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Every pitcher is hard to rank. We've been doing this "toughest players to rank at every position" series over the past week or so to close out the season at the FBT Newsletter, and it's been relatively easy to whittle the list down to a fairly manageable five (or so) names for every position, even outfield. 

But at starting pitcher, it's basically impossible. Pitcher talent fluctuates a ton – guys just get way better or way worse seemingly overnight because they have a new grip for a pitch or because they lowered their arm slot by a few degrees. And if that's all it was, it'd be tough enough to project pitchers. But there's the injury risk on top of the inherent volatility. And then there's the fact that pitchers are way more dependent on their teammates doing their job to succeed than any other position. 

I've got seven names here in the "toughest players to rank" discussion for starting pitcher, but it's an inherently incomplete list. I didn't mention Bryan Woo, coming off a breakout season, but with injury questions in his very recent past. There's Spencer Schwellenbach, who looked like a top-10 pitcher before an elbow injury that has his long-term outlook cloudy. Cole Ragans (shoulder injury), Nick Pivetta (lack of track record), Dylan Cease (total lack of consistency), Robbie Ray (late-season collapse), Chase Burns (huge upside, limited track record) … and on and on. 

One thing I will say from my initial attempt to put together rankings for 2026 – which will be sent to your inbox Monday morning after the end of the season – is that this position still has plenty of depth. There are pitchers I really like who aren't in the top-30 right now; they are pitchers I think have plenty of upside who won't even be top-50 options. There are few sure things at pitcher, but there's still a lot to like here.

Here are the toughest pitchers to rank for 2026 before I unveil my very first, rough-draft rankings for the season next week: -- and in case you missed it, here are the toughest players to rank at catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, and outfield from the past week: 

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Zack Wheeler, Phillies

His official timeline to return from Thoracic Outlet surgery could see him back in action by Opening Day if he hits the absolute best-case scenario outcome. But you probably shouldn't bet on the absolute best-case scenario outcome when it comes to a serious procedure like this, especially not when we're talking about a 35-year-old. Even if he is back in six months and pitches in Spring Training, can you bet on him being himself?

Of course, can you truly write off the possibility that he might? Unlikely as it is, if you could get Wheeler at a discount only for him to pitch more or less like himself, that could be one of the best picks anyone makes next season. When healthy, he was arguably the best pitcher in Fantasy, and while I don't think he's likely to be that in 2025, I can't say for certain he won't. 

But I also can't say for certain he'll even pitch at all next season. That's not the likeliest outcome either, but setbacks happen. The range of outcomes here is unbelievably wide, and it's basically impossible to say which is most likely. So … I dunno, SP40, I guess? 

Hunter Greene, Reds

I wrote about Greene a few weeks ago, and all he's done since then is continue to dominate. He's going to finish the season with his best strikeout and walk rates ever, and while the sample size isn't huge (just 101.2 innings as of publication), he has largely built on the gains he made in his breakout 2024 campaign. I have very few concerns about the talent at this point. 

And if you want to be injury-agnostic, you could make a case for Greene as a top-five pitcher in Fantasy. If everyone has injury risk, you might as well just take the most talented players? I'm sympathetic to that argument when it comes to position players like Yordan Alvarez; it's a lot harder to make that case for pitchers, especially ones who throw 100 mph as often as Greene does. And especially when those pitchers have been on the IL as often as Greene has. Here's every IL stint he has had in his MLB career:

  • 2022-08-05 - placed on 15-day IL with strained right shoulder
  • 2023-06-19 - placed on 15-day IL with pain in right hip
  • 2023-09-01 - placed on 10-day IL with COVID-19 (positive test)
  • 2024-08-17 - placed on 15-day IL with sore right elbow
  • 2025-05-09 - placed on 15-day IL with strained right groin
  • 2025-06-04 - placed on 15-day IL with strained right groin

I actually don't have too much concern about this year's injuries moving forward, though the fact that they recurred on multiple different occasions can't be totally overlooked. But it's the arm injuries that worry me, and that list doesn't even include the Tommy John surgery he had before making the majors. 

Greene is an ace when he's on the mound. He keeps runs off the board, he has a sub-1.00 WHIP, and he goes deep into games while racking up big strikeout totals. But he has only topped 150 innings once in nine seasons as a professional, and even that season included an IL trip for elbow soreness. He could be worth drafting as a top-12 SP even if he just throws 150 innings, but is that really a bet worth making? Well, I'm not even close to being ready to finalize my pitcher rankings yet, but my very first run through it finished with Greene as my SP10. I don't feel good about it. 

