Fantasy Baseball Today - Top-12 Starting Pitchers for 2026! (11/19 Fantasy Baseball podcast)
Episode Date: November 19, 2025Why is Chris Sale ranked as the SP4 for next season? Will we pay the price to draft Cristopher Sanchez and Bryan Woo? Hunter Brown over Hunter Greene in 2026? Subscribe to our YouTube channel: �...��youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CPTowers @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Way too early. Starting pitcher rankings for 2026.
Up next on Fantasy Baseball Today Express.
Welcome in to FBT Express on Wednesday, November 19.
I am, for example, joined by Scott White,
and let's take a look at Scott's starting pitcher rankings for 2026.
We'll take a look at the top 12 and start off with the big three, Scott.
We have Terrick Scoobel, Garrett Crochet, Paul Skeen.
These three have kind of separated themselves.
They are a clear tier above, I think, the rest of the starting pitchers that we're going to go get to the rest of today.
Garrett Crochet, I'll ask you about him.
Obviously, big breakout season, first year with the Boston Red Sox.
Any concern over the innings jump from 146 in 2024 all the way up over 200 here in 2025?
The concern isn't zero.
There is some concern over that.
but on the list of concerns I could have about pitchers that I might put here instead,
that I might wait to draft on instead.
It's pretty low.
It's pretty low.
For me, innings, these days I'm more concerned, the reason I stress about innings is can they get there?
Can they take on the ace workload?
Will their teams let them take on the ace workload?
Are they forever going to be restricted to a level that makes them less than an ace?
well, we've now seen that that Crochet can give us 200 plus innings that the Red Sox will let him.
And so now we bet on him staying healthy.
And that's all you can do with any pitcher.
There are no guarantees in terms of staying healthy.
I think Crochet has a case to be the number one starting pitcher in fantasy, not just number two.
But Scoobel's done it two years in a row and Crochet just has the one where he's given us an ace result.
So I give Scoobled the edge, but they're 1 in 1A.
And Skeen's being third.
I mean, he's right there too.
It's a clear top three, like you said.
And I would say that this year more than, I don't remember the last year.
It's been a few years since I've been willing to actually pay the premium for an elite starting pitcher in the first second round range.
I would for any of these three guys right at the one two turn.
All right.
Four through six, you have Chris Sale, Yoshinobu, Yamamoto, and.
Logan Gilbert, one of the biggest questions this offseason has been,
who will be the SP4 drafted? It feels like there's a big tier of options here to be that
SP4. You landed on Chris Sale. How did you get there?
I got there because I think he is the most likely to hang with the top three in terms of
output. In fact, he seemed on a good trajectory to pick up a second consecutive Cy Young Award
before his ill-fated decision to dive for a ground ball and fractures rib.
That cost him so much time.
But he was pitching like an ace before then.
He was pitching like an ace after he returned.
Five of his final six starts exactly nine strikeouts.
So performance-wise, no concerns here about sale.
It's just a matter of staying healthy, which, again, is a concern for every pitcher.
I feel worse.
If it was an arm injury, he suffered, it was a fractured rib.
So I think that's fine.
Yamamoto is probably going to be the chalk pick here at a number of,
number four after a historic postseason performance.
But I don't think game to game, the outcomes are as high as sale.
And I don't think the innings upside is as high as sale.
For all of sales injury concerns, Yamamoto is probably going to be in a six-man rotation
with Otani there.
And it's going to be a stretch to get him to 180 innings.
All right, let's take a quick break.
We'll be back right after this.
Welcome back in FBT Express.
We are taking a look at Scott's top 12 starting pitchers for next season.
7, 8, and 9 you have Christopher Sanchez, Brian Wu, and Max Fried.
I'm going to ask you a bit of a philosophical question for two of these names
because I know that I've struggled with it.
Sanchez and Brian Wu, two names that moved up a lot based on where they were drafted last year, right?
It was both of these guys going outside of the top 100 in ADP.
outside of the top 125, are you actually now willing to invest
if you have to use a top 40, a top 50 overall price tag
for one of Sanchez or Brian Wu as your SP1 for next season?
Yeah, if they last that long, then I think that's fine.
There is a period in the draft
where I'm not going to pursue a starting pitcher at all.
Like I said, I'd take the top three at the round one, two turn.
But then I'm probably not looking at starting pitcher
again until round four at the early.
earliest. So anyone who last to round four is on the table for me. I put these guys in the same
tiers like Chris Sale, who's my fourth ranked starting pitcher, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto. And so whichever
lasts the longest is who I'm most likely to take. And it could be either of these guys or even
some of those I rank behind them. Sanchez, I put ahead of Wu, I think there's a higher floor
there. He really excels in all three
areas that a pitcher can
directly control and that he gets ground
balls and elite rate. He's an elite
strike thrower that both of those have been a multi
year trend. But
Sanchez upping his velocity this past
he really emerged as more of a strikeout pitcher
than he'd ever been before. So
add that he goes deep
into games consistently, add that he's on a great
team. I think he's a true ace in fantasy.
Woo is too.
But I
think there's a little,
there are more ways things could go wrong for Wu,
which is why I put him behind Sanchez.
All right, and 10, 11, and 12 in your rankings here.
You have Hunter Brown, Hunter Green, and Cole Regens.
My first very serious question,
did you put brown and green next to each other
because they're both first named Hunter
and their last names are colors?
That is just a happy accident,
though I was happy when I saw it happen.
It was really a question of which Hunter went first.
And I do think Hunter Green is the higher upside play.
I think Hunter Brown is the higher floor play.
Ultimately, I went Brown over Green because we've never seen Green top 150 innings before.
Yeah.
And he was throwing even harder last year, which introduces more injury risk.
The time he missed was a groin issue.
It wasn't an arm issue.
So unrelated to the velocity increase.
But that does introduce more injury risk.
I'm not sure Green really needed the extra velocity.
but per inning per start he should be an ace hunter brown should be two i i think i think there is some
potential to overrate hunter brown even though i have him the higher of the hunters because of the 10
k per nine he had in 2025 i'm not sure i buy that mark in the second half it was only 8.8k per nine
and you look at the swinging strike rate it's never been very good for hunter brown i think
the strikeout rate from this past year's a little mislead
He's more of a ground ball specialist who gets strikeouts at a nice rate.
So very similar to Max Fried, actually, is Hunter Brown.
So I don't see him as a series.
Like some people might consider him for that fourth spot that's in question or fifth in the starting pitcher rankings.
But for me, he belongs down here at 10.
All right.
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