Welcome to The List, where I rank the Top 100 SP for Fantasy Baseball every single Monday of the year.
Want an earlier update to The List? Join me on Mondays at 1:00pm ET as I live-stream its creation each week!
Have questions? My “office hours” are on Twitch 9:00 am – 11:00 am ET Monday – Friday + the aforementioned stream of The List.
For each edition of The List, I have a set of rules to outline my thought process and how to best use these rankings. Please take note:
- This is 5×5, 12-teamer, H2H format focused. It generally is the same as roto as well, but make sure you adjust accordingly.
- We have two tables to review before the notes and rankings. First is an injury table that outlines where players would be relatively ranked if fully healthy. It’s the best way to tackle how to value players on the IL.
- If a player is on the IL or not confirmed inside the rotation, they aren’t on the List. That includes injuries and guys in the minors, but there are exceptions for players who are expected to be in the rotation but are being skipped this week.
- Second is a table of pitchers outside the Top 100 I considered. Please read this if you can’t find your guy.
- Since this is a 12-teamer, I heavily weigh upside in the back-half of the rankings. Tier 10 is likely going to underperform those in Tier 11 across a full season, but it’s in your best interest to chase Tier 10’s ceiling vs. settling for Tier 11’s floor.
- I’ve made a decision to remove all the labels that I struggle to maintain through the season to instead give each player just one label at a time. It streamlines the process much better and hopefully gives you a more targeted understanding of the player.
- The notes outline oh-so-much to help your team. Please read the notes if you can instead of just scrolling to the bottom.
Let’s get to the tables. First are all of our injured compatriots:
I made a decision this year: I’ve removed the “Preseason tiers” and changed “tiers” to “Relative Rank” as it’ll be more consistent week-to-week — Tiers change while their relative rank does not.
Please understand that “70-80” does not guarantee the player will be exactly in that range when they return. Rankings are 100% relative to the landscape and while this table reflects where they would sit in a vacuum, it’s a fluid creature. Sometimes there are oh-so-many options, sometimes I want to see them healthy and stretched out again, and others we’re starving for pitchers and they jump higher than “70-80”. It’s a loose reference point and why it’s called “relative ranking.” I hope it helps!
One last point about that – often times pitchers need an extra week or two to ramp up once they do return to the majors. It’s why Still ILL exists and the “relative rank” you see is when those guys have shaken off their rust. Will they be back to normal in their first start or will they need a few? I have no idea! Those ranks are to show what I’d expect once they are fully back to normal.
Now let’s take a look at the pitchers I considered for the Top 100 but didn’t quite make the cut:
Other Pitchers I Considered (Not Ranked In Order)
Lastly, I heavily recommend you follow my daily SP Roundup that outlines all pitcher performances through the season, or if you want a primer on most of these pitchers, you can check out my 40,000 words from the pre-season via my Top 224 Starting Pitchers for 2022 from February. Both will help you get a grasp of my general thoughts on most of these guys (especially the roundup!) as I simply can’t detail everything about 100 pitchers in these notes each week.
Ranking Notes
- This is your reminder to please read these notes as they’ll tell you plenty about why “someone moved up” or “why is he at #X?!”
- Seriously. Read the notes.
- Yo. It’s me. The Notes. I’m here to tell you that Brandon Woodruff is on the IL with an ankle injury, which means everyone outside Tier 1 gets an innate +1. It changes a lot so keep that in mind.
- Tier 2 gets another innate boost as Walker Buehler fell down to #12 this week. I felt it was time for the Ace of Very Good to take a hit as others are flat-out dealing and look to stay that way. He’s not bad at all, just not elite like he used to be armed now with a whiff-less four-seamer.
- Let’s welcome Sandy Alcantara and Zack Wheeler back to Tier 2 as they received their AGA labels this week. They’ve been pitching like the arms I expected them to be in the pre-season and it’s a glorious thing.
- Meanwhile, I gave a slight dip to Lucas Giolito, placing him behind Wheeler. He hasn’t been overwhelmingly dominant yet this year and while I expect it to come, I felt a little better slotting him at #11 for now.
- In Tier 3…pretty much nothing has changed. I stared at it and didn’t see anything outlandish and outside of bumping up Wheeler and Sandy, it’s essentially stayed the same.
- …expected for Luis Severino who steps in at the bottom of the tier. I’m loving the trajectory of Severino and feel confident his ability is only getting better with more time removed from his Tommy John Surgery. He deserves the push.
- I did some shuffling in Tier 4, bringing Tarik Skubal, Eric Lauer, and Nestor Cortes into the bunch. All three have been fantastic southpaws and continue to earn…