The calendar has flipped into March, and we’ve had almost a month of spring training games, so it’s time to update my starting pitcher rankings for the 2025 fantasy baseball season.
This is now my second year publishing my top 150 starting pitchers. If you’ve read my work before, you know I generally hate publishing starting pitcher rankings because they never feel done to me. As somebody who spends a lot of time watching/thinking about pitching, I always feel like there are tweaks I want to make or pitchers that I constantly change my opinion of.
It’s important to note that I only partially rely on surface-level stats when I do my rankings. I will look at last year’s SIERA, K-BB%, swinging strike rate (SwStr%), and Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) to get a sense of how the pitcher performed (even though I usually remember), but much of my analysis is done by breaking down a pitcher’s arsenal. I’ll use the Pitcher List pages, plus my knowledge of the pitcher, to get a sense of whether I believe the pitcher can consistently pound the strike zone and miss bats and whether he has a deep enough arsenal to pivot if something isn’t working. I don’t use projections in my pitcher analysis, so you may see some variation from typical rankings, and I’m OK with that.
As always, the pitchers are split into tiers, which I’ve named so you can understand why they are ranked where they are. The tiers themselves are more important than the rankings inside the tiers, so I wouldn’t split hairs over a few spots in the rankings. I’ve also ranked these pitchers as if I’m doing a 12-team league, so safe but boring low-end starters take a hit in value, etc.
PLEASE READ: I went to a lot of effort to share my thoughts on the rankings below, so you’ll find short blurbs with my thoughts “off the dome” for these guys. I would highly encourage you to read the blurb and not just focus on the ranking because it allows you to get a sense of WHY I have the pitcher ranked where I do and if that logic makes any sense to you.
OK? Ok, so let’s get started.
2025 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Rankings
|
Rank |
Player |
Team |
|
Fantasy Aces |
||
|
1 |
Tarik Skubal |
Tigers |
|
2 |
Paul Skenes |
Pirates |
|
3 |
Zack Wheeler |
Phillies |
|
4 |
Garrett Crochet |
Red Sox |
|
5 |
Corbin Burnes |
Diamondbacks |
|
6 |
Jacob DeGrom |
Rangers |
You’re picking knits at the top between Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. Skenes’ fastball doesn’t get as many strikes as we think it should. The command could be better, but he’s talked about it this off-season. I prefer the depth of Skubal’s…