Best of BP: Examining 2024’s Fantasy Pitching Trends

Last year around this time I wrote a piece called Grappling with the Pitching Paradigm where I examined how changes in the way major league teams use pitching should alter how we view (and use) pitchers in our fantasy leagues. The general premise of this article (and most of my writing the last few years on this subject) is that the vast majority of fantasy analysts still use an outmoded paradigm that assumes 80-90 starting pitchers leaguewide will qualify for the ERA title (162 innings minimum) and there will be about 65 pitchers who get at least 30 starts. We all know from experience that it hasn’t played out this way in years but as a community we haven’t pivoted to an advice model that recognizes this.

To be fair to the fantasy analyst community this isn’t an easy task. It’s one thing to notice these trends; it’s another thing to provide actionable information that isn’t merely trivial and useless or–worse–an overcorrection. It doesn’t help matters that major league baseball has seemingly changed everything the last few years and that the conclusions we draw today might not apply at all tomorrow.

However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and adjust based on the trendlines. The simplest reason for this is that if modeling our drafts and in-season management based off last year’s data might be slightly incorrect then doing the same thing off data from five-plus years ago is extremely off base.

Today I’ll look at some of the premises I’ve discussed the last few seasons and see if they remain valid.

Premise #1: The most expensive starting pitchers are (generally) the most reliable.

Summary: There is significant focus on outliers, particularly on starting pitchers drafted very late, that leads to a common belief that starting pitching is random, despite the fact that years of data suggest otherwise.

Table 1: Fantasy Starting Pitchers by Tier: 2022-2024

Tier	Pos $	ADP	Sub-replacement
2024
SP1 (1-15)	$220	36	1
SP2 (16-30)	$181	80	3
SP3 (31-45)	$140	144	5
SP4 (46-60)	$56	195	7
SP5 (61-75)	$35	242	12
SP6 (76-90)	$59	300	11
2023
SP1 (1-15)	$196	36	2
SP2 (16-30)	$182	80	5
SP3 (31-45)	$75	133	9
SP4 (46-60)	$97	179	8
SP5 (61-75)	$71	241	9
SP6 (76-90)	$36	293	13
2022
SP1 (1-15)	$252	32	2
SP2 (16-30)	$208	84	3
SP3 (31-45)	$94	133	7
SP4 (46-60)	$63	188	7
SP5 (61-75)	$34	236	11
SP6 (76-90)	$75	289	8

The Reality: Very little changed. The most intriguing number is in the “SP3 2024” bucket. As a group, these pitchers earned more than they had since 2021 and there were the fewest number of sub-replacement starters since I began tracking these data in 2015. One season of data isn’t enough to indicate a trend, but it is something worth monitoring in 2025.

However, most of the trendlines remained the same. The most expensive starting pitchers are the most reliable ones in terms of earnings and particularly in terms of finishing above replacement level. The SP2 arms are also quite good–and there is a case to be made for shopping for your aces here instead of in the SP1 tier–but are more prone to blow-ups (finishing below replacement). Everywhere else is random/risky.

The slight drop in ADP in the SP3, SP4, and SP6 tiers make me wonder if drafters are taking my advice or coming to these same conclusions independently.

Premise #2: There are fewer starting pitchers completing a “full” season.

Summary: A decade ago there were more pitchers qualifying for the ERA title and therefore making it through an entire season. This phenomenon started around 2016 and worsened during the pandemic.

Table 2: Starting Pitcher Innings and Starts: 2014-2024

Year	162+ Innings	30+ Starts
2014	88	68
2015	78	66
2016	54	62
2017	58	46
2018	57	56
2019	61	59
2021	39	41
2022	45	43
2023	44	44
2024	58	51

The Reality: 2024 saw an uptick in starting pitchers reaching 162 innings, with the highest number of qualifiers and pitchers with 30 or more starts since 2019. It is possible that this uptick will continue and while we will never return to 2014 (or earlier) levels of starting pitcher innings the extremely low post pandemic totals are permanently behind us. This doesn’t mean that the quality or quantity of the innings we got from those 58 starting pitchers who reached at least 162 innings last year synced up evenly with 2019, which leads directly to our next premise.

Premise #3: We get less from the starting pitchers we draft than we used to.

Summary: This one is exactly what it sounds like. Because starting pitchers don’t provide nearly as many innings as they used to, they aren’t nearly as valuable anymore.

