the first meaningful dip of his career.
2025: 21.5%
2024: 25.1%
2023: 26%
2022: 26.9%
2021: 26.6%
Everything else — velo, pitch mix, feel — held steady. That makes him a decent bounce-back target, especially since the cost will be lower than usual.
But the strikeout dip shouldn’t be brushed off. These things don’t always bounce back with age.
Chris Bassitt, RHP, Age: 37
Bassitt’s been dependable in real life with 30+ starts in four straight seasons, but he’s lost fantasy appeal with a two-year slide in ratios.
He continues to mix up his arsenal and use a variety of pitches. Last season, he threw six pitches at least 5% of the time.
In an effort to further keep hitters guessing and combat his waning velocity, Bassitt has steadily lowered his arm angle over the past two years:
He’s crafty, logs innings, and every reality rotation could use him as a back-end starter. For fantasy purposes, he’s fully in streamer territory outside of deeper formats.
Lucas Giolito, RHP, Age: 31
Giolito signed with Boston before 2024 but missed the year due to elbow surgery. Then, a hamstring injury in the spring delayed his 2025 debut until late April.
He settled in eventually, finishing with a 2.82 ERA over his final 22 starts. But it wasn’t backed up by any of the underlying numbers. The pitch models didn’t buy it. Neither did the estimators.
The biggest red flag: his strikeout rate dropped by six percentage points from his 2022–23 levels. His movement profiles didn’t really change. And the ERA overperformance looks like a fluky HR/FB rate more than anything repeatable.
He’s hard to trust heading into 2026.
Merrill Kelly, RHP, Age: 37
Kelly found his stride after lowering his arm angle in 2022 and has pitched his way into fantasy relevance ever since.
He’s another “pitch-mix-over-velo” guy who makes the most of his arsenal. The upside isn’t huge, but he hasn’t started to fall off yet.
At this point, landing spot will be everything. He’s more of a matchup play or deep-league option heading into his age-37 season.