Top 101 Starting Pitchers: Rest-Of-Season Rankings for Fantasy Baseball Week 18 (2025)

August 1, 2025

Nick Mariano's updated fantasy baseball starting pitcher rankings for Week 18 (2025). Baller Ranks is a weekly rankings list for the top-101 starting pitchers.

The end of July is upon us, which means we're squarely in the final third of the season! This piece will examine movement since the All-Star break and lay the groundwork for the final two months of the year. Let the latest edition of the FSWA-award-winning Best Baseball Series help usher you towards a winning track.

Readers will find my SP thoughts with tiered ranks (the tiers matter more than individual ranks), 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. There is also a prospect table at the end from our star evaluator, Eric Cross. This is written throughout Tuesday, but you'll notice a few Tuesday game notes mixed in.

As always, these ranks are geared toward traditional 5x5 roto leagues, and I typically exclude most injured SPs unless they're about to return. This will be the penultimate piece in this year's series, with one final run at the end of August for the final month. Godspeed to all of you faithful readers, as we dig into my weekly Starting Pitcher Baller Ranks!

Starting Pitcher Rankings Analysis for Week 18

-Paul Skenes being exceptional yet robbed of winning decisions isn’t newsworthy anymore. But Pittsburgh has won each of his last two starts to make him 6-8 with that 1.83 ERA (oof), with the biggest news being that Skenes was able to hit 99 pitches after being hooked before reaching 90 in his previous five outings.

As long as that’s still on the table and we aren’t cemented at a 70-80 pitch range, then we can place this form of Skenes in the top tier. (One day we’ll have Jacob Misiorowski without a hard limit either!) Enjoy the history being made.

Players since 1901 to have 300+ strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA through 44 career MLB games:

Paul Skenes

That’s it. pic.twitter.com/p8bR63eI4l

— Greg Harvey (@BetweenTheNums) July 22, 2025

The powerful righty hasn’t allowed more than five hits in a game since May 12, which is just goofy. And that strange control blip seen early on has also dissipated, or at least been traded in for fantasy-friendly hit batsmen instead. He has four HBP and only three walks in five July starts (36 Ks), which is silly.

-Jacob deGrom is still cruising, which you have to love.

-Joe Ryan will remember the early-season slander against his high placement and continue to dominate anyway.

-Logan Gilbert got tagged for four runs on Sunday, with two coming on a mighty Mike Trout blast. There’s little shame in a future Hall of Famer taking you yard, but Gilbert’s three walks did tie his season-high mark, and that feels controllable.

He still has 26 Ks in his last 16 ⅔ IP and hadn’t allowed an earned run in his previous two starts, so we’re feeling okay here with over a month in the books since returning from the elbow scare.

-Max Fried left his Cubs start early due to a blister, which surely contributed to his walking three batters for the first time this season. The team gave him 11 days before his next start, but he walked three again, which combined with six hits to allow six runs (four earned).

This writer held his breath for Tuesday’s tilt against the Rays, but Fried snapped back with his first quality start of July. The southpaw allowed two runs on four hits and two walks with nine strikeouts over 6 ⅔ IP for his 12th win.

For context, he only had 12 total Ks in 19 ⅓ IP on the month before this. Are we back? Also, you know he appreciates having Ryan McMahon’s glove at third base, especially with Anthony Volpe committing another two errors on the night.

-Blake Snell looked like himself in his final Triple-A tune-up on Saturday. He struck out seven and walked four across 4 ⅔ IP of no-hit ball. The southpaw is no stranger to going as far as his control can take him, and hoping that the breaking stuff can nip the bottom of the zone with his north-south approach.

The Dodgers may be battered, but they’re still an above-average winning environment that should defend any lead that Snell’s shorter starts provide. We’re expecting that bullpen to be further bolstered at the trade deadline, after all.

Those of you who buy into Snell simply being a second-half ace will need to hope that it rings true even without pitching much in the first half.

His teammate, Tyler Glasnow, surrendered two homers and five walks in just four innings as I write this. Those control issues were supposed to be left in the past, sir!

-Shota Imanaga does well to minimize the home run damage by limiting walks, but the longball can still take a mean cut. He gave up seven runs on 12 hits (three homers) against the White Sox in Chicago after holding the Twins, Yankees, and Red Sox to three combined runs in a trio of quality starts.

It’s the third time in 14 starts that he’s allowed three homers, but that 3.12 ERA and 1.04 WHIP sparkle all the same.

Still, the full-season 4.70 FIP and 4.78 SIERA are not kind. And don’t blame his approach either, because last year he had a 3.72 FIP and 3.50 SIERA. In his six starts since returning, he has a 3.51 ERA (4.92 FIP) with a 21:3 K:BB and seven HRs allowed.

