The List 5/21: Ranking The Top 100 Starting Pitchers Every Monday

[pitcher_list list_id=”20307″ season=”2018″ include_stats=”1″]

Welcome to The List – The weekly top 100 rankings of starting pitchers in fantasy baseball for the rest of the season. Use this list to help make choices on the waiver wire and as a tool to gauge trade value in your fantasy leagues. These rankings are made with 5×5 H2H standard 12-team leagues in mind.

Let’s talk about how the SP landscape has changed since last week:

• Some small shifts in the teens with Carlos Carrasco taking a small dip as other arms are performing better and more consistently. Meanwhile, the Carlos Martinez injury looks a little more severe + he was due for plenty of regression without the massive K rate, forcing me to drop him a little.
• Charlie Morton, Shohei Ohtani, and Lance McCullers are major injury risks, however their performances justify a lofty rank despite it. If you can cash out at this price, I’m all for it, but given the dearth of quality options starting near the #20 mark, I’m forced to rank them highly.
• Sean Manaea and Dallas Keuchel take a bit of a stumble as their relatively low strikeout rates aren’t being supported by strong ratio performances. I think better days are to come for both, but they deserve less love at the moment.
• I heavily regret dropping Nick Pivetta as much as I did last week and have reinstated him in the mid-40s. Won’t happen again, I promise.
• I’m loving what I’m seeing from Andrew Heaney and Michael Wacha. Heaney has looked stellar across the board while Wacha is holding a 2.06 ERA across his last six starts.
• A lot of people will react strongly to the -12 drop for Eduardo Rodriguez despite having a fantastic outing last night. I admit that I was ranking him a bit too high without considering his massive injury risk given the consistency of his knee injuries. I’ve baked in risk among plenty other “injury prone” players and needed to do so with Erod as well. Still love him, don’t worry.
• Don’t look at the big red number for Walker Buehler and think I view him any differently. The players in front of him are simply more stable to provide for a longer amount of time through the year and I should adjust my season-long expectations slightly.
• The Spice Girls had plenty of adjustments this week. Nick Kingham and Freddy Peralta were each sent back down, forcing Peralta to leave The List, though I believe in Kingham more and believe he’s one of the better stashes around. Mike Soroka takes a hit as he hit the DL. He should pitch this week, but there is a little more haze to his status, despite being one of my favorites of the lot.
• Joining The List this week are Jordan Lyles (upside play but most likely not going to work out), Matt Boyd (On a roll that is probably not sustainable), Jake Odorizzi (best fastball I’ve seen from him!), Ross Stripling (Not a bad add as the Dodgers are hurting), and…
• …Ervin Santana was added to the designated “DL stashes” at the end of The List as he’s a few weeks away from returning. Remember, this isn’t a direct ranking, but a list of notable DL plays, as Robbie Ray would be slotted around the middle of The List in most leagues.