Early Season Pitcher Rankings: Which Starters Are Overdue For a Turnaround

We're just two weeks into April, and the pitcher evaluation game is already getting interesting. Here's the thing about baseball pitchers: they give us information in massive chunks, not the slow drip you get from hitters. Every fifth or sixth day, you get a complete data dump. So when we start seeing patterns in pitcher performance this early, it actually means something.

Strikeouts minus walks is becoming the real predictor of success. After about five starts into the season, this metric holds just as much weight as the fancy stuff ratings. And right now, there's a group of pitchers with genuinely good strikeout-minus-walk rates who are getting absolutely killed by their ERAs. Translation: some of these guys are about to break out.

The Strikeout Kings With Brutal Luck

Jesús Luzardo leads the pack with a 31.0% strikeout-minus-walk rate, but he's saddled with a 6.23 ERA. Jack Leiter sits at 23.8% K-BB with a 4.91 ERA. Nathan Eovaldi is at 19.6% K-BB but owns a 5.40 ERA. Brandon Woodruff, Kodai Senga, Lance McCullers Jr., Chase Dollander, Garrett Crochet, Luis Castillo, and Jameson Taillon round out a list of guys whose command and stuff suggest things are about to get better.

The question isn't whether these guys have the goods. They do. The question is timing. Luzardo, Crochet, and Leiter have the pure stuff and command to turn things around fast. Eovaldi, Castillo, and Woodruff lean more on command mastery at this stage of their careers, but the track record says trust them. Senga made some serious noise in projection models last week. McCullers carries injury concerns that drag down his ranking despite solid peripherals. And Dollander? Playing half your games at Coors Field isn't doing him any favors, though April is actually a slightly better month to pitch there.

How The Rankings Actually Work

These rest-of-season projections blend strikeout-minus-walk rates, Stuff+ ratings, injury history grades, command evaluations, and how arsenals stack up against different hitters. The analysis removed anyone currently injured to keep things clean, but you know how baseball goes: somebody could hit the IL any day.

Tarik Skubal tops the league at 116 Stuff+ and a projected 2.75 ERA. His fastball velocity is down slightly from last year and his strikeout rate dipped a touch, but he's basically right where he was last April. He's throwing the four-seamer more and ending at-bats before the strikeout even matters. Still the best stuff in the game, still excellent command.

The Mariners sit in the middle of the pack here, which tells you something about early season form around the league. Watch this list closely. The next three weeks will reveal which of these "should be better" guys actually are.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.