With some time to kill between our pre-spring training power rankings and those coming immediately before Opening Day, here at Power Rankings Central, we’re running through a series of top 10s. First up, last week, was the top 10 offenses in baseball, so the natural progression of that is to rank the top 10 starting rotations.
We already got a jumpstart on the homework for this project by running through potential aces vs. mere “No. 1” starters last week. And those absolutely matter. I don’t think you could be considered one of baseball’s very best rotations without an ace. A collection of 2s and 3s are nice, but sometimes a team needs an ace-like starter to go out and shove for seven or more innings and will his team to victory.
It isn’t just an accounting of aces and other frontline starters here, though, as depth matters some as well. We’re talking about the best rotations and you can’t really get there with one ace and a bunch of Triple-A-caliber starters. It’s a combination of high-level arms and depth.
Let’s get to it, counting backward from 10.
Honorable mention: Astros, Royals, Twins, Reds, Padres
Paul Skenes does some heavy lifting here, but it’s well established what a difference a dynamic ace like Skenes can make in elevating a rotation into the upper echelon of the league. He only threw 133 innings after getting called up last season, but the Pirates won 15 of his 23 starts and he was worth 5.9 WAR. Between the minors and majors in the regular season, he threw more than 160 innings, so he could easily work up around 180 this year. He’s a big, strong dude and there’s no doubt in mind he can handle that workload just fine. He’s a huge plus here, which helps offset some of the depth concerns.
They can’t achieve this ranking with only Skenes though. The potential of Jared Jones gives a nice boost. The former second-round draft pick had a nice rookie season last year (4.14 ERA, 132 K in 121 ⅔ IP) and I’m expecting him to be a quality No. 2 this season. Mitch Keller is capable of being one of the better No. 3 starters in baseball. Lefty Andrew Heaney makes for a fine four, too.
Another ace-heavy squad here, but there’s an argument to be made that Tarik Skubal will be the single best pitcher in baseball this season. The Tigers went 21-10 when he started last season and 65-66 when he didn’t. That alone should be a nice illustration of how a true ace can lift an otherwise .500ish team into the second round of the playoffs.
Jack Flaherty is back for another round and likely this time for the whole season. He’s a quality second starter behind Skubal. Reese Olson is next and he’s actually a pretty nice mid-rotation starter. A shoulder injury cost him a good portion of last season but he pitched to a 3.30 ERA in 101 innings before the All-Star break. A breakout season in his third year is now on the table. Former No. 1 overall pick Casey Mize is next in his second season removed from Tommy John surgery, so the expectation should be returning to 2021 form, when he posted 3.3 WAR.
And then there’s Jackson Jobe, the sixth-best prospect in baseball. He likely won’t be in the rotation all season, as the Tigers will limit his innings, but he’s an X-factor.
The return of Jacob deGrom is a huge deal. He came back from Tommy John surgery to make three starts late last season and looked pretty much like, well, himself. He struck out 14 against one walk in 10 ⅔ innings with a 1.69 ERA. Now, I’m well aware he hasn’t had a season without a stint on the injured list since 2020 and that means he hasn’t had a full season since 2019, but I’m expecting a lot of deGrom this year and that’s a big boost for the Rangers in this exercise.
Tyler Mahle is capable of a very good season and he’s also returning from Tommy John surgery. Nathan Eovaldi was an All-Star in 2021 and 2023 and he’s back at age 35. Consistency is an issue with Jon Gray, but he’s fine at the back-end of a rotation.
The veterans are balanced with some young blood. Injury held Cody Bradford back last year, but in 76 ⅓ innings, he posted a 3.54 ERA (112 ERA+), 1.01 WHIP and struck out 70. A breakout year looks to be on tap in 2025. Then there’s Kumar Rocker, the Rangers’ No. 3 prospect. He was generally good in his three starts late last season and has decent upside.
There’s a lot of variance with this group in that it’s entirely possible it topples like a house of cards. It could also be a top-five bunch. I love the upside.
The chances they end up better than this ranking are higher than the chances they drop. There’s a lot of upside here.
Returning rotation members Tanner Houck (3.12 ERA, 137 ERA+), Brayan Bello (4.49 ERA, 95 ERA+) and Kutter Crawford (4.36 ERA, 98 ERA+) were part of a group that overachieved last season. Houck grew into an All-Star and frontline starter. Bello was much better in 2023 and he’s still only 25.
Added to the group now are Garrett Crochet (via trade), Walker Buehler (free agency) and Lucas Giolito (Tommy John surgery last March).
Crochet threw like an ace in the first half last season and his only real concern is workload. Buehler was a frontline starter, finishing as high as fourth in Cy Young voting, from 2018-21. He returned from Tommy John surgery last year and wasn’t very good overall. In fact, he was terrible. He had a -1.3 WAR and 5.38 ERA (72 ERA+) in the regular season. He finished the playoffs with 13 straight scoreless innings, though, winning Game 3 of the World Series and saving the clinching Game 5. He’s still only 30 years old, so there’s a decent level of hope that he’ll be back to his old self this year. Giolito is also 30 and has three very good seasons as a starter under his belt.
It would be aggressive to say the Red Sox have four aces in Crochet, Houck, Buehler and Giolito, but it’s possible they have four frontline guys with Bello and Crawford as perfectly capable back-end guys. I’m bullish on this group.
