Leandre: Top 30 starting pitchers entering 2024; 30-21
With pitchers and catchers set to report in the coming week-plus, it's time to start ranking players entering 2024.
Ah, Spring Training — a fresh start for everyone. Whether fans are optimistic or pessimistic about the outlook of the season, it’s a time of year when everyone is the same distance from the ultimate goal of winning the World Series.
As the adage goes, however, good baseball starts and ends with pitching. While the World Series representatives — the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks — both finished outside the top 15 in ERA, without heroic pitching performances from their one-two punches, neither team would’ve made it to the end.
Entering 2024, who are the best of the best?
Disclaimer: Starters with no prior MLB experience — Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shöta Imanaga — are not going to be ranked. Neither are starters expected to miss 2024: Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs, Brandon Woodruff and Shohei Ohtani.
30. RHP Logan Gilbert — Seattle Mariners
Gilbert is one of my personal favorites in the game right now. However, he hasn’t quite put it all together.
That said, he’s one of the better run-preventers in the game — 16th in ERA and 18th in FIP since 2022.
The next step for him is keeping the ball in the ballpark, which ultimately is keeping him from ranking higher on this list than No. 30. To me, he doesn’t generate enough strikeouts to mitigate being bottom-10 among qualifiers in homers-per-nine the past two seasons.
With that in mind, he throws strikes, has an ever-improving ground ball rate and pitches in a ballpark that allows him to sustain a good ERA despite a higher fly ball rate than grounder rate for his career.
29. RHP Freddy Peralta — Milwaukee Brewers
The 2023 season was the first that Peralta reached 30 starts. Not only that, but he posted a career-best 94.4 mph average fastball velocity.
Similar to Gilbert, he had a problem keeping the ball in the yard. Historically, however, he’s maintained a sub-one homer-per-nine clip in four of his first five seasons.
Unlike Gilbert, Peralta is one of the best strikeout artists in the league — so he’s maintained generally elite expected run prevention metrics and elite-to-very good peripherals despite not being proficient at avoiding Ball 4.
If Peralta ended up skyrocketing this list during the season, I would not be shocked in the slightest.
28. RHP Aaron Nola — Philadelphia Phillies
Nola’s ranking may come as a surprise to some, but it’s important to reiterate that a few impressive postseason outings aren’t enough to completely negate an ERA over 4.4 in two of the past three seasons.
I like Nola a lot, and I think ranking him in the top 30 despite the high ERAs reflects that liking.
The red flags with Nola are as follows, however: his fastball velocity has ticked down each of the past two seasons, as has his strikeout rate. Moreover, his walks crept up in 2023 to couple with a career-worst homers-per-nine.
That being said, he still finished 14th among qualifiers with a 3.77 xERA in 2023 and tied for 14th in xFIP. He just also happened to rank 35th in ERA and 29th in FIP.
Given my perception that he’s on a downward swing, I’m more inclined to rank him closer to where he was on the latter two metrics entering his age-30 season.
27. RHP Tanner Bibee — Cleveland Guardians
Bibee emerged as a Rookie of the Year candidate and potential frontline starting pitcher last season.
In 25 starts, he posted a 2.98 ERA (tied for fifth, minimum of 140 innings), a 3.52 FIP (15th) and a 3.66 xERA (tied for 12th).
Quite frankly, the main thing keeping Bibee from ranking higher is a sheer lack of volume and the pedigree it comes with.
26. LHP Carlos Rodón — New York Yankees
I know Rodón was horrible and injured in 2023, but one bad season can’t completely negate two years he was arguably the most dominant arm in the game.
Consider the No. 26 ranking a courtesy one for the southpaw, who will enter Year 2 of a six-year contract with the Yankees — who will need every bit of the 2022 version of Rodón he has left in the tank to bounce back from an 82-80 campaign.
The good news is the 31-year-old didn’t lose anything velocity-wise and his walks, though elevated, weren’t so excessive. With a normal offseason, he should return to a form at least in the neighborhood of this No. 26 ranking, if not much higher.
25. RHP Shane Bieber — Cleveland Guardians
Bieber isn’t the same pitcher he was from 2019 to 2021, but he’s reinvented himself in a way to remain a quality arm.
Injuries interrupted what looked to be a great season through June (3.43 ERA), but he still lives in the strike zone (65.4% strike rate) and has increased his grounder rate to alleviate the pressure on him now that he’s not racking up punchouts.
Maybe he should be flipped with Bibee but, as I mentioned before, there’s a level of pedigree that comes with volume. Bieber has it, Bibee doesn’t. While it wouldn’t shock me if the reigning Rookie of the Year runner-up was better than the 2020 AL Cy Young, for now, they’re ranked as such.
24. RHP Bobby Miller — Los Angeles Dodgers
I was highly impressed with Miller in his rookie campaign. While his postseason start went about as horribly as a postseason debut can go, that doesn’t erase the campaign he had that helped get the Dodgers to the dance.
In short, he was ridiculous.
To elaborate, he was in the 87th percentile in pitching run value, 98th percentile for average fastball velocity, 80th percentile for walk rate and 81st percentile for expected ERA.
For me, being in command of the strike zone like that at a young age is extra impressive. I envision an even better sophomore campaign for Miller in 2024.
23. LHP Jesús Luzardo — Miami Marlins
When I initially ranked starters, I thought Luzardo would end up much higher. However, the reason he ended up *only* 23rd is because 2023 was his only season making the full 32 starts.
He’s a stud, though. Similar to Peralta, I wouldn’t be shocked to see him skyrocket these rankings in 2024 with another elite campaign.
Perhaps unfairly, I just need to see that he can sustain it for another season of at least 25 starts before he can pop into the top 20 or better.
In 2023, he ranked seventh in strikeout rate, eighth in strikeout-to-walk rate and 11th in SIERA. He was truly worth the few weeks of Starling Marte it took Miami to acquire him from the Oakland Athletics in 2020.
22. LHP Jordan Montgomery — Free Agent
Montgomery is the Tampa Bay Rays personified in the sense that he’s an analytical anomaly.
Other than being proficient at avoiding walks, nothing jumps off the page at you when you look at his chase and whiff metrics as well as his batted ball data. He’s pretty ordinary in that regard, sometimes less than.
And yet, his ERA has gone from 3.83 in 2021 to 3.48 in 2022 to 3.20 in 2023. He even won a World Series with the Rangers after posting a 2.79 ERA in 11 regular season starts, then a 2.90 ERA in 31 postseason innings.
He’s a very good pitcher; just gets outs and does what it takes to keep his opponent off the scoreboard. Amazingly, he’s still a free agent as we close in on pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training.
21. RHP Corbin Burnes — Baltimore Orioles
The newest Baltimore Oriole rounds out Part 1 of the top 30 starting pitchers.
I’m sure the No. 21 slot for Burnes might shock some, as he’s just two seasons removed from winning the National League Cy Young.
However, similar to what I said about Nola, Burnes has regressed each season since.
While it’s admittedly hard to sustain the level of production Burnes put out in 2021, his K-BB rate has dropped over 13% since then. While he’s still elite at limiting hard contact and couples that with an above-average grounder rate, the regression from a strikeout and walk standpoint makes it hard to foresee him being a Cy Young candidate in the gauntlet that is the American League East.
He’s still exceptional, however, ranking 14th in ERA, tied for 20th in FIP and 22nd in xFIP in 2023.
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