Nationals, Mets cream of NL staffs
The following list aims to rank the 15 National League teams by the strength of their rotations. It considers each club’s projected opening-day starting staff by recent performance, projections and general health, as well as the organization’s depth behind its front five. It accounts for park and environmental factors.
1. WASHINGTON NATIONALS
The offseason trade of prospects Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez cost the Nationals some depth, and a prolonged injury to dominant but brittle Stephen Strasburg could send Washington plummeting down this list. The Nats will work to manage Strasburg’s workload between starts this season in an effort to keep him healthy all year. Ace Max Scherzer, 32, has made at least 30 starts in each of the last eight seasons but is dealing with a knuckle issue that might prevent him from being ready by opening day. But Tanner Roark enjoyed a breakout season at 29 in 2016, Joe Ross is 23 and maintains big-time talent, and Gio Gonzalez appears at the very least a safe bet to stay healthy and gobble up a leagueaverage number of innings.
2. NEW YORK METS
It’s so easy to envision a way the Mets have the best rotation in baseball in 2017. It’s this way: They all stay healthy. But the first pitches Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz and Zack Wheeler throw in 2017 also will be their first big-league pitches since arm surgery, so it’s difficult to feel confident they’ll all hold up for a full season. Fireballer Noah Syndergaard should be a Cy Young Award candidate if he stays healthy, but he, too, is a young pitcher operating under constant risk of arm injury. In Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo, the Mets have some decent depth, but any setbacks among their top guys could make the group look quite a bit thinner.
3. CHICAGO CUBS
The Cubs rotation ranked first on this list last year and spent most of the season proving the ranking right, then — and maybe you’ve heard about this — the team went on to win the World Series. So why’d the Cubs fall to No. 3? Maybe it’s all part of a conspiracy to make people angry and drum up page views, or maybe all the teams at the top of this list are extremely close in terms of talent and we are skeptical the Cubs can maintain such an extraordinarily low batting average on balls in play for a second consecutive season. They’ll certainly be good, as Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks make a tremendous front three, but the loss of Jason Hammel to free agency hurts them more than it might seem: They’ll try to replace Hammel’s 1662⁄ sturdy innings with some combination of often-injured castoffs and converted relievers.
4. LOS ANGELES DODGERS
Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in Major League Baseball, and it’s not even close. A back injury limited Kershaw to 21 starts and cost him a shot at a historic season in 2016, but he returned in September and started pitching like Clayton Kershaw again, and there’s no good reason to believe he won’t pitch like Clayton Kershaw again in 2017. He’s good enough that he could make an otherwise ordinary rotation an above-average one, but the Dodgers also return Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda and wunderkind Julio Urias behind him.
5. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Madison Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto stack up well against any pair of pitching teammates in baseball: Both look like locks to throw 200 excellent innings for San Francisco in 2017, and Jeff Samardzija appears a safe bet to throw 200 pretty good innings as well. That type of certainty is rare even in the fronts of the best rotations in baseball. The picture gets a bit murkier thereafter. Matt Moore, if he’s healthy, makes a strong No. 4 starter, but Matt Cain hasn’t had a good season since 2012 and top prospect Tyler Beede likely needs at least half a year in Class AAA before he can join the big-league rotation.
6. ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
Last season was a weird one for the Cardinals starting staff: Every guy except Carlos Martinez well underperformed career norms, and St. Louis will need to hope that Adam Wainwright, Michael Wacha and Mike Leake fixed whatever ailed them last season. But all of them were something between decent and excellent as recently as 2015, plus Lance Lynn should be ready for a normal spring training schedule after missing 2016 because of Tommy John elbow surgery. The loss of top prospect Alex Reyes to Tommy John surgery cost the Cardinals a higher place on this list.
7. ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
Zack Greinke played a big role in the Diamondbacks’ disastrous 2016, seeing his ERA jump nearly three full runs in the first season of his six-year, $206.5 million free agent deal with Arizona. But Greinke’s a far better pitcher than he was last season, and the offseason addition of Taijuan Walker to a mix that includes Robbie Ray, Archie Bradley and Patrick Corbin gives the D’backs a lot of upside, if not a lot to feel good about in terms of recent performance. It’s hard to guess where Shelby Miller goes from here, but it seems safe to guess he can’t possibly be worse than he was last season.
