Pitching 3D: Starting Pitchers 11-21

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Updated on February 8, 2017 11:19PM EST

The top of the starting pitcher ranks was similar whether looking at NFBC ADP or my 50-point rating system, though there was one pitcher who was mysteriously missing from my list of top-10 starting pitchers this season.

I should note that the NFBC ADP rankings that are listed were taken on Jan. 31. The NFBC list is a moving target that can undergo big changes at this early stage of draft season, so to have a concrete list for reference I chose a snapshot of a single day.

Once again, here are the points possible in each of the seven categories on these fantasy pitcher rankings (please consult the original article for translating stat values into points):

Strikeouts - 10 points
ERA - 6
WHIP - 6
Wins - 3
Innings - 10
Stuff - 8
Mechanics - 7
Total - 50

Justin Verlander
NFBC ADP: 11
DT Rank: 13

K	8 of 10
ERA	4 of 6
WHIP	5 of 6
W	2 of 3
IP	8 of 10
Stuff	6 of 8
Mechanics	5 of 7
TOTAL	38 of 50

It was just a year ago that pundits were ready to write off Verlander, considering the 30-something candles on his birthday cake and seeing a shell of the pitcher that won the 2011 AL MVP and Cy Young awards. Yet here we are after one season of resurrection, and he's sitting in the crosshairs of SP1 territory. I see a pitcher whose baseline skills are certainly worthy of

Once again, here are the points possible in each of the seven categories on these fantasy pitcher rankings (please consult the original article for translating stat values into points):

Strikeouts - 10 points
ERA - 6
WHIP - 6
Wins - 3
Innings - 10
Stuff - 8
Mechanics - 7
Total - 50

Justin Verlander
NFBC ADP: 11
DT Rank: 13

K	8 of 10
ERA	4 of 6
WHIP	5 of 6
W	2 of 3
IP	8 of 10
Stuff	6 of 8
Mechanics	5 of 7
TOTAL	38 of 50

The right-hander's WHIP and especially his Ks are very volatile, with a huge range of potential outcomes with steep downside in each category. His velocity bounced back by a full tick, but it took more than a month to get there and his average pitch-speed was still short of peak, though perhaps more significant was the return to effectiveness of his breaking pitches. Mechanically, when Verlander was off-kilter it looked as if there was an invisible wall that was setup on the right side of the mound, pushing off-line to the left on most of his pitches, and though he straightened things out last season the possibility exists that he will take time to line up the gears once again.

Yu Darvish
NFBC ADP: 12
DT Rank: 6

K	10
ERA	5
WHIP	5
W	3
IP	6
Stuff	7
Mechanics	7
TOTAL	43

Of the top 21 pitchers in the game, Darvish earns by far my greatest optimism when compared to the NFBC consensus. I know that he has Tommy John surgery in his past, but he showed enough last season in his return to witness that the top-flight stuff and mechanics were back in full force. Given the pitcher's age (30) and the Rangers heavy investment (final year of his six-year contract with the Rangers, who spent $111.7 million on Darvish between the contract and posting fee), I could see the team rolling the dice with their most dominant starter. The innings count for 2017 is an issue, but the right-hander has 200-inning upside and the team has little reason to be cautious with his workload.

Darvish could lead the league in Ks if given enough frames, and though anyone with a scar carries additional risk of a truncated innings-count, compare the projection to Adam Wainwright, who underwent TJS in spring training '12 (Darvish was spring '15) and was roughly the same age at the time of going under the knife (Waino was 29, Darvish was 28). Wainwright actually returned more quickly, tossing 198.0 innings after taking a year off, but in year two post-surgery (equivalent to Darvish's 2017 campaign), Wainwright led the majors with a ridiculous 241.0 innings pitched. Yu doesn't need to lead the league, but if he gets 200 frames under his belt this season then he could be a top-five pitcher.

Stephen Strasburg
NFBC ADP: 13
DT Rank: 11

K	9
ERA	4
WHIP	5
W	3
IP	5
Stuff	7
Mechanics	6
TOTAL	39

I have followed Stras for a long time. He pitched for San Diego State University at the time that I was going there for grad school, and his college stuff was the best I've ever seen in person. But the guy has never had an ERA less than 3.00 and he has had a WHIP above 1.10 in each of the last three years, and though those are lofty thresholds, his status as an ace is highly dependent on those metrics. Plus, he has only pitched more than 185 innings once in his career, such that the 5 points awarded for his innings might be optimistic. It seems that the obstacles keep piling up.

