Jon Anderson's Early Starting Pitcher Tiers & Rankings for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

January 26, 2023

Jon Anderson gives his early starting pitcher rankings for 2023 fantasy baseball. Who should you draft high and whose value has gone lower than expected?

Welcome back RotoBallers to my early 2023 fantasy baseball rankings and projections series! We are finishing it up today with starting pitcher. I have been through all of the hitting positions already, so check those out at the links below.

• Catcher
• First Base
• Second Base
• Shortstop
• Third Base
• Outfield

I went for an even 100 here, so this will even be useful for leagues that go a little bit deeper. Here they are, my top 100 starting pitchers ranked and tiered.

Tier 1

There are at least a handful of pitchers worthy of Tier 1 consideration, but this is what I've settled on. This is my first year putting Alcantara in the top 10, and he's the whole way up to #3 now. I suppose 2022 just convinced me that he can regularly generate elite BABIP and that keeps him up here with the best of the bunch even despite the K-BB% being below 20%.

As for Cole and Burnes, I'm just not going to quit. Cole gives up some homers and definitely gets damaged by some of those high fastballs being hit over the short porches of Yankees Stadium, but I'm not letting that distract me from his iron man innings counts and consistently great K-BB%. Nobody really compares to him in terms of year-to-year consistency, and I'm more than happy to take any slight discount I might find on him this year.

Despite all that lovey-dovey talk about Cole, Burnes is my top dog. He has the elite K-BB% without the home run "issue," and he gets a slight benefit pitching in the NL Central (although that advantage is diminished this year with the new schedule in place).

Tier 2

My heart wanted to put Woody in Tier 1, it really did. However, the injury last year knocks him out of the running even though it was a relatively minor thing and there are no concerns at this point for 2023. He has been consistently great with the K-BB% and GB% since 2018 so that bigger data sample combined with the younger age has me putting Woody at #4 - which I'm guessing is the highest of any analyst you'll read.

Then we have McClanahan and Scherzer, who both have SP1 upside but come with slight injury questions as they both missed time last year. It's becoming harder and harder to draft Scherzer in the first couple of rounds as he approaches 40, but nothing has been taken away from his on-field performance yet so we can certainly grab him as a cheaper SP1 on our teams this year.

No qualms whatsoever with the rest of the tier. To me, these are all rock-solid SP1s - which is wild since we're 15 pitchers deep already. I won't be the guy to draft deGrom in a standard league situation just because I think he's by far the least likely guy here to reach 170+ innings and the most likely to miss significant time - which would be pretty devastating for a fantasy team that drafts him in the top 30 picks. I really like the prices we're getting on Bieber, Wheeler, and Gausman this year - so those are probably my three favorites from a per-cost standpoint.

Tier 3

You aren't losing much with these three names either, but I'm docking Rodon because I still have worries in the back of my mind about his shoulder, and I don't love how dependent Fried and Urias are on generating soft contact. I think that's a real skill for both of them, but to me, it still keeps them out of the top two tiers.

These 18 pitchers I would call "aces." We rarely see the "aces" going this deep, which probably means you want to draft two of them in a 10 or 12-team situation. As more elite pitchers show up, the better stats you're going to need to take down a league - so I would dip my toes in these top three tiers at least twice in a standard league situation.

Tier 4

These guys have all pitched like fantasy aces in very recent history as well, so we're not even really done with greatness yet. Castillo, Gallen, and Javier were three of the best pitchers in the league down the stretch last year and all set up well this year in terms of age and the squads they're on. The downside is consistency. We haven't seen a long stretch of greatness from Castillo basically in his whole career, and we've seen very little of Javier and Gallen in terms of repeated fantasy success.

Manoah, Musgrove, and Darvish feel too cheap as well as guys that can be relied on to provide positive fantasy starts most times out. You do run into some lower strikeout rates here and a pretty big age question with Darvish at age 36.

Still, I have no objections to this tier. We're 24 pitchers in and I'm still liking what I'm seeing. In a 10-man league, I'm getting three or four of these guys. If I'm taking one of the top-tier guys, I'll probably settle with three of these 24, but if I go hitter-hitter to start the draft, I'm gunning to get four guys from Tiers 2-4.

Tier 5

At this point, the risk begins to set in. Let's just handle each name individually.

Valdez - He was one of the best fantasy picks in the league last year as he rattled off the best season of his career. He lowered the walk rate and heightened the strikeout rate and put up a ton of quality starts and wins. The question mark is if he can repeat that. If the walk rate goes back up above 9% and the strikeout rate back down below 24% - that starts having some big negatives on the WHIP. The good news is his GB% will be above 60% - so there's only so much damage that can be done to his ERA there. He's fine, but I don't want to put full trust in last year's data in that case.