Two years ago, the Diamondbacks made the World Series on the strength of two frontline starters and a rookie who was thrown into the fire. Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly and Brandon Pfaadt are still around and though Kelly is hitting his decline, Pfaadt will continue to improve. Gallen falls in as the No. 2 starter here now, though, as ace Corbin Burnes was signed in the offseason.
Eduardo Rodríguez enters his second year with the D-backs after a disaster of a first season. He was injured and then had an ERA over 5 for his 10 starts. He was 13-9 with a 3.30 ERA in over 150 innings in 2023 and it’s reasonable to believe he could get back into that range. If he does, the Diamondbacks line up nicely with Burnes-Gallen-Kelly-Pfaadt-Rodríguez. And while I’m sure they’ll continue to try and trade Jordan Montgomery, it isn’t totally off the table that he has a bounce-back season as well.
There are potential pratfalls, as with most rotations, but the D-backs starting pitcher looks very strong heading into 2025.
Projection systems like the Braves as the third-best rotation or even second-best by WAR, but the question marks here are enough to drop them a few spots for me. Just a few, though.
Chris Sale won the Cy Young last year at age 35 in his first full season since 2019. Now at age 36 with so much mileage on that arm, will he hold up again? It was a big leap in workload from 2023 to 2024.
Reynaldo López was an ace last year when he pitched (1.99 ERA in 135 ⅔ innings) but didn’t last the whole season and the rest of his career shows a track record of being an inconsistent — or bad — starter. What happens this time around?
Spencer Strider could be on level with pitchers we’ve mentioned above like Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, but he’s coming off internal brace surgery and unlike pitchers mentioned above such as Mahle and deGrom, Strider’s actually came during the season last year, so his 2025 season will be significantly impacted. He’ll start the season on the injured list.
Spencer Schwellenbach was very good last season as a rookie in his 123 ⅔ innings. How will his sophomore campaign go and how will his workload hold up?
Then you get to the likes of AJ Smith-Shawver, Bryce Elder, Dylan Dodd, Grant Holmes and Ian Anderson.
This could well end up the best rotation in baseball, but there are questions all over the place. They are more reliable than the Rangers, to name another high-variance team, but we can’t ignore that there are questions.
The Yankees were 11th in rotation ERA last season and that was with Gerrit Cole missing several months and then being compromised. They’ve since added Max Fried and the hope is, surely, to get a full season out of Clarke Schmidt. That means the Yankees are looking to replace 59 starts of Nestor Cortes (3.77 ERA, 109 ERA+) and possibly Marcus Stroman (4.31 ERA, 95 ERA+) with Fried and more starts from Cole and Schmidt (2.85 ERA, 145 ERA+). That’s a boost.
Remember, Cole had a 2.20 ERA in his last 10 starts and was ace-caliber in the playoffs until the defense (including his own) imploded in one specific inning. Fried was an All-Star for the third time in 2024 and has been the ace of a World Series champion.
The mercurial Carlos Rodón and 2024 AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil round out the rotation. At least for now, Stroman is around if they need the depth.
The Mariners were third in rotation WAR and first in ERA last season. They return the group intact: Logan Gilbert (3.23 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 208 ⅔ IP), George Kirby (3.53 ERA, 1.07 WHIP in 191 IP), Luis Castillo (3.64 ERA, 1.17 WHIP), Bryce Miller (2.94 ERA, 0.98 WHIP) and Bryan Woo (2.89 ERA, 0.90 WHIP). Youngster Emerson Hancock is the sixth starter and has pretty nice upside given that he’s a depth piece.
So why aren’t the Mariners No. 1? Well, much like the Rockies‘ offensive numbers at home can skew a bit, T-Mobile Park is so extreme in being pitcher-friendly that it boost the Mariners’ pitcher numbers. ERA+ adjusts for ballpark and then compares it to the league average. The five starters, respectively, posted the following ERA+ last year: Gilbert 113, Kirby 104, Castillo 101, Miller 125 and Woo 127.
Still great, obviously, which is why I have them third. It just doesn’t knock you over the way the raw ERA numbers might appear to.
An “ace” is somewhat in the eye of the beholder and I have spoken with at least one very intelligent baseball mind who said he’d call Zack Wheeler the only true ace in baseball right now. That’s a leg up. Aaron Nola has three top-seven finishes in Cy Young voting and was very good last season. Cristopher Sánchez and Ranger Suárez were both All-Star starters last season and have looked the part of aces for stretches. That leaves offseason trade acquisition Jesús Luzardo, who has long been thought to have ace-caliber stuff. He’s 27 and it hasn’t happened in a full season yet, but he’s also the No. 5 starter for the Phillies. In 2022-23 combined, he had a 3.48 ERA (129 ERA+) in 50 starts, so he’s fully capable of throwing like a mid-rotation starter or even a frontline one. And, again, he’s the five. Should they need a six, the inconsistent Taijuan Walker is still around and he’s awfully talented for a sixth option.
That’s right, sports fans, the team with the best offense also has the best rotation. It has no surefire aces, but one could reasonably argue that Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow will all be aces this year. This doesn’t even mention the ace potential of Roki Sasaki and/or the returning-to-mound Shohei Ohtani. Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May are returning from major surgery and have shown All-Star upside in the past. Oh, and Clayton Kershaw is back. And Bobby Miller is very talented. There’s an absurd amount of top-shelf talent here along with depth.
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