Top 100 Starting Pitchers For 2023: Week 17

I really don’t know what “Week” we’re on. Weeks only matter in fantasy football because in Week 17 you’re in your fantasy championship game. Over here in baseball, it’s just another barrage of random starters. Baseball is wonderful that way. There’s a legit chance that the AL Central division winner goes to a team that has a sub-.500 winning percentage, while almost the entire AL East and 4/5 of the AL West have teams with winning records that will be watching from the sidelines. I dunno about y’all, but imagine if we did away with the minor league farm system and instituted a Premier League style relegation system. That way, the Athletics aren’t only not in Oakland next year, they’re not even in the Majors. No more tanking. No more Super 2 status. No more Quad-A jokes. If the East Carolina Yellowjackets have a winning year made up of players who work double-shifts at the Kroger, then they get promoted and are playing against the Miami Marlins next year. What a beautiful world.

The Razzball WordPress backend also tells me this is my 150th baseball article at Razzball, This will tie me with Donkey Teeth on the career baseball posting leaderboard. Over on football, I eeked out 158 articles, which was good for 8th most all-time. Adding in that one year stint I had on Razzball Basketball, I’ve topped 330 total articles. I suppose at the end of the month I’ll have my overall 333rd article, which will undoubtedly be worth celebrating with some jokes about Robbie Ray’s pants.

Speaking of pitchers!

It’s the second half of the season and a bunch of you have legit teams that are just a player or two away from the fantasy championship. Yet, you look at your teams, and you look at the waiver wire, and then back to your teams, and then your phone crashes because the app sucks, and then you reload the app, except this time you reloaded YouTube and are now watching Congressional revelations about aliens, and then you finally look back at your team and wonder if any of those aliens could play for your team.

Never fear! John Means is near! OK, there’s a lot to fear. John Means — remember him? If you’ve been on the scene for a while, you’ll remember when every full-time analyst lost their shizz over Means and pumped him up the draft board so be like your 2nd or 3rd starter on a 12-team fantasy roster. This is when the Orioles were bad, bee-tee-dubya. Means is a prototypical low-K / low-BB innings maven — which is really funny to say about a guy who has topped out at 150IP. But that’s the world we live in now — 150 IP is the new 200 IP. Means is available in just about every fantasy league, and he’s due back in MLB in [checks notes] August. That’s almost here! Now, the usual caveats apply — pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery usually take a bit to ramp up. I hear the naysayers shouting about Justin Verlander right now. Sure, Verlander had some yak blood in him that helped with some supernatural healing prowess. But when we look at Luis Severino, Chris Sale, Tyler Glasnow, and so on, we can see that the trajectory for return on investment on Tommy John recovery is long. That said, John Means’ profile of 8 K/9 and sub-2 BB/9 looks more like Justin Verlander’s success story than it does the profiles of those higher-K pitchers like Severino, Sale, and Glasnow. The real kicker is that the Orioles are actually good this year, and Means could get a handful of fantasy meaningful starts during your fantasy playoff run. So if you’re desperate for a legit starter playing in meaningful games for your fantasy playoffs, John Means is a high-risk / high-reward player that could help you for cheap.

Hyun-Jin Ryu is also returning any minute, although the expectations on Ryu should be more like your expectations for a dinner of quality fast food. You know how you go to McD’s expecting to get some food and stay alive, and sometimes you just happen to get a really good meal. That’s Ryu. Reports have his fastball at 88MPH, which is Corey Kluber territory. Kluber couldn’t get back to 90MPH, and that basically knocked him out of the league this year. Ryu’s still warming up, and 88MPH fastballs from crafty veterans might trick minor league players, but that’s not going to cut it for 5IP a pop in the AL East. That said, Ryu built the second half of his career on control, and he’d be a fine streamer whenever he matches up against weaker teams.

Last week I opined how our favorite starters have abandoned us with crappy performance. But why do we draft? Because our favorite starters come back in our times of need! Searching the top starters of the past month, I see the following list: Spencer Strider, Corbin Burnes, Zach Eflin, Tyler Glasnow, and Dylan Cease. Finally! This really isn’t news. This is just validation of projections.