Ray - Pretty nerve-racking. He wasn't all that great last year and he's losing some velocity and tinkering with his arsenal. He's still just 31 and the Mariners are going to win games this year, but you just don't feel safe pushing that button.

Kirby - Love everything about Kirby and I think he puts up one of the better ERA/WHIP combinations in the game this year, but the question is the innings and if he can really take a step forward. He showed great signs last year but the strikeout rate did come in a little bit low, and the 11% SwStr% doesn't make me feel super great. I expect improvement, but I certainly can't guarantee it - so that would not work too well if he doesn't reach 160+ innings like we want him to.

Webb - Big step backward in K% last year, which was weird. He's a tough guy to figure out, but he has good swing-and-miss potential and a solid ground-ball rate in a good park - so I'm fine with it. The upside is certainly still well up there for the young guy.

Gilbert - Another guy that pitched worse in 2022 as compared to 2021. His arsenal is great, and I expect him to be quite good this year as a talented guy that should be able to improve - but again, can't guarantee anything and there have been stretches for him where he has not delivered good results.

Lynn - One of my favorite SPs to draft this year. He looked amazing after getting settled in last year. He's a veteran and he was a workhorse prior to last year. Maybe I should be more worried about the health and performance of a 35-year-old who pitched half a year last year, but I'm just not. He was really cheap and I love him.

Glasnow - He's one of the best pitchers in the league pitch-for-pitch, but he missed almost the whole season last year and we already had innings questions about him prior to that. Can he really go out and throw 170 innings this year? I don't think there's much chance of that with the way the Rays handle their business - so you have to downgrade him quite a bit for that.

McKenzie - Another inconsistent guy with a really limited pitch arsenal. He knows how to make it work, and can go on runs where he dominates - but he also tends to run into some ruts. He's a trendy breakout pick this year, but I don't really see it happening unless he adds or strengthens one of his secondary pitches.

Cortes - Always hard to believe that an "out of nowhere breakout" guy can repeat it the following year, but the K-BB% stuff is solid with him, and that gives me some more confidence.

Tier 6

Now we're really in a mixed-bag situation. The upside guys all come with a risk:

• Lodolo (back health, walk rate)
• Greene (Great American Ballpark, home runs allowed)
• Snell (he's Snell)
• Kershaw (health)
• Severino (health)
• Peralta (health)
• Luzardo (health)
• May (health, workload)

All eight of those guys can put up SP1 or SP2 seasons, but probably none of them will. Garcia, Wright, and Montgomery are safer options in terms of getting innings, but they also aren't nearly as talented as those other names - so it's really a pick-your-poison situation in this tier.

Tier 7

More than 50 pitchers and there are still guys I'd start with confidence to open the year. My favorites here are Ryan, Rasmussen, and Gray - I think they are likely to stay on the field and pitch well enough to really beat their draft costs. The guys I'll draft if they really fall about this far would be Lopez, Bassitt, and Giolito, and I'm probably out on the other guys just because of the risk they come with.

Tier 8

In a standard league, I want to have almost my whole pitching staff covered by now. There is talent here, but you don't see too many 26%+ strikeout rates anymore, and that's really important for me. I think Taillon, Cobb, Eovaldi, Bello, Contreras, and Flaherty are more than cheap enough to justify what you might get out of them - but I'll probably let someone else roll the dice on the other names there.

Tier 9

I am a big fan of Ken Waldichuk, and I seem to be alone on that since not many other people have him in their top 100. He has really good pitches, controls the walks, and posted a good SwStr% last year - so I think there's some nice upside for him even on that travesty of a team in Oakland.

Whitlock, Cabrera, Rogers, and Kopech are the "upside" arms here - and I like Mikolas, Kelly, and Lauer as guys you can at least get innings and some wins out of without trashing your ratios.

Tier 10

This is where I really lose confidence in my ranks. I think I might be really misranking Maeda, Anderson, Quintana, Mahle, and Rodriguez - but this is just where I settled on them. A case can be made for all of them to be ahead of plenty of the guys I have in Tiers 8 and 9, but I just don't see any of them as guys you're going to really regret fading. In super deep leagues, I've been gravitating a lot toward drafting Anderson, Quintana, and Civale. I think they're nice picks for late wins and decent WHIP with their good teams and lower walk rates, but you're not finding any game-breakers down here.

Tier 11

This is just kind of "the rest." I know I'm incredibly, incredibly low on Manaea - but that guy has been getting drafted as a fantasy starter for years now and just year-in and year-out busting so hard. San Francisco is a good place to pitch, and he will probably make my #98 rank look silly - but I don't care, I'm not touching him.

The only guy I really like here is Garrett, and he doesn't currently have a job in the Marlins' rotation - so let's go ahead and fill out our starting rotations before we get this low.

That's it and that's all for my top 102 pitchers, and therefore my entire ranks and tiers series! Let me know how dumb you think my ranks are on Twitter @JonPGH!

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