Mechanics are critical to his success: when Stas is on line to the target, directing his delivery straight at the catcher, then he can be unstoppable, able to hit both sides of the plate by repeating his release point; when he's off-line, with a tendency to veer and fall-off to the first-base side of the mound, then Stras struggles to command either side of the plate. His on-line mechanics earn the score of 6 that's seen above, but that 6 can become a 5 or worse at any time.

Carlos Carrasco
NFBC ADP: 14
DT Rank: 16

K	8
ERA	4
WHIP	5
W	2
IP	5
Stuff	6
Mechanics	6
TOTAL	36

Carrasco just needs to avoid batted balls. He has been shelved multiple times due to pitches hit back up the box, the latest being a broken pitching hand when he tried to field a hot shot up the middle. It seems that the injuries are a fluke, but given that he's been held under 185 frames in each season of his career - even in 2015, when he made 30 starts - it's impossible to draft him without acknowledging his lack of workload.

In this sense he's like Strasburg, but without the one big-inning season to his credit. The stuff and mechanics are both awesome, giving Carrasco steep upside for dreamers to gaze at admirably, but he will likely need to do something unprecedented - like pitch 190 frames - to be worth his cost of acquisition.

Chris Archer
NFBC ADP: 15
DT Rank: 12

K	9
ERA	4
WHIP	4
W	2
IP	8
Stuff	6
Mechanics	5
TOTAL	38

Archer was one of last season's biggest disappointments. He lost a full tick off his fastball as compared to 2015, yet his changeup and slider each gained pitch-speed, on average, the net result of which was a narrower band of available velocity on his pitches, making it easier for opposing batters to time his different offerings - all three of his pitches fell within a 7.6-mph range, on average. His score on the DT scale of 38 is actually tied with that of four other pitchers, but Archer earns the top spot among them due to his K rate, relative youth and theoretical upside.

Archer's a "stay back" pitcher with a very slow delivery from the windup, and though players can sometimes maintain stability a bit better with a more deliberate pace, it also opens the door for timing issues given the long time window involved. The other problem is that such pitchers can't possibly be so slow when pitching from the stretch, lest they give up stolen bases by the bushel, so they have to master a completely different timing pattern from the stretch.

Kyle Hendricks
NFBC ADP: 16
DT Rank: TBD

K	6
ERA	4
WHIP	5
W	3
IP	7
Stuff	4
Mechanics	3
TOTAL	32

Say hello to the one pitcher from the NFBC top-21 that doesn't make my list with such high esteem. In fact, I can't even pinpoint his exact ranking quite yet, because I still have some sifting to do with the pitchers in his rating cohort, but Hendricks will rank outside my top 30, at least. There is a massive glut of pitchers in the 32-to-33-point range, such that we'll need to classify these players into groups based on their strengths and weaknesses. We will see this once we get outside the top 21 and I will take a slightly different approach beginning with the next article, but suffice to say that Hendricks will watch his stock suffer in this system.

Hendricks' strengths - such as WHIP and wins - are largely outside his control, and though he plays in front of a dynamite defense and is supported by a top-scoring offense, he will suffer even more than the other Cubs pitchers when comparing this year's defense to last, due to the copious amounts of balls in play that he allows. His stuff is very pedestrian, scoring as high as a 4 only because of his unique ability to keep the ball low and away from batters (away from their strengths). He doesn't have the delivery to back up strong command, with imbalance in every direction that could lead to issues with coordinating his release point this season. It's a recipe for serious regression in the lesser-predictable categories that are his strengths, and there are several high-strikeout pitchers that I would rather gamble on.

Jacob deGrom
NFBC ADP: 16
DT Rank: 20

K	8
ERA	5
WHIP	5
W	2
IP	4
Stuff	5
Mechanics	5
TOTAL	34

DeGrom offers a scary proposition, as a pitcher who underwent elbow surgery (on his ulnar nerve, no less) but not the classic Tommy John procedure. There is little telling whether the procedure will hold or if deGrom will be back under the knife by midseason. My appreciation for his stats, stuff and delivery put him in the conversation at 34 points, and though that value places him at no.20 in this ranking system, I would not feel comfortable trusting him with anything more than a No. 3 role on a single-season fantasy squad.

