- Clayton Kershaw
- Roy Halladay
- Cliff Lee
- Justin Verlander
- Felix Hernandez
- David Price
- Tim Lincecum
- Zack Greinke
- Matt Moore
- Cole Hamels
- CJ Wilson
- Yovani Gallardo
- Jon Lester
- Madison Bumgarner
- Matt Cain
- Ian Kennedy
- Jered Weaver
- Dan Haren
- CC Sabathia
- Cory Luebke
- Yu Darvish
- Mat Latos
- James Shields
- Josh Johnson
- Brandon Beachy
- Gio Gonzalez
- Steven Strasburg (innings cap of 160-170 IP)
- Dan Hudson
- Matt Garza
- Jordan Zimmermann
- Adam Wainwright (innings cap of 170 IP?)
- Michael Pineda
- Shaun Marcum
- Josh Beckett
- Jaime Garcia
- Chris Sale
- Doug Fister
- Ricky Romero
- Anibal Sanchez
- Tommy Hanson
- Johnny Cueto
- Max Scherzer
- Brandon Morrow
- Derek Holland
- John Danks
- Vance Worley
- Bud Norris
- Wandy Rodriguez
- Neftali Feliz (innings cap of around 160 innings)
- Brandon McCarthy
- Colby Lewis
- Gavin Floyd
- Francisco Liriano
- Juan Nicasio
- Mark Buehrle
- Hiroki Kuroda
- Justin Masterson
- RA Dickey
- Jonathon Niese
- Mike Minor
- Clay Buchholz
- Ted Lilly (out for start of the season)
- Jeremy Hellickson
- Ubaldo Jimenez
- Tim Hudson (out until May)
- Ervin Santana
- Jhoulys Chacin
- Ryan Dempster
- Erik Bedard
- Scott Baker
- Trevor Bauer
- Henderson Alvarez
- Tim Stauffer
- Chris Carpenter (out indefinitely)
- Jeff Niemann
- Edwin Jackson
- Drew Pomeranz
- Jake Peavy
- Brian Matusz
- Mike Leake
- Chad Billingsley
- Edinson Volquez
- Daniel Bard
- Drew Smyly
- Ryan Vogelsong
- Jeff Samardzija
- Aroldis Chapman
- James McDonald
- Trevor Cahill
- Jake Arrieta
- Philip Humber
- Matt Harrison
- Tom Milone
- Jonathan Sanchez
- Jair Jurrjens
- Carlos Zambrano
- Hector Noesi
- Ivan Nova
- Josh Tomlin
100.Josh Collmenter
Key
Bold = Changed Teams
Red = Injury/Innings Cap Risk
Blue = Reliever Converted to Starter
Green = Rookie
Orange = Japanese Import
Using These Rankings: Don’t use these rankings literally; meaning, just because Cueto is ranked #41 and Scherzer is ranked #42, don’t assume it’s always best to take Cueto over Scherzer. Your individual fantasy team will dictate who the best starter is for your team. If your team is low in strikeouts and has good ERA/WHIP ratios, then Scherzer has much more value to your team at that time than Cueto does. If you feel your team needs Wins more than Strikeouts, you might take #19 Sabathia over #12 Gallardo. There are tiers of separation between groups of starters, and there are different types of starters within each tier.. for example, there are lower-Strikeout but good ERA pitchers like Buehrle and Dickey in the same tier as higher-Strikeout but worse ERA pitchers like Masterson and Kuroda. Some pitchers carry additional risks like being more susceptible to injury (like Bedard) or have an innings cap for 2012 (like Strasburg), and some have higher upside than others (such as Morrow). This is merely an overarching look at the Top 100 SPs for 2012 based on the combination of their projected stats, health, team they play for, upside, and risk. There’s a table below that breaks down the top starters into tiers and allows you to look at projected stats/team/health/upside/risk for each starter in one place. The team is given so that you can decide about how many Wins to expect based on that team’s offense and bullpen (for example: NYY starters will be much more likely to get SP Wins than HOU based on their far superior offense and bullpen). Rankings are fluid and subject to change between now and Opening Day so check back often to see which starters might be moving up or down the list.
*The “Health”, “Upside”, and “Risk” categories are rated on a scale from 1-5, with 5 being high and 1 being low. So 1 Health = not healthy, 5 Upside = high upside, 3 Risk = medium amount of risk. “Health” relates to both current health and overall career health, and thus how many innings you should expect (Health rating of 1 means don’t expect more than 100 innings while a rating of 5 means expect 200 or more). “Upside” relates to that player’s upside comparative to his projected stats, not upside overall. “Risk” relates to skills risk, so likelihood that the player underachieves his projected stats and by how much (so a rating of 5 means that player has a decent chance to drastically underachieve his projected stats) – note risk does not encompass health risk – that is obviously covered in the “Health” category. The converted relievers (Sale, Bard, and Feliz) and rookies (other than Matt Moore) do not have projections because their transitions to starting in the majors for a full season will be very volatile and projections are pretty pointless – all that you need to know is ABOUT where to value them… then based on your gut, team make-up, etc you can draft them where you feel it’s good value… which should be about where I have them ranked. I will have an article about the relievers converting to starters later, however.. that will give you some idea of what to expect.