Top 100 Starting Pitchers For 2022: Week 11

We’re all here because we love baseball (on Razzball, not Earth; that’s a different “Why are we here?” discussion for another column/site). When did you know you loved it? Feel free to skip through if you just want the rankings.

For me, it was before I was a teenager. My grandfather played on a small-college national championship baseball team in the late-1940s, and he loved to play catch with me in their big side yard. After enough routine throwing and warming up, he’d challenge me by throwing me grounders and pop-ups where I’d have to really range to one side or the other, mostly diving, to make the play. When I’d successfully come up with the catch, he’d call me “Sweet Lou” after Detroit Tigers second baseman Lou Whitaker, who then became my favorite athlete in any sport (and my avatar for this site). When my grandpa called me Sweet Lou, my chest would puff out a little bit and I’d feel just a little bit like I was something or somebody; more than just some little kid from a town of 1,000 people who was still a little afraid of getting hit by the kids who had already reached puberty and could throw much faster than I’d prefer. 

It was enhanced by my father, who would coach my little league team and be my own personal Lance Parrish in the backyard. I couldn’t throw hard, and couldn’t throw any other pitches but a fastball. But that didn’t stop my dad from humoring me and catching pitch after pitch, even if he’d already had enough physicality from the day (he and my grandpa owned and ran a wood and aluminum boat dock manufacturing company). Every now and then, I’d try to really muscle up on one, it’d go wild, and he’d have to go chase it down; there were no good backstops in our yard. Every now and then, I’d try to throw a curveball or try to make the ball do something other than my typical “fastball” (which was less “fastball” and more “go slowly in a reasonably straight line”), it’d go wild, and he’d have to go chase it down again. I could tell he’d get frustrated at times, but he’d never make me feel bad. He’d coach our team, we’d lose plenty of games, sometimes I’d pitch well, sometimes I’d get shelled…but he never showed disappointment in how I played and never made me feel as if I wasn’t enough. I may know I stunk that night, but it was never because my dad made me feel that way. He’d encourage, and pump me up for next time.

It’s so difficult to, in the words of To Kill A Mockingbird lawyer Atticus Finch, get in somebody else’s skin and walk around in it. But it’s Father’s Day (I’m writing this article on Sunday night, after kid bedtime, for Monday morning submission) and I’m a dad now, so I have the benefit of finally understanding something my dad and grandpa understood long ago; I can finally walk around in their skin a little and see those times the way they saw those times. When I play catch with my youngest daughter, it doesn’t really matter what plays she makes; when I watch her softball games, it doesn’t really matter if she pipes a strike or pulls one through the SS/3B hole. She wants to do well, but she needs to know that I love and support her. I want her to do well, but I need to know that she knows how much I love her and how proud of her I am. I’m old now, and won’t ever play catch with my dad or grandpa again. Some day, she’ll face that same reality with me. But for now, I’m going to take advantage of every single opportunity to spend meaningful, impactful time with her. She doesn’t realize that it’s even more special to me than it is to her. When she wants to go practice pitching at 8:30 p.m. after a game, and it’s already been a long day, well…I’m not saying no.

I think that was a strike, but I can’t be sure; there’s something in my eyes.

Now, to the stuff you came here for–this week’s SP ranks.

