| | | | Friday, September 27, 2024 | | This is the last FBT Newsletter of the regular season, and before we get to the heart of today's edition – about five pitchers I'm having a tough time figuring out for 2025 – I just wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to every one of you for subscribing and reading this season. | | Committing to this newsletter every day this season was something new for me, and I think it's been a very successful first season for us. At least, I sure hope so – I suppose that is measured by the number of championships we helped you all win this season. The whole goal here was to make this a one-stop shop for winning your Fantasy league, so if all you read was this newsletter every day, you would be better positioned than your competition to win a championship. | | I hope I helped you out with that, and I hope the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast helped, too. We're so lucky to have the audience we have, and I'm personally so lucky to get to talk baseball with Frank Stampfl and Scott White every day. They make me a smarter baseball fan, a better analyst, and a more successful player, and I hope I've been able to do the same for you. | | This isn't goodbye, of course; you'll be hearing from me as soon as next week when I plan to send the first draft of my 2025 positional rankings – if I can get through it all! And we'll be right here throughout the offseason, making sure you're up to date on everything you need to know well before your 2025 drafts. I want to make sure you're not just winning championships but putting together a dynasty that causes the rest of your league to resent your success. | | And we're only just beginning. | | | | | | Corbin Burnes, Orioles | | Okay, wait, now, all of a sudden, Burnes is starting to look like himself again. Burnes' cutter just hasn't been the same pitch for much of this season, and that's a problem for a pitch he throws as often as most pitchers throw their fastballs. In his words, speaking to TheBalimoreBanner.com, Burnes was "getting too efficient with how I was spinning it, which was making it a [expletive] four-seam fastball." | | After a particularly rough August, Burnes made some mechanical adjustments to his cutter and has now gone five starts in a row in September, allowing two or fewer runs, including five one-run innings Thursday against the Yankees. He has 31 strikeouts to just eight walks in the month, and he generated a whopping nine whiffs on 22 swings with the cutter Thursday, one of his best results of the season. | | I was pretty much ready to write Burnes off as an ace based on how this season has gone, and now I really have to rethink that. One month shouldn't fundamentally change how you view any player, of course, but in Burnes' case, it's a lot easier to buy into it when he's just mostly just looking like he has in the past. I will note that, prior to Thursday's start, his whiff rate with the cutter was 22.2% in September, better than it had been in any month this season but still an awfully far cry from where it was when he was at his best in Milwaukee when the pitch was typically in the 28-32% range. I don't think it's reasonable to expect him to get back to that level, but if he can be more like 2023? Well, that's definitely a top-five pitcher, though one whose looming free agency is a big question mark for his value. | | At this point, I'm thinking he's a top-five pitcher again. Top-three? I'm going to need to see some more playoff dominance from that cutter before I get there. | | Gerrit Cole, Yankees | | We'll go to the other side of Thursday's matchup, as Cole outdueled Burnes, allowing just two hits and one walk over 6.2 shutout innings against the Orioles. That brings Cole to a 3.41 ERA and 1.13 WHIP for the season, which is even more impressive when you remember that he missed the first few months recovering from an elbow injury. So, why am I so skeptical of Cole? | | Well, for one thing, despite increasingly good performances as the season has gone on, he still never quite looked like Gerrit Cole. Even in Thursday's game, he generated just five strikeouts and only eight swinging strikes, six of which came on his four-seamer. That means Cole's various secondaries generated just two whiffs combined, and that's really the concern here. Cole's fastball was actually about as good in 2024 as it was in 2023, but his slider, especially, wasn't even close. He had just a 27.3% whiff rate with the pitch, down from 32.7% in 2023 – which was already down from over 40% in three straight seasons prior. | | We already saw some leakage in Cole's skill set in 2023 despite his Cy Young, and that's now two seasons in a row with a drop in strikeout rate. He's remained much better at preventing hard contact, which has helped him overcome it, but I just don't think you can expect a guy who will be 34 next