What’s surprising me, is Brady Singer just outside the top 20 starters for the past month. Flash backward to the pre-season, and Singer was a top sleeper pick for Grey and myself. He was basically a cheaper version of the John Means prototype — low-K rate buffeted by IP volume combined with low walk rates. Singer never really got in a groove early this season, and in hindsight, that makes sense. The Royals are awful — to the point that they’re nearly as bad as the Athletics — a team that is abandoning their hometown and purposefully tanking. Singer has quietly posted 3 quality starts in his past 5 games, with a 3.66 ERA / 3.41 FIP over that span. Sure, two of those games came against the Guardians, but 3 of the games were against the Rays and Dodgers. Singer’s not the solution to your fantasy needs — he could allow zero runs for the rest of the year and still end up with 0 Wins on that Royals team. But if you’re looking for a streamer that’s available everywhere with a particularly promising upside, Singer is a great option.

Tarik Skubal is rostered everywhere now and has given us two nice starts combined with a blowout against the Royals. That happens. Key takeaway is: the swinging strike rate is above-average, and his FIP on the season — although in a very small sample size — is 1.96. The Tigers are still conceptually in the race for the AL Central Division Title, and August is the time to make their move. Skubal could be a really important part of that race.

Max Scherzer is having major struggles, having allowed 9 homers in his last 4 starts. This dong show has given Scherzer a 5+ ERA to go with a 7+ FIP over that period, and his BB/9 is soaring as well. His swinging strike rate and fastball velocity are well within normal expectations, and his K/9 rates are still great. This looks more like a rough stretch, comparable to Gerrit Cole‘s typical annual struggle. Spencer Strider struggled like this earlier in the year, and I heard rumors among analysts that he was donezo. The rumors were greatly exaggerated. Strider is now SP1 and on pace to break Nolan Ryan’s strikeout record 26 years from now, and Cole is SP4. Scherzer has definitely lost the shine off his previous career — being 38-years old does that to you — but he’d be a great trade target as the fantasy trade deadline comes to the wire. Scherzer has a long career of data, and his run-counting stats — from ERA to FIP — all show second half improvements of about 5% overall. That means he’s a mean, lean, playoff making machine. If you can get Scherzer at cost or discount — and he’s SP36 right now, or SP3/4 on your 12-teamer — you could easily have yourself a fantasy league winner.

Rankings

Here’s the deal, NeYo. Just like data needs a certain volume to be meaningful, it also needs a certain timeline to be meaningful. On a long-enough timeline, just about anything will happen. This is how R.A. Dickey — the famed knuckleballer — finished as the fantasy SP1 nearly a decade ago. On a short-enough timeline, nothing you expect will happen. This is why the majority of DFS players have suboptimal lineups. Don’t believe me? It doesn’t get any better than yesterday’s “Perfect” DFS lineup for DraftKings. In a slate that featured the Braves, the Brewers, the Astros, and the Giants — all division contenders and top offenses — it was this murder’s row of Nationals, Pirates, and Athletics that won the jackpot:

On a small enough timeline, Sal Frelick and Alex Call win you a million. I can tell you right now, the chances that Alex Call — a career .220 hitter over nearly 500 AB — is not going to win your 2023 season-long fantasy league. So how can we find somebody who will win your league?

That is to say, I made the rankings even more aggressive by changing my noise threshold. You can now find Tyler Glasnow in Tier 1, despite his low IP threshold. Keep in mind, Glasnow has never started more than 14 games in a season and has never accrued more than 6 Wins. Right now, Ian Gibaut and Colin Poche — you don’t know who they are, do you? I don’t either because they’re Roleless Robs! — have more wins on the 2023 season than Tyler Glasnow has ever accrued in a season. Again, my rankings are never meant to reflect true life MLB value — that’s what the Razzball Player Rater is for. My rankings are here to give you an aggressive insight as to how players should — according to data that has previously matched fantasy player performance — perform when they pitch. Good luck!