Early 2026 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Top 40 at starting pitcher gives priority to biggest bat-missers
How deep it is depends on how much grace you give to recent injury cases
Can we tell which starting pitchers are going to get injured? Do we have any sort of reliable metric for that?
Sure, past injury can be a predictor of future injury, but it’s not a particularly good one. We sometimes treat it as foolproof. Zack Wheeler, Logan Gilbert and George Kirby were some of the safest bets to make it through the 2025 season unscathed, but they didn’t. Bryan Woo and Jacob deGrom were supposed to have no chance of remaining healthy, but they did.
The pitching motion is an unnatural one, and done with the repetition and force required to succeed at the major league level, it’s only a matter of time before injury is the result. So is predicting when and where one will arise a fool’s errand? Should we even bother to try?
More and more, I’m beginning to doubt that. Surely, durability counts for something. A perpetual injury case like Tyler Glasnow can only be trusted to do so much, and there’s of course a big difference between a pitcher who goes 6-7 innings with regularity and one who never does. But when evaluating pitchers for a new season, effectiveness should be the primary and secondary consideration, with demerits for durability applied in only the most extreme cases.
With that, here’s my initial top 40 for 2026.
Note that the focus here is standard 5×5 scoring (such as Rotisserie leagues), but if you scroll a little further, you’ll see my rankings for points leagues.
Top 40 starting pitchers for 2026
What changes in points leagues?
1. Tarik Skubal, DET
2. Garrett Crochet, BOS
3. Paul Skenes, PIT
4. Chris Sale, likely ATL
5. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, LAD
6. Logan Gilbert, SEA
7. Cristopher Sanchez, PHI
8. Bryan Woo, SEA
9. Max Fried, NYY
10. Hunter Brown, HOU
11. Hunter Greene, CIN
12. Cole Ragans, KC
13. Logan Webb, SF
14. Framber Valdez, free agent
15. Blake Snell, LAD
16. Jacob deGrom, TEX
17. Spencer Schwellenbach, ATL
18. Jesus Luzardo, PHI
19. Freddy Peralta, MIL
20. George Kirby, SEA
21. Tyler Glasnow, LAD
22. Kyle Bradish, BAL
23. Eury Perez, MIA
24. Dylan Cease, free agent
25. Nick Pivetta, SD
26. Joe Ryan, MIN
27. Brandon Woodruff, MIL
28. Kevin Gausman, TOR
29. Shane Bieber, likely free agent
30. Trevor Rogers, BAL
31. Shohei Ohtani, LAD
32. Spencer Strider, ATL
33. Chase Burns, CIN
34. Emmet Sheehan, LAD
35. Gavin Williams, CLE
36. Nathan Eovaldi, TEX
37. Cam Schlittler, NYY
38. Nolan McLean, NYM
39. Carlos Rodon, NYY
40. Robbie Ray, SF
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