The Reality: This one is somewhat complicated. If all pitchers are providing fewer innings, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the best pitchers, relative to the player pool, would be as valuable as their historical counterparts?

Without taking any other factors into consideration, yes. However, there are two things at play here that are diluting the value of the top starting pitchers.

1. The Inning Differential Isn’t Linear

Returning to 2019 and 2024, there was a 485-inning difference between the top 61 pitchers in innings, which averages out to slightly under eight innings per starter. However, breaking this down into groups of 15 pitchers provides us with a much starker picture of what is happening.

Table 3: Starting Pitchers by Inning Tiers: 2019 and 2024

Tier	2019 IP	2024 IP	Difference	AVG Diff
Top 15	3,119 2/3	2,903 1/3	216 1/3	14.4
16-30	2,844 1/3	2,688 1/3	156	10.4
31-45	2,655 2/3	2,593 1/3	62 1/3	4.2
46-60	2,519 2/3	2,472 2/3	47	3.1

The average difference in innings doesn’t sound like much per pitcher, but across an entire pitching staff it adds up. In 2019, 15 pitchers cracked 200 innings. In 2024, only four did. Not all these 200+ inning starters in 2019 were aces but nearly all of them were solid arms who offered plenty of quality statistics across the board. 

T2. The Statistical Contributions are Fewer

We intuitively know that we aren’t nearly getting as much from starting pitchers as we used to. When you see the numbers side-by-side the differences are dramatic.

Table 4: Top 61 Starting Pitcher Contributions: 2019 and 2024

Year	Innings	% of Total	Wins	% of Total	K	% of Total
2019	11,302 2/3	45%	766	53%	11,232	47%
2024	10,817 2/3	43%	687	48%	10,379	44%

Table 4 isn’t the be all and end all–it isn’t a requirement to get all our innings from these pitchers–but the fact that we are getting less from these pitchers creates dual challenges for fantasy managers in both category targeting and roster management. The challenge has shifted from finding quality innings via free agency (I’ll touch on that a little more in my next talking point) to figuring out how to properly build a roster so that we don’t:

1. Spend too much draft capital on useless starting pitchers while also
2. Maintaining enough FAAB to consistently add pitchers liberally to our lineups (and benches) when the need arises.

 3. The “Sub-Qualifiers” are Better Now

I used 61 pitchers on Table 4 (above) because there were 61 qualifiers for the ERA title in 2019 and 2024 came very close to matching that. My first question after looking at the top 61 starting pitchers was how did the rest of the player pool in each respective season do?

Table 5: All Starting Pitcher Contributions: 2019 and 2024

2019
	IP	W	ERA	WHIP	K
Top 61	11,302 2/3	766	3.81	1.216	11,232
The Rest	13,855	683	5.13	1.401	12,738
Total	25,157 2/3	1,449	4.54	1.318	23,970
2024
Top 61	10,817 2/3	687	3.73	1.188	10,379
The Rest	14,519 2/3	737	4.47	1.323	13,109
Total	25,337 1/3	1,424	4.15	1.266	24,488

There used to be a far more significant gap between the pitchers who produced the most volume (innings) and everyone else. This doesn’t mean that the pitchers in the “the rest” grouping in either season are/were desirable targets, but the ones in this 2019 bucket on Table 5 were far less likely to be useful than the ones in the 2024 bucket.

What Are the Takeaways?
Even with a full season of data it is better to exercise caution rather than draw sweeping conclusions but there are a few things worth considering entering 2025:

• The most expensive starters are still the best and most reliable investments. However, given the drop off in both quality and quantity among the best arms, it is worth considering waiting until at least the third round to take your ace.
• Workloads have increased to pre-pandemic levels but have still flattened out and aren’t likely to increase by very much more than they already have.
• In particular, the most prolific starting pitchers are less likely to throw 200+ innings, which also means they’re less likely to provide significant gains in strikeouts, ERA, and/or WHIP.
• The free agent pool was better–or at least less risky–in 2024 than it has been in years. The mistake here is that people often thinks this means “well I can wait until Round 10 to draft a starter” but what it really means is that you should still draft your two or three aces early and then avoid overpaying for starting pitching at the middle and end of the draft.

There is a less obvious takeaway that has nothing to do with starting pitchers but can and should impact how we conduct our drafts that I’ll examine next week.