Chad’s 2024 Tiered Ottoneu Rankings: Starting Pitchers

As we move into draft season, I will be updating these rankings occasionally, when there is news to justify changes. The original rankings will stay at the bottom of the article to maintain my player notes. The original SP rankings were posted 1/31 and the most recent update is 2/28.

Changelog:

2/26 – In comparing auction results to my rankings, I found that I was underestimating the market for the top  ~40 pitchers, particularly the top 10-20. Sometimes I’ll find that the market isn’t aligned with my rankings and determine that is an opportunity for me, but in this case I determined that I was too low on those pitchers (rather than the market being too high). As a result, the top five tiers shifted from 1, 6, 10, 13, and 12 names per tier to 1, 12, 7, 10, and 15 names per tier.

In addition, I made the following changes: Moved Shota Imanaga up two tiers based on further research into his likely performance. Moved Braxton Garrett, Eduardo Rodriguez, Frankie Montas, Ranger Suárez, Logan Allen, Cristopher Sánchez, Josiah Gray, Hayden Wesneski, Michael Wacha, and Robbie Ray down a tier based on re-evaluating league economics. Moved Jordan Montgomery and Mike Clevinger each down a tier based on both expected performance and lack of a job. Moved Kyle Bradish, Kodai Senga, and Walker Buehler down multiple tiers due to health concerns. Moved James Paxton and David Peterson down one tier for the same reason. Moved Clayton Kershaw, Shane McClanahan, Max Scherzer, and Sandy Alcantara down a tier based on decreased willingness to spend on stashes. Added River Ryan, Noble Meyer, Yariel Rodriguez, Bubba Chandler, Chase Dollander, Matt Canterino, Juan Mejia, Sam Robberse, Luke Weaver, David Buchanan, Brandon Sproat, and Trevor Bauer to the rankings as they now meet the criteria to be ranked.

Updated Rankings:

January Rankings and Notes:

On deadline day, we finally get to starting pitching. This is an abbreviated post, in that there are not comments on each of the starters at this point. I hope to come back to those in the future, but in order to have this up before you have to make final cuts, tradeoffs had to be made. If you want to get more info on any of these pitchers, Paul Sporer’s SP rankings, updated just a few days ago, is full of great insights. And while those are tailored to 5×5, not FanGraphs Points, the comments are still very useful.

Meanwhile, I will just say that I am panicking a little bit about starting pitching this year. Part of it is the position feels thing at the top, but part is that the top of this list is riddled with players who have made a leap in the last 12-24 months, meaning their prices are still reasonable and so they are keepers. Gerrit Cole and Corbin Burnes are getting cut in some of my leagues, but not all. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be a free agent in all leagues. But most of the rest of the top 35 or so are keepable in a lot of leagues.

As I realized that, I did a couple of things:

1. I traded for pitchers I liked even if the price was less than ideal. Slightly overpriced Reid Detmers? Sure. Expensive Spencer Strider? No problem.
2. I stopped trading pitchers I like unless the return is just too good to pass up. I was asked about Pablo López in one league and told the other manager the ask wouldn’t be reasonable. He wanted to hear it, I shared it and…it was not reasonable. No deal. I’ll just keep Pablo.

For drafts, my plan is to allocate more to pitching than I normally would. If I need pitching, my only options for a top-40 arm might be Yamamoto, Carlos Rodón, and maybe one or two others. If that is the case, I need to be confident I am ready to go get one of those guys. If that means cutting back on offense, so be it.

For the methodology and notes on the rankings, please check out my intro column.