season to bounce back. He can remain an effective pitcher, for sure, but with the recent elbow injury, you also have more red flags here with Cole than ever before. | | He might end up a top-12 pitcher when I reveal my way-too-early 2025 rankings next week, but I also can't say I'm especially excited about the prospect of drafting Cole to anchor my rotation. | | | | Luis Gil, Yankees | | I haven't checked, but I'm pretty confident no pitcher has seen a bigger innings jump this season than Gil, who went from four innings pitched in 2023 to over 150 by the time he's through. It's not just a massive one-season jump, though; Gil hasn't thrown more than 26 innings since 2021 and has never thrown more than the 108.2 he threw in 2021. To his credit, Gil has remained remarkably effective despite injuries and the mounting innings totals, sporting a 3.50 ERA in the second half of the season with 48 strikeouts in 43.2 innings … albeit with just a 1.443 WHIP and a pretty massive 13.9% walk rate. | | Gil is one of the toughest pitchers in baseball to hit, both in terms of quality and quantity of contact, which has helped him overcome his walk issues all season long. But we've got two pretty significant red flags in his profile to account for: The gigantic innings jump and the injury risk inherent to that, plus the worst-in-baseball control. He's mostly pitched like an ace this season, but his future feels pretty ominous. I might not rank him in my top-40 starting pitchers for 2025, as wild as that sounds. | | Seth Lugo, Royals | | Loyal readers of the Fantasy Baseball Today Newsletter know that I've been a Lugo skeptic all year long. And, for the most part, that's been to my detriment. Even when he has faltered a bit in the second half of the season, Lugo has still provided plenty of highlights – he has a middling 3.94 ERA in 12 second-half starts, but even then, he's had seven starts out of 12 with at least seven innings of work. Lugo's 3.73 xERA for the season suggests he's not nearly as good as his actual 3.03 mark, and I do expect some significant regression. But he's been one of the true workhorses in baseball, a rare thing in today's game, and maybe his kitchen-sink approach can help him continue to outrun his peripherals – for what it's worth, his ERA was nearly a run lower than his xERA in 2023, too. I'm not really sure I buy that as an explanation, but I've been wrong about Lugo all season long, why would that stop in 2025? He's at least a top-40 SP in points leagues. | | Joe Musgrove, Padres | | When Musgrove was coming back from his elbow injury this summer, I was pretty much writing him off as a Fantasy option. He was coming back from bone spurs, and while that isn't an inherently terrifying prospect on its own, he did acknowledge that he would have to change his mechanics to pitch through the injury, and that's always a scary thing for a pitcher to have to go through. It was perfectly reasonable to suspect that the 31-year-old Musgrove would struggle in his return. | | So much for that. After 6.1 outstanding innings against the Dodgers Thursday, he now has a 2.15 ERA in nine starts since returning from the injury, with 57 strikeouts over 50.1 innings. He has, frankly, looked about as good as we've ever seen him before. Which really confuses his 2025 outlook. Because it sounds like Musgrove won't be having surgery on that elbow this offseason, which means there is probably just going to be heightened risk with his elbow – and there's already plenty of risk for every pitcher's elbow. | | On the one hand, the fact that all pitchers carry a significant amount of risk of injury means you could argue that fading someone for injury risk doesn't really make a ton of sense if, basically, everyone's baseline level is high, at some point, does it really matter that Musgrove's is a little higher? Of course, that'll all depend on how he's value heading into 2025. From a talent standpoint, I think you can argue pretty convincingly that he could be a top-24 guy. So, downgrading him to the low-end SP3 range of the rankings seems like a fair choice. Will I actually have the guts to rank Musgrove that high, coming off consecutive seasons with less than 100 innings? No, I think I'll be more comfortable with him in the 40 range. | | See that? I just talked myself into about a 15-spot drop in the rankings in the span of about 70 words. That kind of sums up Musgrove's outlook. | | | News and Notes