Framber Valdez, Astros

Valdez has been one of my favorite pitchers to draft in recent years as a nice high-floor rotation stabilizer. Having someone you can count on for 180 good innings makes it a lot easier to take the kind of risks you need to for a good pitching staff. But I'm not sure how much you can trust him to be that stabilizing presence at this point. 

His 3.75 ERA this season is his worst since 2019, when he was first establishing himself in the majors, and while the underlying numbers are mostly better, I'm skeptical. We're talking about a guy who turns 32 in just over two months and saw his strikeout rate and walk rate both move in the wrong direction for the second season in a row, with Valdez especially struggling in the second half. 

Oh, and he's a free agent. Houston isn't necessarily a great place to pitch, but a potential change of scenery just introduces some inherent uncertainty that you have to account for. And in Valdez's situation specifically, comfort seems like a big part of what makes him successful. He might just return to the Astros, but they've been happy to let their big-name free agents walk in recent years, and giving Valdez a long-term deal might be inviting a level of risk they aren't willing to take on. 

If there were a path to a sub-3.00 ERA and 200-plus strikeouts, I might be willing to overlook some of the risk here, but I don't really see that. I'm thinking he might be outside of the top-24 at SP. 

Blake Snell, Dodgers

Let's take a look at Blake Snell's ADP over the past five seasons in NFBC drafts: 

  • 2025: 52.94
  • 2024: 70.95
  • 2023: 115.51
  • 2022: 117.40
  • 2021: 46.19

I know there's been a lot of fluctuation in his performance, but this does not strike me as an especially rational marketplace. Snell threw 76 fewer innings in 2024 than he had in 2023, with a higher ERA (though a lower WHIP, at least!), and saw his price rise by multiple rounds. Is his price going to rise yet again in 2026? Unlikely, but who can say? 

In all likelihood, his price is going to go down in 2026, even if the fundamentals haven't changed much. He had a shoulder injury that will end up limiting him to just 11 starts this season, and that's a decent red flag. But he also has just two seasons out of 10 in the majors with even 130 innings, so he's never been a particularly good bet for volume. He's a frustrating pitcher whose numbers generally end up being pretty helpful, but you need to know going into drafting him what your personal level of risk tolerance is. 

I have trouble justifying an early-round pick on a player with as rocky a track record as Snell, especially now that he's staring down his mid-30s. But if his price does start to dip to around 100 overall, I might be willing to talk myself into it. 

Nolan McLean, Mets

Any pitcher with a small sample size and obvious talent is going to be tough to rank, but McLean stands out for just how stark his success has been. He was viewed as a good prospect before his MLB debut, but not necessarily a superstar – FanGraphs.com had him ranked 53rd in their mid-season update, while BaseballProspectus.com had him 34th among players who had yet to debut in the majors. He had a terrific breakout campaign in the minors, putting up a 2.45 ERA in 113.2 innings as a 23-year-old across Double-A and Triple-A, but he also struggled with control and had a 3.98 FIP in Triple-A, especially. 

But he's pitched like an ace so far, with a 1.27 ERA in his first seven starts. The peripherals aren't quite that good, but they're still pretty terrific, ranging from a 3.32 xERA to a 2.42 FIP. Those control problems have largely disappeared, and he has emerged as one of the best groundball pitchers in the game, with more than enough swing-and-miss in his six-pitch mix. 

So, here's the question: How much of his strike-throwing issues in the minors were the result of being more focused on process than results, developing individual pitches in specific circumstances he wouldn't necessarily use them in if the only concern was the bottom line? It's an interesting theory, and McLean wouldn't be the first pitcher to seemingly level up against a higher level of competition. 

Taken at face value, McLean looks like a burgeoning ace, someone you could justify ranking as a top-24 SP. I won't rank him that high, but I'm trying to find a place for him in my top 36, at least. 

Trevor Rogers, Orioles 

Rogers' stuff has bounced back, but not all the way back to where it was back in 2021. That hasn't mattered amid his resurgence, which has been fueled by some of the best command of any pitcher in baseball in the second half of the season. Did Rogers' years spent lost in the wilderness make him a better pitcher as he came out of it? That's possible, though Rogers really doesn't have a track record of throwing a lot of strikes and limiting damage on contact the way he has been this season, and those are skills that can tend to fluctuate more from one year to the next. 

But here's where I'm really getting tripped up: Even the Orioles had no idea he was going to be anywhere near this good. Their season was already effectively gone by the time they called Rogers up for a spot start in late May, but even after he tossed 6.2 shutout innings against the Red Sox, they sent him back down to Triple-A. And they didn't call him up again for three more weeks. And it's hard to blame them when Rogers made 11 starts between 2024 and 2025 at Triple-A with a 5.37 ERA. I'm not saying the Orioles not calling him up necessarily means his season is a fluke – I'm on the record about what a bad job I think Mike Elias has done this season – but it does give me pause. 

