Top 100 Starting Pitchers for 2021: Week 22

Fantasy playoffs! I don’t kink shame here. If you’re Googling “MLB Playoff Fan Fiction,” that’s your thing. My thing? Ranking pitchers in a giant table. We’re down to the last month of the MLB regular season — and many fantasy leagues are in the playoffs already — so you’ll want to start any hot hand you think will help your team. Within reason, of course. We’re going to see a lot of rookie starters called up, and even with their immense hype (see Cabrera, Edward), they can still put up lackluster performances that don’t really help your cause. As always, consult Rudy’s Streamonator Tools (and if you’re not subscribed, where have you been? Jump in and support us!) and check-in with the writers throughout the week. We’re here to help!

Triston McKenzie: The Cardiac Kid stopped my heart this week because he went on the IL with shoulder fatigue. McKenzie broke out of Guardians camp in early 2021 with a ton of expectations but failed to deliver, going with a 5+ ERA/FIP/xFIP through July accompanied by a stunning 6+ BB/9. Let’s put that in perspective: it was about as bad as Robbie Ray’s 2020. Why do I keep referencing Robbie Ray? Because he’s that wild pitcher that set the Mendoza Line for hurlers and then chased the Cy Young. Meanwhile, the 24-year old McKenzie is following in Ray’s footsteps by fully reinventing himself in the middle of the season. Over his last 4 starts, McKenzie has a sub-2.00 ERA, a 2.40 FIP, a 26.5% K-BB%, and a 14.6% swinging-strike rate. Even better, he’s walking less than 1 per nine innings, which is more redonkulous than Grey’s spec script about Dunkin’ Man — The superhero powered by Dunkin’ Donuts (also a crossover with Space Jam 2). Let’s all remember that the Guardians are racing to the bottom and sold off a bunch of players to help them do that. Shane Bieber is basically asking to pitch right now and the Guardians are saying no; I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some kid gloves on McKenzie for the rest of 2021. Of course, McKenzie wants to right the ship as much as possible this year; the Guardians, meanwhile, are looking at his service time clock. With a .10 clock as of right now, the Guardians could feasibly keep McKenzie up for most of next year and he still might be under the 1 year service time mark. All this [waves up there] is really just the preamble to my novel: The Pitcher (with the main character Gerralt Cole). Throw a coin to your Pitcher! The TL;DR that I shoulda put at the top of the paragraph: we don’t have enough data to say that McKenzie is fixed, and we may not see him much again this year. Stay tuned to Grey’s 2022 draft rankings, when he reveals the end of my novel! In the meantime, look at this sweet curveball action:

Thru 7, Triston McKenzie has an unbelievable 60% CSW on his curveball. pic.twitter.com/roIJjufgrc

— Alex Fast (@AlexFast8) August 21, 2021

Edward Cabrera: Who says baseball isn’t romantic? The 23-year old raced through the minors in 2021, going from Single-A to Triple-A in one year, and this week he made his MLB debut for the Miami Marlins.

Let’s check in on Edward Cabrera’s Sunday Night. pic.twitter.com/I8H4zLCFno

— Miami Marlins (@Marlins) August 23, 2021

But for E-Cab, who is described as “Just like Sixto Sanchez but way healthier right now,” he notched his first MLB K, and it’s a beauty. Luckily for the sake of this post, he only got 1 other K that night. Overall, it was an unimpressive outing, where he walked 3 and struck out 2 while allowing 2 homers over 6 IP. But that 6 IP — sawheet. That’s what teams need now.

Edward Cabrera, first MLB strikeout ?

Freezes Riley Adams pic.twitter.com/vQ7IN3e0GK

— Fish On First Spaces (@MarlinsSpaces) August 25, 2021

Adbert Alzolay: At a certain point, your work environment breaks you down and destroys you. Yes, this is a peak capitalism critique. Alzolay looked really good in the beginning of the year and then after the Cubs sold the entire team for a pack of disc golf hammers, it seemed like Alzolay just stopped caring. He’s due to come back from the IL soon, but I don’t think I’d pick him up in any format outside of DFS. Next year he’ll be a sleeper target because he’s got games where he has a near-20% swinging-strike rate (even recently). However, he also has games where he’s basically a Twins-style pitch to contact maestro, except that contact always leaves the park. With the Cubs looking like the Washington Generals of the MLB to finish out 2021, the 20% of you that are hoping for an Alzolay return to glory can probably relax and give up hope in 2021.

Yusei Kikuchi: He’s been rocked in his past two games and it might have something to do with his 2-3 MPH drop in velocity recently. For those not in the know: that’s a bad thing. A really bad thing. In late May/early June, Kikuchi was averaging 96+ on his fastball; that fastball is down to 93-94 now. We’re probably looking at him getting tired, and the Mariners really need Kikuchi to regain form in order to stay in the playoff hunt. I don’t think Kikuchi will get the rest he’ll need to stay productive, so I’m going to aggressively say that Kikuchi managers should sit him going forward or — if your trade deadline hasn’t passed — try to pass him off onto another manager. I love Kikuchi for 2022, but it’s clear he’s out of gas.