Injury Notes

• I excluded Nathan Eovaldi (BOS) from the list, as he’s supposed to be out at least into July.
• I excluded Marcus Stroman (CHC) from the list, as he’s also out until early July.
• Walker Buehler (LAD) is out until September, so he’s off the list.
• Brandon Woodruff (MIL) is back on the list, as he made a rehab start this past weekend and struck out 7 of the 8 hitters he faced. It’s looking like one more rehab start and if there are no setbacks, he’ll rejoin the team. Freddy Peralta (MIL) is excluded; he’s throwing, but there’s no timetable for any sort of bullpens/rehab.
• Bailey Ober (MIN) is excluded (no info on rehab timeline).
• Tylor Megill (NYM) is excluded; he won’t throw for at least a month, and then there may be a considerable ramp-up period. Max Scherzer (NYM) is back on the list; he’s slated to throw a rehab start Tuesday, June 21, and may only take one more rehab start if there are no setbacks. Jacob deGrom (NYM) is excluded; he’s thrown multiple bullpen sessions but still a few weeks away from anything newsworthy.
• I’m including Zach Eflin (PHI) but he just got lit up Sunday, and was removed after a couple of innings with continued right knee soreness. The Phillies say that he was scheduled to only go three innings anyway, but the fact that they’re limiting him so much and then he was so ineffective he was pulled early isn’t a terrific sign for his health going forward, so take his numbers/ranking and feel free to move him downward if you’re even remotely risk-averse.
• Joe Musgrove (SDP) is on the COVID-19 IL but he pitched great the day before going on it; there’s no news that it’s anything other than precautionary or that it will only be missing one start.
• Jake Junis (SFG) is excluded as he’s out around four weeks due to a hamstring strain.
• Andrew Heaney (LAD) is excluded but returned to the Dodgers rotation on Sunday.

Player Notes

• I’ve got to address Sandy Alcantara’s (MIA) “low” ranking. How can I have a guy 26th when his ERA is 3rd in baseball, his WHIP is 16th, his xERA is 2.76, and his xwOBA is 9th? His last 62 IP have resulted in a meager 7 ER. TWENTY-SIXTH, HOOVE?!?! I hear you, I do. Here’s the why: his K%-BB% is only 15.7%, good for 55th overall. Even though he throws his fastball almost 98 mph on average, his K% isn’t super-high (23.4%), and his walk rate of 7.7% is definitely higher than you’d like from your ace. He’s also middle-third in both xFIP and SIERA. Alcantara has been great, but I used these metrics for a reason, and too many of them tell me that his outputs aren’t commensurate with his inputs.
• Keeping with the “Why is he so low?” idea, let’s look at Tony Gonsolin (LAD). He’s tops in MLB in ERA, WHIP, is 8-0, and is top-10 in both xERA and xwOBA. In my ranks, he’s *scrolling, scrolling, scrolling*…49th? Out of the six metrics I use for my inputs, his *highest* rank is in CSW%, and it’s only 33rd among the starters that qualify for my rankings. In the other five metrics I use, he’s average to below-average among his peers. It’s hard to quibble with the results, but it’s also hard for me to recommend him much higher than where he is going forward.
• Let’s switch up to some good news, shall we? Last week Jon Gray (TEX) checked in at 71st in my rankings, while this week sees him fly up to 37th. He’s had 13 innings since I pulled the stats for last week’s rankings, and in those 13 innings he’s given up 1 ER and struck out 16. That’ll do, donkey…that’ll do. And before you say “Hey, one of those starts was against the Tigers, that doesn’t count!” I won’t argue with you. But until Detroit is relegated, Premier League-style, I’m going to go ahead and use them even if those stats are more inflated than…well, maybe this isn’t the right time to be making inflation jokes.
• Another major riser is Taijuan Walker (NYM). Since pulling the stats for last week’s column, Walker has thrown 12.2 innings of 2-run ball, striking out 19 while walking two. Those are big-time increases, so are they sustainable? Walker’s last two starts were marked improvements in staying out of batter-advantage counts (2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1) and in getting early outs on balls-in-play counts (0-0, 0-1, 1-0, 1-1). The other inputs don’t show much actionable change, but if Walker can stay ahead and get early action, that may be a recipe for success for him.

This is a reminder that these rankings are me sticking to what my formula spits out using the input metrics that I discussed in last week’s column. There are certainly some guys I’d move around based on my personal preference, but what good is a formula if I’m just going to put my own personal biases into things anyway? I just want to give you what my formula spits out, and if you like Player X better than Player Y, then by all means move them–but at least then, it’s *your* bias making the adjustment for you, and not *mine* making the adjustment for you. We can all cherry-pick stats that support our own preferences for Player X over Player Y, or to knock Player X over Player Y. The only personal bias I want these rankings to have is the personal bias of what inputs I used. After that, the rankings are the rankings.

All data pulled at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, June 19 and did not include any starts that day.