This article is part of our The Wheelhouse series.
Now that we're two months into the season, I wanted to take a moment and make a full adjustment to my starting pitcher rankings for the rest of 2017.
A few notes about the table:
All stats displayed are from the past calendar year, with the snapshot including games played through June 4th, 2017.
- Players highlighted in red are currently on the disabled list.
- Players highlighted in blue are currently in the bullpen.
- Players highlighted in yellow are currently in the minors.
- The "Gr" header stands for grade, which is a loose 1-5 scale where 5 is the best, 1 is the worst. Splitting hairs on the margins between grades is a waste of time. Especially at the bottom, if you're in a league deep enough to use Grade 1 starters, the strength of the upcoming schedule and two-start weeks will guide your usage more than anything else.
This year absolutely matters in terms of setting expectations going forward, but I prefer the past calendar year as a larger snapshot of a pitcher's skills. Some of the biggest movers will be the outlier types -- Jose Berrios was awful last season as a rookie, but he passes the eye test as a potential No. 2 starter now.
Broken pitchers (Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, etc.), and seemingly broken pitchers (Masahiro Tanaka, Julio Teheran, etc.) are very difficult to price and project. While I would prefer a healthy Aaron Sanchez to 20+ arms currently ranked ahead of him, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding his ability to stay on the field with three hand-related ailments putting him on the DL throughout this season.
When in doubt, downgrade injured arms even further, especially those who have been dealing with various ailments for multiple seasons (Steven Matz, Felix Hernandez, and Charlie Morton among others).
In no particular order, these are the most difficult players to evaluate at the present time (their earn value in 15-team mixed leagues to this point is included in parenthesis):
Ervin Santana ($31) -- This season's success started a year ago. I thought he was a fifth or sixth starter in most mixed leagues on draft day. He's clearly more than that, but I'm still not sure how much more.
Jason Vargas ($24) -- Shrug emoji. In a weird way, a good portion of what he's doing seems real.
Mike Leake ($23) -- Is he the 2017 version of Rick Porcello?
Ivan Nova ($15) -- The strikeout rate is ridiculously low, but everything looks great otherwise during his time with the Pirates.
Brad Peacock ($9) -- He's been throwing his slider more over the past two seasons, working mostly in the bullpen, but his three-start stretch since joining the rotation has been outstanding from a K:BB perspective (25:4 K:BB).
Jake Arrieta ($3) -- An ERA over 4.00 stretching back over the past calendar year is a growing concern. The 2017 struggles include a home-run rate that has more than doubled since last season, and an elevated BABIP (.346 in 2017, .279 career), both of which are supported by a career-high 33.3% hard-hit rate (career 26.4%).
On a related note, a whopping 48 Twitter followers weighed in on this toss-up poll last week:
[Poll] For the rest of 2017, which SP has the most fantasy value?
— Derek VanRiper (@DerekVanRiper) June 1, 2017
Rick Porcello ($0) -- More strikeouts this year, but the results have been much worse.
Justin Verlander ($0) -- The walks are just a two-month outlier, right?
Jose Quintana ($0) -- Could still get dealt, but his collapse is very surprising given his consistency over the past four seasons.
Kenta Maeda ($0) -- Can't get deep into games right now, and the Dodgers may have a too-man-starters problem again in the near future.
Michael Wacha ($0) -- Looked great in April, is he hurt again?
Feel free to share your comments, including arms you're simply not sure about right now, in the comments section below the rankings table.