DeGrom's fastball finished half his 205 strikeouts in 2015, but the fastball velo went down from 95.8 mph in '15 to 94.2 mph last season, as the heater went down to finishing 44.8 percent of his Ks in '16. The '15 FB velocity is looking more and more like an aberration, and the questions swirling around his elbow make drafting deGrom a dicey proposition.

Masahiro Tanaka
NFBC ADP: 17
DT Rank: 21

K	6
ERA	5
WHIP	6
W	2
IP	5
Stuff	5
Mechanics	5
TOTAL	34

Tanaka's split is an awesome pitch, a true trap-door pitch that he can play off his fastball and command at will. He also has a known tear in his UCL that gives the impression of a ticking timebomb, potentially stripping him from the mound at any given moment. Even putting the UCL strain aside, last season was the first that Tanaka tossed more than 155 innings, putting his ability to dent the ratios in question.

He also gives up too many homers and is on a decreasing run of strikeouts, elements that put his excellent walk rate (and WHIP) into jeopardy. Similar to fellow 34-point pitcher Jacob DeGrom, Tanaka is a bit of a wild card who has the talent to justify a no.2 role in a typical fantasy rotation, but the risk inherent in employing his services makes it necessary to have a backup plan in case the elbow gives way.

Cole Hamels
NFBC ADP: 19
DT Rank: 15

K	7
ERA	4
WHIP	4
W	3
IP	9
Stuff	5
Mechanics	6
TOTAL	38

Admittedly, I have a bit of bias when it comes to Hamels. An NPA guy who worked with my mentor, Tom House, since Cole was a teenager, Hamels actually graced the cover of the book that I wrote with House in 2009, and he even wrote the forward. He has done nothing to quiet my enthusiasm for his skills in the years since, and though most pitchers will naturally see their stuff degrade over time as they drift further from physical peak, Cole has exhibited the opposite trend, with a career-long quest to improve velocity; he set another career-high last season with an average four-seam velocity of 93.69 mph.

Hamels used to be best known for his killer changeup, but that pitch was actually the worst in his arsenal in 2016 and he has displayed the ability to finish strikeouts with each of his pitches - he registered 30 or more punchouts with each of his four-seamer, sinker, changeup, cutter and curveball last season, according to Brooks Baseball.

Carlos Martinez
NFBC ADP: 20
DT Rank: 18

K	6
ERA	5
WHIP	3
W	3
IP	7
Stuff	6
Mechanics	5
TOTAL	35

Owner of a brand new, $51 million contract, Martinez has parlayed his high-90s heat and killer slider into excellent ERA's over the past two seasons, though his peripherals have lagged behind. He has the stuff to backup the low marks in the ERA department, but pitchers don't often maintain such a stark disparity between fantasy categories as CarMart's ERA and his WHIP.

I think that he could take a step forward yet his numbers stand still, lowering the right-hander's perceived upside despite his high-octane gas and the shiny new contract that pays him like an ace. His K rate is relatively low considering his ability to light up radar guns, an important point to remember if his velo drops the way that it has for so many young fireballers before him. The skills are legit, though, and I wouldn't put it past Martinez to bring his strikeouts back up to the K-per-inning pace of 2015.

Zack Greinke
NFBC ADP: 21
DT Rank: 17

K	6
ERA	5
WHIP	4
W	2
IP	8
Stuff	5
Mechanics	5
TOTAL	35

I opted to go 21 players deep in the first two articles because of how closely my own rankings adhered to those of NFBC ADP up to this point in the list, but after Greinke, the shape of the pitcher pool changes and some pitchers with very different skill sets receive similar scores, underscoring the need to have designated pitcher types for this section of a draft, when it is more instructive to have an innings-eater type or a high risk/high reward player based on team need.

Greinke's regression last year was expected and predictable, not just because he was coming off an impossible-to-repeat 1.66 ERA, but also because he was going to Arizona to play his home games at Chase Field, playing at the second-highest elevation in the majors and where hits drop like the salmon of Capistrano. Greinke has long posted ERA's that outstripped his hit rates, and though projecting a sub-3.00 may be folly, I think that the perceived view of Greinke's value has gone too far the other way.