Dynasty Starting Pitcher Rankings Takeaways (Part 1)
Shane O'Mac SP1? Luis Castillo career year? Hunter Brown on the verge?
Scattered thoughts from recently completing an overhaul of my dynasty SP rankings.
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1. Shohei Ohtani, Angels
I haven’t written about Ohtani in the dynasty ranking series yet as his value changes depending on league format. I rank him 5th in my overall Top 100, ahead of any starting pitchers (hence him being No. 1 in today’s piece), but obviously if you’re in a daily moves league he’s the top player. Period.
Let’s focus on who Ohtani is as a pitcher entering 2023, because even the SP-only version of him would be placed comfortably inside the top-10 at this position.
Ohtani made 28 starts last season, an increase of 5 from 2021. His innings jumped from 130 1/3 to 166. It’s hard to envision him shouldering a bigger workload than that while operating in a 6-man rotation, which is the obvious knock against him as an arm.
However, his per-inning results were downright phenomenal. Compared to 2021 Ohtani pitched deeper into games, struck out batters at a higher clip, allowed fewer free passes, and lowered his HR/9.
He accomplished this by throwing his four-seamer nearly 2 mph harder than he did in ‘21 (up to 97.3 mph on average). Additionally, he increased the velocity of his sweeper by a full 3 mph while still getting an above-average amount of horizontal movement on it.
His sweeper, splitter, curve, and slider are all among the league leaders in whiff% for those pitch types. He also possesses a biting cutter, and then suddenly out of the blue he started throwing this down the stretch in ‘22:
Shohei Ohtani taught himself that turbo sinker in the middle of a season in which he posted a 172 ERA+ (similar to 2011 Cy Young/MVP Justin Verlander) and a 145 OPS+ (the equivalent of Willie McCovey’s career mark). The pitch instantly had more vertical and horizontal movement than most sinkers around the league.
Late in the season Ohtani leaned into it, and his September pitch usage reveals some hidden upside moving forward.
(Note the first graphic highlights the increased sinker usage on Brooks Baseball while the second one takes advantage of Baseball Savant’s new sweeper designation).
What if Ohtani became primarily a sinker/sweeper guy? But he still has all his other pitches to counteract certain platoons and matchups? It’s hallucinatory to think of all the weapons at his disposal.
I’ve used up a lot of this column’s space to discuss Ohtani, who you already knew was awesome. I’ve just been marveling at his WBC performance. Entering his free agent year I think we could see a TRULY special season from him. At 28 years old he’s in the prime of his career, and his recent history shows us he’s still finding ways to get better. Welcome all to The Year of Ohtani!
2. Shane McClanahan, Rays
I’m all-in on Shane O’Mac at his redraft valuation of a back-end, top-10 SP. For dynasty, however, he’s my defacto SP1.
Corbin Burnes has two years of a proven track record, and I’d have no issues with anyone who selects him over McClanahan in a dynasty startup. McClanahan, who is 3 years younger than Burnes, was well on his way to establishing himself as a universal top-3 pitcher before a late-August shoulder impingement stopped him in his tracks.
On the one hand, an argument can be made that the first time he attempted to shoulder an ace workload, he couldn’t hold up. So can we really trust that it’ll happen for him in 2023?
I’m willing to believe in it based on how dominant McClanahan was before that minor injury scare. Here are his numbers through August 24th:
147 1/3 IP
2.20 ERA (4th in MLB)
2.64 FIP (4th)
32.5 K% (1st)
27.1 K-BB% (1st)
16.3 SwStr% (1st)
Among pitchers who generated at least a 47 GB% for the season (McClanahan was over 50%), only Burnes was in his stratosphere of K-BB%.
Grounders + Ks - BBs = everything we want.
Again, no issue with anyone going in a different direction at the top of the SP market right now. Just know that if McClanahan holds up this summer, then his age-track record combo likely makes him the SP1 moving forward. Last chance to possibly get that at a discount.
14. Cristian Javier, Astros
The most obvious “breakout candidate” for 2023 was written up in detail back in January (link here).
Note that I recently traded Gunnar Henderson for Javier and some other stuff in a dynasty league where I needed pitching and had a surplus of young infielders. I support targeting the 25-year-old aggressively.
17. Luis Castillo, Mariners
Forget everything you previously knew about Castillo from his time with the Reds. He became an entirely different pitcher following his trade to Seattle last summer:
As noted in last week’s Bryce Miller writeup, this is an organization I trust with pitching development.
With the Reds in 2022 Castillo threw his changeup 25.7% of the time, which produced a 17.8 K-BB%. That changeup usage fell to 17.6% with the Mariners, which spiked his K-BB% to 22.6%.
Previously a sinker-changeup arm, Castillo transformed into a fastball-slider pitcher with the Mariners. Freed from Cincinnati’s launching pad of a home park, and armed with a new approach, I’m assertively viewing the 30-year-old as being on the brink of a career-best campaign. And I don’t believe the market has caught up to that line of thinking.
28. Hunter Greene, Reds
My No. 1 starting pitcher target in 2023 redraft leagues.
His breakout potential will come down to whether or not he can consistently locate his fastball at the top of the strike zone, like he did in September:
Over his final 6 starts of last season, Greene did this:
35 1/3 IP
51:8 K:BB
30.9 K-BB%
1.02 ERA
1.70 FIP
He’s only entering Year 2, but eventually getting Greene out of Cincinnati could be huge for his long-term dynasty value.
31. Andrew Painter, Phillies
I haven’t altered Painter’s ranking since he was diagnosed with a UCL sprain. Many are assuming the 19-year-old will need to undergo surgery this season, and he might eventually, but Philadelphia believes rest and rehab will do the trick for now.
Their confidence stems from the fact that Painter’s sprain is a proximal UCL tear, not a distal UCL tear. From this MLB.com piece:
In a 2017 Cleveland Clinic study, 17 of 19 pitchers (89.5 percent) with partial proximal tears returned to pitch without surgery, while only 4 of 13 pitchers (30.8 percent) with distal tears did.
Of course, undergoing Tommy John would change everything. I’ve never been a fan of rostering pitchers in dynasty immediately after TJ. I’d rather move them for whatever I can get and open up the roster spot for 18 months. I’m not there yet with Painter.
Him pitching in the big leagues this season, and coming out of it healthy, would still be a 100th percentile positive outcome at this point.
38. Hunter Brown, Astros
Brown is an easy candidate to move up the ranks by the end of ‘23. I’m incredibly bullish about his rookie campaign, but we still need to see him actually go out and have success before getting carried away, which is why he’s listed behind win-now vets such as Logan Webb and Robbie Ray.
The 24-year-old made a name for himself at the Triple-A Pacific Coast League last summer, a notoriously hitter-friendly environment. Among pitchers who threw at least 100 IP at the level, Brown ranked 1st in ERA (2.55) and the next closest was 3.74!
His over-the-top release mimics his idol Justin Verlander, as does his pretty curveball, which checked in as the 2nd best curve among Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects.
Then there’s his slider. Of the 525 pitchers who threw at least 40 sliders in 2022, Brown’s velo was the hardest (93.2 mph) - ahead of even Jacob deGrom.
Ultimately, Brown commands his slider in and out of the zone for mis-hits and whiffs, while his curve depth plays perfectly off his four-seamer shape, allowing him to viciously attack hitters with a north-south approach. It’s a “high-stuff, medium-command” approach as described by the great Eno Sarris. With the aid of Houston’s phenomenal player development system, I’m betting Brown only gets better from here.
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Can you provide any additional thoughts on Detmers and Sandoval? I’m between those two in a dynasty points league that values SP depth.