Mastering your fantasy baseball draft is not just about finding hidden gems in the later rounds, but also knowing who to avoid in the early ones. After having fun with sleepers last week, I’ll focus on the much more somber busts today. Specifically, these are potential starting pitcher busts I’m steering away from in my drafts. They’re all drafted in the early rounds and, in my opinion, have a reasonable potential to return much less value than their asking price.
As it happens, all three of my starting pitcher busts are drafted within 17 picks of each other on average. That might give you the impression that the 4th and 5th rounds aren’t a good time to draft pitchers. Not so. I find myself drafting my SP 1 right around that range. And so I’ve offered alternatives in and around the same average draft position.
And about average draft position, or ADP, now that all the major fantasy baseball platforms – including Fantrax! – are back in business for drafts, I will switch my ADP references to Fantasy Pros. They use a consensus average that covers the five major platforms. NFBC, which I had been using, is included in that calculation. So this is really just adding data.
Starting Pitcher Busts to Avoid
Gerrit Cole SP Yankees ADP 43
2024: 95 IP 17 GS 8-5 W-L 99 K 3.41 ERA 1.13 WHIP
There was a lot of concern during draft season last year that Gerrit Cole would require season-ending elbow surgery. That was after the righty pitched one game in Spring Training, reported fatigue, and had to visit a slew of doctors. Turns out it was nerve inflammation that would push his season debut to mid-June.
The surface numbers after his return were good enough (above), but they did mask a few potential red flags for his value in 2025. First, his fastball velocity (still 79th percentile at 95.9 MPH) declined for the third season in a row, down two miles per hour from his peak. Second, his strikeout rate (25.4%) was lower than at any point over the last seven seasons. And third, his slider, a signature pitch that for many years induced whiffs at over a 40% rate, was much less effective. It generated just a 26.4% whiff rate, his lowest ever. It got so bad that the 34-year-old faded its usage to just 15%, also the lowest ever.
That latter issue could be the reddest of the flags. The big questions are, did the righty fade his slider because it was less effective? Or was it less effective because he was conscious of the strain on his elbow and threw it differently or with less confidence as a result? Or could this just be a case of simple age-related decline?
At 34, these answers could be interrelated. And with the fourth-round asking price, that’s just too many questions for me. I think the odds of an ace-like outcome are significantly less than an injury-related decline that manifests in surgery. Or simply continued decline. The reasonable upside is a better-than-average pitcher on a good team. At this range, I can do a lot better than that. I’ll take the much-younger Cole Ragans (ADP 40) in the same round. Or Michael King (ADP 59), who just needs to continue doing what he’s already done, at the end of the next one.
Blake Snell SP Dodgers ADP 46
2024: 104 IP 5-3 W-L 145 K 3.12 ERA 1.05 WHIP
A cursory glance at Blake Snell’s numbers last year will tell you he had a really good season. The ratios, especially, stand out (3.12 ERA/1.05 WHIP/12.6 K/9). And it gets even better if you dig deeper on Statcast. The 32-year-old highly underperformed his xERA (2.57, good for 96th percentile), reduced his league-worst walk rate from the year before (10.5 vs. 13.3), and led all qualified starting pitchers in both K rate and hard-hit rate. This followed up a year in which he won the Cy Young Award. And, oh yeah, in 2025 he’ll have the advantage of the Dodgers lineup, ranked 2nd last year in run production.
Why, then, is the righty on my bust list when you can draft him all the way at the end of round four? If you’ve ever actually rostered Blake Snell, I think you already know the answer. I’m not aware of any metric that measures this, but the veteran has to be the streakiest pitcher in all of baseball. We have lots of examples. Over his final 14 starts last season, this was his line: 1.23 ERA/0.78 WHIP/12.8 K/9. Over his final 23 starts in 2023: 1.20 ERA/1.07 WHIP/12.4 K/9. Or, how about from July 23 onwards in 2022: 2.19 ERA/1.03 WHIP/12.1 K/9? I’m going to stop there, but it goes back further than this.
Are you noticing a pattern? Again, if you’ve rostered Blake Snell, I’m sure you do. Every year, Snell starts off the season dreadfully, and with little exception, he eventually rights the ship, and his overall numbers look good or great. That’s fine if you’re in some kind of draft-and-hold roto league where your lineup is locked all season and it really doesn’t matter how you got there. But in any league where you’re allowed to make regular roster transactions, which is the overwhelming majority, there’s a good chance if you drafted him that you didn’t get the benefit of his great starts. You likely dropped or traded him by then. And even if you didn’t, he pretty much single-handedly lost you ERA and WHIP (without helping you in wins) for the first half of the season.
Added to the tempestuousness of high variability and high pitch counts that lead to a lot of early exits, Snell has had myriad injuries over the years. It limited him to only 104 innings last season and fewer than 25 starts in three of the last five.
Bottom line: let someone else deal with the migraine. You can get Cole Ragans or very-reliable George Kirby in the same round. Or take the less-stressful upside of Michael King in the round after.
Jacob deGrom SP Rangers ADP 60
2024: 10.2 IP 3 GS 14 K 1.69 ERA 1.13 WHIP
I’m a Mets fan and Jacob deGrom has brought much joy to my life. So it pains me to write this: he doesn’t belong at this stage of the draft anymore. Not many 36-year-old pitchers do. In fact, there’s no other SP his age or older in the top 200 this draft season.
And it’s not a knock on his ability which still seems mostly unchanged after a second Tommy John surgery. He returned at the end of the season to make three abbreviated starts and achieved the normal results (listed above). Should we be concerned with the dip in velocity (from an average fastball of 98.7 MPH to 97.3)? Considering he topped out in his last start at 98.7, and that he won two Cy Young Awards throwing slower (96.9 MPH on 2019 and 96.0 in 2018), probably not. It was, after all, kind of like Spring Training for him.
No, the main concern is simply that he hasn’t managed to throw a full season’s worth of innings in six years. Six! In a position that is wrought with injuries and injury-prone players, this is an exceptional case. Is it likely that the oldest starting pitcher in the top 200 of the player pool is all-of-a-sudden going to throw more than 92 innings for the first time since Pete Alonso won Rookie of the Year? Definitely not.
Can the Degrominator still be the best pitcher in baseball and return first-round value? Maybe. Can he still be valuable throwing 120 innings with his killer ratios? Also maybe. But in the fifth round, where I’m looking for anchors in my rotation all season, I’ll let someone else take the long-shot gamble. Give me the more likely upside of Michael King (final 21 starts of 2024: 2.34 ERA/1.13 WHIP/10.6 K/9) at the same spot in the draft. Or the dependability of Pablo Lopez and Framber Valdez – both of whom barely missed a start in the last three years – in the next round.
For more of the great fantasy baseball rankings and analysis you’ve come to expect from FantraxHQ, check out our full 2025 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit! We’re here for you all the way up until Opening Day and then on into your championship run.
