Dynasty Starting Pitcher Rankings Takeaways (Part 2)
This range of the rankings is all about young arms with upside
Scattered thoughts from recently completing an overhaul of my dynasty SP rankings.
The full rankings, including position-by-position lists and the Top 100 overall, can be found on Patreon here.
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39. Dustin May, Dodgers
It feels like May has been around for a while now, but he’s only entering his age-25 campaign and has never thrown more than 56 innings in a big league season.
He’s always been one of the best at generating GIF-worthy highlights, but through 2020 it resulted in pedestrian strikeout rates.
That changed at the start of ‘21, when May’s K-BB% spiked from 16.9% from 2019-20 to 31.2% through early May of that year. Unfortunately, he then required Tommy John surgery, but he was at least making strides with his optimal pitch mix by reducing the usage of his sinker. That adjustment continued upon his return last season:
The results weren’t as good in ‘22, but he was returning from TJ and the approach is more interesting anyways. Additionally, his velo returned.
Similar to Luis Castillo, May’s sinker was always the fulcrum of his arsenal, but he’s having more success with a fastball-curve attack, which is backed up by his Stuff+ on those two pitches. I’m not convinced he’s done tweaking his offerings (even less sinkers?), so there’s potentially more upside to unlock moving forward.
Health barring, May is a prime candidate to move up the dynasty ranks by year’s end.
49. Reid Detmers, Angels
There’s been a lot of Detmers on my Twitter timeline lately, and for good reason.
The 23-year-old tweaked his slider midway through last summer, adding velo and throwing it with less horizontal movement:
Here were his results through June 21st last year:
58 IP
4.66 ERA
5.35 FIP
9.7 K-BB%
113 Stuff+ slider
And from July 8th on:
71 IP
3.04 ERA
2.51 FIP
17.5 K-BB%
125 Stuff+ slider
And just last week we get this report from the OC Register:
"[Reid Detmers] was throwing it 82-84 mph early in the season. After he was sent to Triple-A, he made an adjustment and returned throwing the pitch 86-88 mph. Last week against the Dodgers, his slider was 89-91 mph."
I think Stuff+ is going to like this development. Detmers isn’t someone to get carried away with — he’s part of a 6-man rotation and still needs to go out and actually live up to the hype, but he’s undoubtedly a young arm worth getting excited about.
52. Edward Cabrera, Marlins
Back in January I wrote about why I thought Cabrera was the prized trade target for MLB teams this offseason.
Miami ended up dealing away Pablo Lopez instead, but Cabrera still has breakout upside with the Marlins.
The above table highlights some pitch mix changes the 24-year-old could make. Cabrera combines to throw his four-seamer and sinker nearly 1/3 of the time, but the results on those offerings weren’t very good last season. What would happen if he primarily focused on his changeup/curve/slider?
The Marlins have a positive track record of pitching development, headlined by the eruption of Sandy Alcantara. Could Cabrera be next in line? At the right price I believe he’s worth betting on.
64. Brandon Pfaadt, Diamondbacks
Grayson Rodriguez is the best pitching prospect in baseball, but I’m skeptical about the impact he’ll make in 2023 — both in terms of his season-long innings and his per-start workload.
I have no such concerns for Pfaadt, fresh off a 167-IP campaign in the minors last year. Furthermore, he pitched into the 6th innings a whopping 19 times, and completed 6 full in 17 of them! For comparison, G-Rod only pitched into the 6th six times in 2022.
Pfaadt led the minors in strikeouts and innings last season. He allows minimal walks. He possesses one of the 5 best sliders among Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects, and also has a fastball with cut that can live at the top of the zone.
He isn’t getting an Opening Day rotation spot and doesn’t light up the radar gun or induce crazy GIFs on Pitching Ninja. The overall package is so impressive, however. In an era where most young pitchers take several years to establish themselves in a major league rotation, Pfaadt will arrive in Arizona with a leg up on his fellow first-year starters. That has value in dynasty.
68. Brayan Bello, Red Sox
First impressions are important, and Bello’s tenure in Boston didn’t get off to the best start. For the season he finished 2-8 with a 4.71 ERA. That came with a 2.94 FIP, however, and a more thorough look under the hood reveals reason for optimism.
First, his 55.7 GB% would’ve ranked 3rd among qualified starters, behind just Framber Valdez and Logan Webb. It’s easy to buy into that mark since his grounder rates were above 60% at Double-A and Triple-A last year.
Second, through his first 7 big league appearances Bello had a 7.27 ERA (3.23 FIP) with a truly bizarre .448 BABIP. Bello was the victim of bad luck and poor defense. Over his final 6 starts he registered a 2.59 ERA, a 2.70 FIP, and a .365 BABIP.
That .365 mark still would’ve led all qualified starters, and that’s when he was at his “luckiest” last season. This was backed up by Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric, which had Bello tied for the 4th worst defense behind him in 2022. This is a remarkable outlier when considering how little he actually pitched in the majors.
Whether or not the Red Sox defense is great this season isn’t as important as the fact that Bello is due for positive regression. Don’t let his first impression carry too much weight as the skills are evident:
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