Kenta Maeda: Update: Maeda going under the knife for an undetermined elbow surgery. The remaining is what I had written prior to the news, and I think it’s still valuable for fantasy managers to consider when evaluating pitchers, so I’m leaving it. However, Maeda is officially done for the year…and depending on what happens during his surgery, he might be done for next year as well.

Is traveling the country looking for opinions on his arm. The local Minnesota fishwrap, The Star Tribune, reports that Maeda’s facing a problem: the contract the Dodgers signed him to was laden with playing time incentives; the Twins now control that contract. Maeda is 4 starts away from a $1.5 million bonus, and 34 IP away from a $1 million bonus. And…there are about 4-5 starts left in the season, and if Maeda took the field right now, he could probably make the GS bonus and have an outside chance at making the IP bonus. The problem is: his arm is tight. We know many pitchers right now who are throwing with partially torn UCLs — Zac Gallen and Dinelson Lamet for example — but these pitchers also know that their elbows could give at any moment. Maeda has a decision to make: throw through the pain and perhaps made a 30% salary bonus, or sit and possibly have the exact same problem crop up next year and lower his take-home pay even more. Long story short: Maeda’s 2020 was beautiful, and we should celebrate that. However, it looks like we’ve lost the Maeda we knew and loved to arm fatigue, and he might not be fantasy relevant all the way through 2022. If you’ve got him in a dynasty league, it’s time to unload for whatever value you can get. [Update: that value won’t be much].

Sonny Gray: I mean this job gets to me sometimes. When people complain about my rankings, I double-check them, and triple-check them, and so on. I mean, I wish I was making Eno Sarris money to do this. I remember my first job was at Barnes and Noble, and we had some people with Masters degrees working in the backroom taking orders and running shipments. I mean, that’s basically me: Doc EWB working in the backroom of a bookstore doing pitcher projections that are really good. Any why do I mention this? Because my pitcher projections were well within margins of errors on just about every player, except Sonny Gray. Like, y’all thought you had me with Andrew Heaney, but Sonny Gray was the actual outlier. And now, Sonny Gray’s the #2 pitcher on the Player Rater over the past week, and the #9 SP over the past month. So, the system works. It’s just that people generally don’t understand the timeframes where these things come into play. I’m not listing pitchers to replicate the Player Rater; you can just go scroll up [waves up] and look at the Player Rater if you want to know who the top pitcher is right now. But what about next month or in two weeks?  As much as we like Lance Lynn, he’s SP72 over the last month, and in 5 out of his last 7 starts, he’s failed to register a swinging strike rate above 10%. [pats self on back] And what’s wacky, is that even when I recommended Lynn last Saturday for DFS, it was because he had the best track record of any pitcher on the slate. Like, we’re getting into sketchy starting pitcher territory; and even Lynn went out there for a 7 ER bombing. Yeesh. ENYWHEY. I’m not here trying to engagement farm y’all. I’m here to tell you where the data leads, and the question every fantasy manager needs to ask is, “At what point in the bell curve of outcomes are we currently residing?” Because little ol’ Sonny Gray is making a late-season surge and winning leagues for managers. Yes, he looks like crap on the season-long Player Rater, but it’s what he’s doing right now that you should care about as you approach the playoffs.

Carlos Hernandez: Still available in almost all leagues, 7th on the Player Rater over the past month. You know the drill.

Cal Quantrill: Hey I’m happy to be wrong but he’s still sporting FIP/xFIP over double his ERA and a SIERA nearly triple, and most of his success has come from a short-lived burst of success on his slider…which is precipitously declining in whiff rate. Still, injuries about and if you’re looking for a pitcher, might as well take a flier.

Visualization courtesy Alex Chamberlain

Noah Syndergaard: Hurt again in recovery from TJ surgery. If there’s one thing I learned from Grey while drafting this pre-season: DO NOT LOAD UP ON INJURY RECOVERY GUYS IN BEST BALL. I thought I was smart to get Luis Severino and Chris Sale in my RazzSlam team. Sale’s debut was delayed by over a month and Severino still hasn’t shown up. Looks like Thor won’t really pitch this season. Sigh.

Shohei Ohtani: Got hit in the hand while batting, although he stayed in the game after demonstrating major pain. Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com says he’s still on track to make his Tuesday start, but I dunno. Weekly league lineup people: refresh the injury report like mad on Monday.

Shohei Ohtani is in pain after getting hit by a pitch on the hand. pic.twitter.com/x5fuoNYKZk

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) August 29, 2021

Space:X Rankings

Week 24 Pitcher Data.xls