Top 101 Starting Pitchers: Rest-Of-Season Rankings for Fantasy Baseball Week 5 (2025)

May 1, 2025

Nick Mariano's updated fantasy baseball starting pitcher rankings for Week 5 (2025). Baller Ranks is a weekly rankings list for the top-101 starting pitchers.

The month of May is fast upon us, and while we want so desperately to see patterns and feel an understanding for the year ahead, we've got five more of these months left! Won't you join me for another round of the FSWA-award-winning Best Baseball Series as we look to add to our respective trophy cases? It's time for this week's edition of my weekly Starting Pitcher Baller Ranks!

Readers can expect to find my SP musings with tiered ranks (the tiers are critical, please don't sacrifice blood pressure over ordinal slots within a tier), complemented by a rest-of-season auction value ($), their Previous Week's Value (PV), the trend between the two, and a (+/-) column denoting the rank shift compared to last week. The initial month won't give us enough data to be comfortable, and calculated risks separate winners from solid-yet-unremarkable teams in fourth place.

As always, these ranks are geared toward traditional 5x5 roto leagues, and I typically exclude most injured SPs unless they're about to come back. So much goes into how an injured player projects upon returning that it's normally best to wait and see them perform anyway. I also write this before Tuesday's games, but will splice in brief thoughts on that as I go if it's appropriate. Now, let's dive into things!

Starting Pitcher Rankings Analysis for Week 5

-Tarik Skubal is clearly just dandy and may rack up 20 strikeouts against the Angels on May 2. Congrats to anyone who snagged him relatively cheaply after the iffy first two outings.

-Paul Skenes remains a dominant force who is still coming into his own. It’s not ideal to see the Cubs on the schedule, yet he just shut down the Dodgers in L.A., so we take the “bad” with the “good.”

-Zack Wheeler has found more strikeouts in the early going with more sweepers and splitters, posting an early sinker rate of 15 percent rather than the usual around 20 percent. Admittedly, I get worried about tracking data and classification when seeing his cutter at four percent in four of his last five starts and 19 percent in the other.

He has also crushed whiff-happy teams in COL and MIA, but that’s part of the package. Your aces should trounce the easy ones. (He did just fine against the Nats on Tuesday as well.)

-Garrett Crochet battled through poor command to allow four runs on five hits and five walks across five innings vs. Seattle on April 24. It was his first real speed bump. Luckily, he’s handling himself well on Tuesday as I write this. The only damage done over seven innings came on a two-run rocket from Vladimir Guerrero Jr., which there is little shame in yielding. We move along.

-Yoshinobu Yamamoto will eventually have us in the blender regarding workload concerns as the Dodgers march toward another postseason chase, but we’re a long way from that. We don’t like seeing four walks against the Pirates, but he held them to one earned (three runs) over five. If that’s his bad side, then we’re cruising.

-Jacob deGrom has been leaning on his changeup more to help his crushing slider keep hitters off of their toes since he’s no longer regularly pumping upper-90s heat as a baseline. Averaging 96.7 mph is no small feat, but it may mean that more mistakes get punished.

At the end of the day, his four-seamer still has a .199 xBA (.250 AVG) and .454 xSLG (.636 SLG) so we’re not concerned in the long run. Getting any “long run” with deGrom in 2025 feels magical. Oh, and he looked awesome on Tuesday against the A's!

Jacob deGrom just keeps looking more and more like Jacob deGrom.

Final line: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K
65 pitches, 47 strikes

as efficient and effective as ever. pic.twitter.com/59Lm4rSwlb

— kennedi landry (@kennlandry) April 30, 2025

-Cole Ragans faltered in a gift road Rockies matchup and eventually left with a mild left groin strain. It seems he will skip this week's tilt and Noah Cameron will make the spot start at Tampa Bay. It’s April, so I’d rather they play it safe, but we won’t punish him for one missed turn as long as he avoids the IL.

-Joe Ryan cruised with a season-high 28 percent sweeper rate to go with his ludicrous fastball in an 11-strikeout gem against the Angels. His 39:4 K:BB is elite, with the 26.1 percent K-BB% settling into the top five among 133 SPs (min. 20 IP). Yes, sketchy days fueled by too many HRs will happen. But if increased confidence in the sweeper can give him a consistent complement to the heater, then we might be cooking,

-Dylan Cease turned in another WHIP clunker, eating six hits and four walks over 4 ⅓ IP. He’s yet to top seven strikeouts in a game, and five of his starts have yielded a 1.38 or worse WHIP (1.62 on the year). His swinging-strike and first-strike rates look just fine. If anything, his first-strike rate is up, which usually indicates aggressive approaches against. Lo and behold, hitters are 8-for-16 on first-pitch batted balls.

Would you believe that they’re still hitting above .400 in both 0-1 and 1-0 counts? That they’re hitting .357 with a .976 OPS when Cease is ahead in the count? That’s slightly better than the .313/.958 marks when Cease is behind! This still smells like rotten luck mixed with a potential approach/command issue. The latter contributes to the whopping 45.5 percent sweet spot rate. This writer is still buying into the 3.17 FIP and 3.57 SIERA as the command re-orients and the .388 BABIP settles. The stuff is still filthy!