Ranking Rogers just 36th at SP for 2026 feels wrong given how good he's been, but I don't have the stomach for ranking him much higher than that. 

Cade Horton, Cubs 

It's kind of the same thing as Rogers, to a certain extent. Horton obviously isn't as good as his 1.36 ERA since the start of July. That goes without saying, I think, but it's especially worth saying in this instance because Horton has a 4.8% HR/FB rate and .214 BABIP, making his success especially unsustainable.

But the skepticism around Horton isn't just because of his performance. It's also because of his lengthy injury history. A lot of Fantasy players (and, frankly, analysts) make the mistake of treating injuries suffered before a player makes it to the majors as less worrisome than the ones we've actually seen and lived through firsthand, but that's obviously not how it works. Horton threw just 34.1 innings in 2024 while dealing with shoulder injuries, and he also had Tommy John surgery in college. His 147 innings in 2025 are more than 110 more than his previous season, but it's also 60 more than any other season.

Maybe Horton has just turned the corner and those issues are behind him, but that's a pretty big assumption to make. Given the massive jump in innings and lack of track record of staying healthy overall, Horton looks like a pretty significant injury risk for 2026, which would make it tough to buy in even without the performance concerns. As is, I don't think he'll even be a top-40 SP for me. I'm not sure he'll be top 50, even. 

And now here's what you need to know from Wednesday's games around MLB:

Wednesday's standouts

Jacob deGrom, Rangers vs. MIN: 5 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 8 K 

That's it for deGrom, and what a bounce-back season it was. He's not quite as good as he used to be, but he finishes with a 2.97 ERA over 172.2 innings, his highest total since 2019. It was a big win for anyone who took the flier on him before the season, though it does appear as if the upside here isn't quite as high as it used to be. The key question becomes, is the risk still significantly higher for deGrom in 2026 than for most pitchers? I'm ranking him as a top-12 starter, so I'm mostly willing to take on whatever risk is there. 

Jesus Luzardo, Phillies vs. MIA: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 K

Okay, I usually don't like doing the "if you take away a pitcher's worst starts" thing. You're almost always better off just looking at the whole track record, rather than trying to figure out which starts "don't count." But in Luzardo's case, he had a two-start stretch where he gave up 20 runs, which ultimately accounted for one-quarter of the runs he gave up on the season. Take just those two consecutive starts out, and he had a 3.03 ERA, which matches with his 3.01 FIP and is in line with his 3.45 xERA. I don't think you should draft Luzardo expecting a 3.00 ERA next season, but I do think you can expect better than his actual 3.92 mark. With his strikeout upside and the Phillies offense backing him up, Luzardo probably needs to be viewed as a top-24 SP in 2026. 

Tanner Bibee, Guardians vs. DET: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K 

The past few starts haven't totally changed my perspective on Bibee, but they have made me much more open to drafting him in 2026. He made some tweaks in September, most notably throwing his cutter significantly harder, and it has turned into 23 strikeouts to four walks in his final 21 innings of the season with just two runs allowed. Bibee looked like he might not even be worth drafting after a disastrous August that pushed his season-long ERA up to 4.77, but the adjustments he made late should at least be enough to get him back on the late-round radar. 

Jonah Tong, Mets @CHC: 2 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 1 K

I still have hope for Tong. He was the best pitcher in the minors this season, and I'm not willing to throw that away because of five bad starts at the beginning of his MLB career. But they have been truly terrible starts, with significantly fewer missed bats than we expected. He might just need more time to cook in the minors – he made just two starts at Triple-A before the Mets' rotation issues forced him up – but if he's in the Opening Day rotation in 2026, he'll still be a viable sleeper. I think the biggest issue here has been command, not stuff – he's just leaving way too many fastballs and changeups in the middle of the zone. If he can push those toward the top and bottom of the zone, respectively, he'll have a much better chance of succeeding. I'm buying the talent in the long run. 

Taj Bradley, Twins @TEX: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K

Bradley is another pitcher who might have pitched his way back onto late-round radars. When it comes to those later rounds, you go in with the understanding that you're making low-probability bets on upside, so the potential for things to go wrong shouldn't really factor into the decision-making process. Bradley's poor command has limited his utility so far in his MLB career, but the stuff has always been good enough. If the Twins figure out a way to unlock some more consistency, he could still be a very useful Fantasy option. I wouldn't bet on it, because I'm not really a believer in Bradley's. But I'll throw him on that late-round sleeper pile for 2026, now.