Frankly, your ratios need to be astounding to float a 5.67 K/9 in today’s world. The next ones down the line to also have a K% below 20% are Clay Holmes, Brayan Bello, and Cade Horton. It’s a tough profile to make work!

-Nick Pivetta has traded in a few strikeouts of his own for reduced homers, as he continues to enjoy life in Petco Park. The 32-year-old’s 27.2% K rate is down from 29-31% in 2023-24, but his 8.9% HR/FB rate is nearly half of the 15-16% marks he was running as a Red Sox. Sometimes you get both positive variance and a park factor correction!

He does appear to be carrying over the philosophy of fewer fastballs from Boston, though. Even throughout the 2025 season, Pivetta’s four-seamer rate has gone from 49.3% in April to 44.8% in July.

-Dylan Cease, Chase Burns, and Jack Flaherty offer the flipside of crashing out for high-K tallies. They’re cruising in that category, but the counterpunches are whipping fantasy teams in the gut.

However, we’ll point out that Burns’ electrifying Ks are on another level (35.7%, trailing only Misiorowski since The Miz debuted). As a result, Burns’ 9.5% walk rate still results in an elite 26.2% K-BB% that is sixth out of 141 SPs with 20 IP since June 12. Cease is 26th (20.5%) and Flaherty is 40th (17.6%).

Jacob Misiorowski and Chase are both in the Top 10 for K-BB% since they debuted.

Misiorwski: 9th in K-BB% since 6/12 debut at 25.6%

Burns: 8th in K-BB% since 6/24 debut at 26.2%#ThisIsMyCrew #ATOBTTR pic.twitter.com/Jg5YlsZT1E

— Eric Cross (@EricCrossMLB) July 29, 2025

-Logan Webb has seemingly lost his feel or desire for the sweeper and cutter, with both seeing their usage rates drop by six percentage points in July. Instead, he’s reverting to a vertical attack with far more sinkers and changeups. Given his .348/.396/.576 triple slash against and more runs (18) than strikeouts (17) in July, we’d hope this is a short-lived experiment.

-Zebby Matthews may finally be rounding the corner. After nine strikeouts in four near-perfect innings in his lone rehab start at Triple-A, he battled Coors before holding the Nationals to two hits over six innings. The righty struck out seven with zero walks, which gives him a 38:9 K:BB in 29 IP thus far, with the 4.97 ERA gravitating towards the 2.74 FIP.

-Kevin Gausman turned back the clock with a stunning pair of starts after the All-Star break. First, he held the Yankees to one run with eight strikeouts over seven innings on July 21, and then he blanked Detroit with six frames of one-hit ball with 10 strikeouts. He won’t habitually enjoy BABIPs below .200, but we’re tuned in if worse batted-ball luck comes with plus whiffs.

-Troy Melton should retain a starting role with Reese Olson’s season-ending injury hitting the news just as Chris Paddack is acquired. He suffered from some poor in-zone command in his MLB debut, which resulted in six runs (two HRs) at Pittsburgh.

But then he rebounded with seven scoreless at home against Arizona on Monday. He’s got a 12:2 K:BB in his first 12 MLB IP and had 56 Ks with a 2.72 ERA/1.16 WHIP in 36 ⅓ IP at Triple-A before the promotion.

What a performance from Troy Melton in his 2nd career start

Fastball hit 98.6 with really good offspeed stuff

Didn’t fool around and just pounded the strike zone

87 pitches, 61 strikes. Zero walks and 5 Ks
pic.twitter.com/S2nX3mYZ38

— Caleb Czarnik (@calebczarnik) July 29, 2025

-Pierson Ohl looks like the Minnesota beneficiary to Paddack’s vacated rotation spot. Nearly 26 years old, Ohl stagnated in the minors as a command arm who didn’t have overpowering stuff to inspire MLB-level confidence.

However, reports surfaced that the 6-foot-1 righty tweaked his arm slot and revamped the changeup, yet kept his trademark control intact. In 102 IP at Double-A in ‘24, Ohl had a 16.3% strikeout rate and 3.7% walk rate. Across three levels in ‘25, he’s posted a 2.17 ERA/0.95 WHIP with a 30% K rate and 3.8% BB rate.

He did well to post a 4:1 K:BB in his three innings against Boston, but four runs on five hits (one homer, and one HR robbery by Harrison Bader) isn’t winning anyone over. Let’s see if he improves the next time out.

Top 101 Starting Pitchers for Fantasy Baseball - Week 18

Top Starting Pitcher Stashes for Fantasy Baseball - Week 18

Here are the key SP stashes from our esteemed, industry-leading prospect analyst, Eric Cross. You can also read his full Top 25 Fantasy Baseball Prospects To Stash article, which is updated weekly!

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