| | The Braves do not plan to start Chris Sale again until they're facing elimination. That means he may not pitch until Monday's scheduled doubleheader, so make sure your league is going to count that game. | | Freddie Freeman left Thursday after twisting his ankle. He was seen on crutches and in a walking boot during the Dodgers' celebration but is expected to be ready for the postseason. | | Tarik Skubal is unlikely to pitch Sunday if the Tigers have already clinched a wild card spot at that point. They're saving him for that first WC game, instead, which makes sense but does mean he likely won't have a chance to win the MLB Triple Crown – Sale actually leads in strikeouts and ERA right now. | | Clayton Kershaw will not be a viable option to pitch for a couple weeks, though he is still trying to return this year. | | Zach Neto left Thursday with right shoulder irritation after landing hard on a stolen base attempt. He won't play Friday but could return Saturday. | | The Diamondbacks reinstated Ryne Nelson from the IL. It seems like he'll be used as a multi-inning reliever, but he could be in the late-round discussion next season after a solid season. | | The Twins optioned Simeon Woods Richardson to Triple-A. | | Brendan Rodgers has missed three straight with left hamstring tightness. | | The White Sox swept the Angels, their first sweep since April. They avoid the single-season loss record for at least one more day but will need to sweep the streaming Tigers to avoid that ignominious distinction. | | Thursday's standouts | | Mitch Keller, Pirates vs. MIL: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 6 K – Keller is a pretty tough pitcher to try to figure out for 2025, too. The highs are incredibly high, but we've now got three seasons in a row with an ERA between 3.91 and 4.25, and I just don't think it makes sense to try to talk yourself into him finally finding consistency. That's not to say it can't happen or that you shouldn't draft Keller. It's just to say that you should probably just take him at face value as a late-round rotation stabilizer. A fine guy to have around, but not someone you need to push for. | | Walker Buehler, Dodgers vs. SD: 5 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 1 K – Even the rare good starts are underwhelming from Buehler now. I'm not writing off the possibility of a bounceback in 2025, but we'll need to see some evidence of it before you buy him for anything more than a late-round pick. If he comes out next spring with whatever team he signs with and is throwing 96-97 mph and getting a bunch of whiffs like Jack Flaherty did this season, we can rethink the possibility of making him a target. But he needs to actively re-earn our trust after putting up a 5.38 ERA and 1.55 ERA. | | Reese Olson , Tigers vs. TB: 4 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 3 K – It's not hard to see Olson taking a big step forward in 2025, armed as he is with two secondary pitches with a whiff rate over 40%. The problem is, has a more limited arsenal than you might think because he almost exclusively throws his sinker and slider to righties and his four-seamer, changeup, and curveball to lefties. And the whiff rate on both the changeup and slider are quite a bit lower when he has two strikes on hitters, which is why he struck out a relatively pedestrian 21.8% of opposing hitters. Again, you can see the case for him putting it all together and taking a big step forward, and the Tigers have had enough pitching development success lately that it's not a bad organization to bet on. But Olson is just a late-round sleeper, not someone you'll want to rely on for 2025. | | Kumar Rocker, Rangers @OAK: 4.2 IP, 7 H, 3 ER, 0 BB, 2 K – Rocker is another late-round sleeper for 2025, though it's not hard to see him generating a ton of buzz and moving into the middle rounds with a big spring training. He ended up with 14 strikeouts and six walks in 11.2 innings of work across his three starts, and that about sums it up, even in the small sample: He has plenty of upside, with upper-90s velocity and that killer slider, but he's also far from a finished product. That's not a surprise, given his lack of professional experience and injury history. He could make a big impact for 2025 if he throws strikes more consistently, but he also could be a bad spring away from a trip back to Triple-A. His draft value will definitely hinge on how his spring goes. | | Aaron Civale, Brewers @PIT: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K – Civale ended up with a 3.53 ERA and 1.22 WHIP in 14 starts with the Brewers, and I know there are plenty of people who have been waiting for a Civale breakout who might be excited about that. But it came with a middling strikeout rate and more homers than you want. I can see Civale being useful for Fantasy, but I tend to avoid low-upside options like him in the later rounds. I'd certainly rather be throwing darts at guys like Olson or Rocker with more projectable ceilings because what Civale does, even at his best, always feels pretty replaceable by streaming. | | | | | | | | NFL | | Big Ten | Quarterbacks headline a CBS Sports Sunday of NFL week 4. Watch your local game live this Sunday at 1 ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
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