MLB tjStuff+ Leaders

1) Ben Casparius - 112
2) Hunter Greene - 111
3) Freddy Peralta - 109
4) Dylan Cease - 109
5) Tyler Glasnow - 109 pic.twitter.com/3SX7Vi8inJ

— Thomas Nestico (@TJStats) April 28, 2025

-Corbin Burnes had his first truly solid fantasy start of the year on April 24, tying a season-high mark with eight strikeouts across 5 ⅓ IP of one-run ball. He brought his cutter usage down to 39 percent from the 50-66 percent seen in his first four outings, bumping his 18 percent curveball usage to 28 percent. The curve only ended two Ks, but he finally looked comfortable throwing it against righties.

He hadn’t topped five curves vs. RHB in a start, yet he threw 11 of the 25 against them here. For perspective, in his first start he only threw 25 pitches vs. RHB, and that was 18 cutters and seven sliders. He still reserves the sinker and slider for righties, who may now have to look for four offerings instead of three.

Hopefully that helps, as RHB had been responsible for most damage (3 HRs, 9 ER, 13 H in 48 batters faced) while lefties have been less fortunate in the power department, yet are responsible for 11 of his 12 total walks on the year. Burnes still needs to work things out, but his latest effort was a step in the right direction. We know what he’s capable of, and as long as we see adjustments toward his best being put forward, then we can at least breathe through it.

-Robbie Ray displayed strong command, and his secondaries wrought havoc on hitters en route to his second quality start (and first dominant fantasy start) of the season. He struck out eight with two runs allowed on five hits and one walk over seven innings against the Rangers at home. Still only 33 years old, expect more good than bad from Ray moving forward.

(We also appreciate seeing signs of life and improvement from Aaron Nola and Luis Castillo.)

-Cristopher Sanchez has been cleared of the forearm concerns and will start on Wednesday. Let’s all hope for a healthy outing, even if it comes with some control rust due to deviating from his usual routine.

-Kris Bubic may appear on paper to have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on, but that can happen when you get to rip up the Rockies in between dates with the Yankees and Yordan Alvarez. He’s not an automatic start guy, and we’ll have to see how he holds up to starting wear-and-tear as the year progresses, but there’s plenty to love here.

-Max Meyer scuffled against the Mariners in Seattle, yielding five runs on five hits and four walks over four innings. He did contribute six strikeouts, at least. But as I pointed out to one Redditor who really wanted Meyer higher, his four-seamer is still a breakout away from being able to carry the mail while that slider dominates, or if the slider isn’t all there.

-Matthew Boyd hasn’t given us the “wow” start yet, but perhaps he will get close to that with Wednesday’s tilt in Pittsburgh. Would you believe that Boyd has faced Arizona, San Diego, the Dodgers, gone back to the Padres, and then taken on the Dodgers again? He hasn’t had a “gimme” matchup in five turns.

Yet he still hasn’t allowed more than three runs in a start, posting a 2.54 ERA in that trying stretch. More favorable opponents are on the way. Don’t be late!

-JP Sears deserves some flowers. He’s throwing more sweepers to fantastic effect. The pitch has a .164 xBA (.229 last year) and .203 xSLG (.402), with the real stats not far off. It would be nice if changeup could also improve, but sadly, it’s just not strong.

You’re likely playing matchups with the southpaw, but he’s made modest gains in whiffs while trimming his walk rate for a third straight year. It currently sits at 4.3 percent after posting a 6.5 percent mark in ‘24 (7.2 in ‘23, 8.0 in '22). He sure looks more comfortable on the rubber:

JP Sears reintroduced the windup into his approach. Now that he’s had a few starts, I asked him how that’s going. Told me he loves it. Helping to make a more quality fastball and a true sweeper that could come off as a slider when it doesn’t play correctly.

— Jessica Kleinschmidt (@KleinschmidtJD) April 29, 2025

-Ryan Gusto looks stellar, and boy, did Houston need him. His overall 2.78 ERA/1.10 WHIP is backed by a 2.71 FIP and 3.06 SIERA, which is helped by the 4.4 percent walk rate. Will they find a way for him to stick as the rotation’s health improves? Lance McCullers Jr. is around the corner, though sustained health is far from a given there, and Spencer Arrighetti’s thumb continues to heal.

Perhaps they’d bounce Hayden Wesneski instead? Can we get a similar runway given to Ben Casparius by the Dodgers?

-Tomoyuki Sugano had nine strikeouts in 28 IP going into Monday’s home start against the Yankees. You run the risk of a home run parade against the Yanks, but you also get plenty of hacks. Sugano struck out eight over five clean frames via 17 total whiffs, over half of which came on the splitter.

The ratios had been good, but the lack of Ks would put a massive strain on the rest of your team to compensate. If we get more firepower in that department, then we could be flying. But Zac Gallen also K’d 13 Yankees, so we’ll need to see Sugano run this back against a susceptible Royals lineup this weekend.

**Shota Imanaga, please be okay! He exited his Tuesday evening start early and was pointing at his right knee/leg. The early word is cramping, so I believe we’ve escaped danger.

Top 101 Starting Pitchers for Fantasy Baseball - Week 5

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