8. PITTSBURGH PIRATES
Pittsburgh pitching coach Ray Searage carries such a great reputation that a more nuanced list might rank the Pirates twice: One spot for what projections and logic expect out of the pitchers and another for whatever heights they might reach under Searage’s tutelage. Instead, they land right in the middle of the pack, with the caveat that they’ll jump into the top 10 if Drew Hutchison joins the likes of Francisco Liriano, J.A. Happ and Pirates teammate Ivan Nova as successful Pittsburgh reclamation projects. Gerrit Cole battled a rib cage injury last spring and finished 2016 on the shelf with an elbow injury, but he will enter spring training on a normal throwing schedule. After two seasons lost to injury, Jameson Taillon returned to health last season and showed some of the promise that once ranked him among the game’s best pitching prospects. Tyler Glasnow has dominated the high minors despite control issues, and reining in control issues happens to be Searage’s specialty.
9. COLORADO ROCKIES
Again: The Rockies’ ERA won’t be pretty in 2017, but their starting staff likely will be a lot better than you would guess. Mile-high altitude is a sick joke to play on a promising young pitcher, but Colorado appears to have compiled a good collection of guys who are apt to keep the highpowered offense in games. By ERA+, which adjusts for ballpark, Jon Gray, Chad Bettis, Tyler Chatwood and Tyler Anderson were above-average major league pitchers in 2016, and all four return, with prospect Jeff Hoffman likely to fill out the rotation on opening day or shortly thereafter. The track records aren’t very long and pitching in Colorado brings with it a whole ton of uncertainty, but Gray, especially, has the makings of an ace.
10. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
The upcoming season should represent a big step along the Phillies’ path from rebuilding to rebuilt. Jeremy Hellickson, who accepted the club’s qualifying offer instead of pursuing free agency, will look to mount another solid season. The Phillies added Boston Red Sox castoff Clay Buchholz in December, but the real excitement in the Philadelphia rotation exists in the form of Jerad Eickhoff, Vince Velazquez and Aaron Nola, a trio of exciting young arms who delivered mixed results but showed enormous potential in the majors last season.
11. ATLANTA BRAVES
The rebuilding Braves have a stable of young arms with reasonably high upside, but after guys including Aaron Blair and Matt Wisler struggled mightily at the major league level in 2016, Atlanta will open its new SunTrust Ballpark this season with a sturdy group of newly acquired veterans in the rotation behind 26-year-old stalwart Julio Teheran. And while neither Jaime Garcia, Bartolo Colon nor R.A. Dickey offers the Braves much in the way of long-term upside, the three are all more than adequate options for holding down starting jobs until their eventual replacements force the issue from Class AAA.
12. MILWAUKEE BREWERS
Welterweight right-hander Zach Davies might be the best pitcher in the world on a pound-forpound basis (he tips the scales at 166), and the 23-year-old represents the current rotation cog most likely to be part of the rebuilding Brewers’ next good team. Another righty, Junior Guerra, spent six years out of affiliated baseball pitching in Italy, Spain and independent leagues before enjoying a solid rookie season at 31 in 2016. A group of unspectacular but passable veterans will fill out the Milwaukee rotation until prospects such as Josh Hader, Brandon Woodruff and Luis Ortiz are ready.
13. CINCINNATI REDS
The Reds will hope for full health from Homer Bailey after two seasons ruined by injury, with the club still owing Bailey $68 million over the next three years. Anthony DeSclafani should settle into his prime as at least a leagueaverage starter, and the Reds have a whole bunch of fairly wellregarded young arms that have mostly been tagged to date at the big-league level. Brandon Finnegan had a solid 2016 despite unimpressive rate stats, and steps forward from Finnegan, Cody Reed or Robert Stephenson would give the rebuilding Reds some valuable rotation pieces for the future.
14. MIAMI MARLINS
The death of Jose Fernandez at 24 in September robbed baseball of one of its brightest young stars and cost the Marlins a transcendent ace at the front of their pitching staff. In Fernandez’s absence, Wei-Yin Chen becomes the de facto ace of the staff despite a down season in his first year in Miami in 2016. Newcomers Edinson Volquez and Dan Straily join a rotation mix with some depth in viable but largely underwhelming back-end arms, and spacious Marlins Park will cover some of the damage, but the Marlins don’t have anyone with frontline-starter upside on the horizon for 2017.
15. SAN DIEGO PADRES
Luis Perdomo might well prove in 2017 that he’s the best Padres pitcher ever named Luis Perdomo. That’s about the most exciting thing we can offer about the team’s 2017 rotation picture. The Padres have promising young offensive pieces, but their best minor league arms appear years away from the majors. It’s hard to find a way to discuss the group’s 2017 outlook that doesn’t seem mean, so I’ll just note that there’s a reasonable case to be made that, with the possible exception of $1.75 million offseason addition Jhoulys Chacin, no one currently in the San Diego rotation mix would land a spot on the Miami opening-day starting staff.