Every year is a weird year for starting pitchers, of course – it's the most volatile position in Fantasy sports, and the only thing you can be sure of is that the position won't look anything like what you expect it to by the end of the season. But even by that standard, 2026 was a weird year for starting pitchers. There were three taken in the first round of most drafts, and all three were at least somewhat disappointing; the best of the bunch was, somehow, the one who had mid-season elbow surgery!
Among the top 24 starters drafted, only eight actually managed to be top-24 starters by the end of the season. Let's put some numbers on it. From 2021 through 2025, the top 24 starters in ADP combined for at least $259.1 in value, per the FanGraphs Player Rater; in 2026, that was just $227 combined.
What's especially weird, however, is that it's not like it was a hugely disappointing season for pitching across the board. SP25 through SP36 combined to return $155.6 in value, not quite the best of the group of five seasons prior to 2026, but not far from it – the best being 2024, when that crop of starters were worth $172.1. What makes 2026 really stand out is the way those mid-round pitchers nearly managed to eclipse the early rounders.
Here's how that looked for every season from 2021 through 2026: The first thing you might notice here is that SP25-36 have outperformed SP13-24 every single season since 2021, typically by a pretty huge margin. That gets into the idea of the "SP Dead Zone" I've written about in the past, a trend that still managed to hold true, even during an especially weird season. I'll be writing even more about this topic moving forward this offseason, naturally.
But what's most interesting is that the third group almost out-earned the first one. You probably already know how that happened: That's the group that featured Jacob Misiorowski, Cam Schlittler, and Chase Burns, along with Sonny Gray and Zack Wheeler. There were some busts in that range, too – Spencer Strider, Emmett Sheehan, and Nick Lodolo stand out, while none of Tyler Glasnow, Brandon Woodruff or Blake Snell pitched enough to really be worth the pick there.
The lesson here isn't "Just wait until the 25th through 36th pitchers are about to be drafted and then jump in," of course. In part because plenty of those guys busted, too and in part because the specific circumstances of last year's pool won't apply this year. 2026's group of starting pitchers included an unusual number of very, very talented, very, very unproven pitchers in that range: Misiorowski, Burns, and Schlittler but also Nolan McLean and Eury Perez before them and Trey Yesavage and Bubba Chandler, who went off the board a bit later. We don't have that same kind of up-and-coming talent this season.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
