The Tampa Bay Rays' Tyler Glasnow was on the Baseball Tonight podcast recently and reported enthusiastically that when the shortened season begins -- when summer camp, which kicked off this past weekend, begins -- he'll be ready to go, full speed. An evaluator with another team listened to that and thought to himself: No, Tyler.
Because, the evaluator explained, there's a difference between going all-out firing the ball into a backyard net and going all-out in a game, against big league hitters, with the adrenaline ramped up to game speed. Pitching coaches and managers can now begin to assess the preparedness of their starting pitchers, which might be the most significant X factor in a 2020 season, if MLB can pull it off.
The conventional wisdom is that all teams will be heavily reliant on relief pitching, and the sooner that starters like Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom can shoulder a full load and absorb a greater share of innings, the better for their teams. In a typical season, some starting pitchers say they don't really build full arm strength until June -- but in this season amid the coronavirus pandemic, there will be no theoretical June, only the equivalent of an April and a May.
With all that in mind, here's our list of the top 10 starting pitchers in the majors going into this season.
1. Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees
There are a lot of great numbers for Cole, but I love this context. In Sandy Koufax's most prolific year for strikeouts, 1965, he whiffed 29.7% of the batters he faced. When Nolan Ryan broke Koufax's record for strikeouts in a season, in 1973, he struck out 28.2% of batters. In 2001, Randy Johnson struck out 416 of the 1,150 batters he faced, 36.2%.
Of the 955 batters Cole faced in 2019, regular season and postseason combined, he struck out 373 -- 39.1%, significantly higher than Koufax or Ryan, higher than the Big Unit's best, better than Pedro Martinez's should-have-been-MVP season of 1999 (37.5%).
Last year, it was as if Cole put together all of the raw talent and pitching understanding into one incredible four-pitch mastery, and on most days, he was like the kid in Little League who hit puberty four years sooner than his peers, overpowering hitters to the degree that now pitchers like Koufax, Martinez, Roger Clemens, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer are his truer peer group. This is why then-Astros manager AJ Hinch so comfortably spoke of Cole during the postseason as, in his eyes, the best pitcher in baseball -- even with Verlander inhabiting the same clubhouse in a year in which he won the Cy Young Award, and at a time when deGrom completely dominates the National League.
2. Jacob deGrom, New York Mets
Really, it's a flip of the coin between Cole and deGrom for the No. 1 spot, tomato or tomahto. Last year, deGrom's adjusted ERA+ was 167, after an incredible 218 in 2018, and in 2019, Cole was at 185. Hopefully, the Mets-Yankees games during this strange season will provide at least one deGrom-Cole matchup, with the winner holding bragging rights and the (temporary) title of best pitcher on the planet.
3. Justin Verlander, Houston Astros
It was about a decade ago that the baseball industry deemed the 300-game winner an extinct species. Randy Johnson achieved that benchmark in 2009, and with the workloads for starting pitchers significantly reduced through more analytically driven innings and injury management, it seemed nobody would have a chance to follow him.
But Verlander, though losing so much of this season hurts his cause, still seems to have a shot. Given the nature of his ambition, you would assume there will come a day when he will lock in on that number.
As a kid, Verlander's favorite pitcher was Nolan Ryan, because, as he explained, Ryan continued to be a power pitcher even into the second and third decades of his career. Verlander is following a similar path. Last year was Verlander's 15th in the big leagues and first in which he compiled 300 strikeouts -- and he led the American League in innings, with 223, and allowed only 137 hits on the way to his second Cy Young Award.
So Verlander, 37, has 225 victories. Ryan lasted as long as he did because of his freakish talent and work ethic, and Verlander shares those attributes.
4. Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals
He doesn't throw as hard as he did when he first reached the big leagues, but Strasburg showed in October that he has mastered the art of pitching, in the way he has refined his changeup, in the way he uses his breaking stuff. There were moments in the playoffs when opponents threatened, putting runners in scoring position, and yet Strasburg seemed to be in complete control in the face of adversity, something that sometimes eluded him in the past. Last year, he struck out 251 batters in 209 innings in the regular season, and in 36⅓ innings in the playoffs and World Series, he punched out 47, against some of the game's best hitters.
ESPN's Paul Hembekides believes Strasburg should be in the top three on this list because last season he led MLB in deserved earned run average, a Baseball Prospectus stat that adjusts for defense, park and quality of opponent.
5. Max Scherzer, Nationals
He'll turn 36 at the start of this season, and by some accounting, he's coming off the most effective performance of his career, with a career low in FIP (2.45) and a career-best ratio of strikeouts per nine innings (12.69). He also generated his highest rate of ground balls since 2009. Put it all together and you have support for what Ryan Zimmerman suggested during the postseason -- that Scherzer has been the best free-agent signing in baseball history: In his five years with Washington, he's averaged 31.8 starts, posted a 2.74 ERA, struck out 1,371 in 1,050⅔ innings -- and won a championship.
6. Jack Flaherty, St. Louis Cardinals
He's got the athleticism and power of a modern-day Bob Gibson, and after some early-season inconsistency, Flaherty dominated in August and September. After the All-Star break, he had a 0.91 ERA, allowing just 48 hits and an opponents' slash line of .142/.208/.217; as Hembekides notes, that is the third-lowest mark of its kind all time. Nobody who has hit against him would be surprised if he challenged for the top spot on this board at some point -- he's still just 24 years old.
7. Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers
He made an All-Star team for the first time last season and was mentioned on Cy Young ballots for the first time. There will be more of that in the years ahead for Buehler, who had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5.81 -- better than any of John Smoltz's seasons as a starting pitcher, an indication of just how much better Buehler might become.
8. Charlie Morton, Tampa Bay Rays
Five years ago, he would have chuckled at the notion that he'd eventually be regarded as his generation's Old Reliable, considering all the injury issues and performance struggles he worked through. But that is where Morton is at age 36. Over the past three years, he's closed out a Game 7 of the World Series and posted 3.5 WAR for the Astros in 2018 and 5.1 WAR for the Rays last year.
9. Mike Clevinger, Cleveland Indians
The Dodgers are among the teams that would love to make a deal for Clevinger, but who wouldn't want him? Back and ankle trouble cost Clevinger about two months of last season, yet he posted ridiculous production -- just 10 homers allowed in 126 innings at a time when the sport was saturated with homers, as well as 169 strikeouts. Other folks in the Indians organization believe Trevor Bauer helped Clevinger's development as a pitcher.
10. Shane Bieber, Indians
You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Indians organization who thought Bieber would become a star-level pitcher, but by all accounts, Bieber has the perfect plow-horse personality for his craft and has steadily improved. His MVP award at the All-Star Game was just one moment of excellence among many: Bieber had a staggering 259 strikeouts to only 40 walks, and he finished fourth in the AL Cy Young voting. He's 25 years old.
Best of the rest
Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers: At 32, he has fully transitioned into the crafty-lefty stage of his career, when he can't simply blow the ball past hitters the way he once did. But he's still pretty damn good, finishing seventh in the NL in ERA last season, at 3.03, and striking out more than a batter per inning.
Blake Snell, Rays: He is fully capable of vaulting back into the highest echelon of starters, where he lived during his Cy Young season of 2018. Because of loose bodies in his elbow, Snell was limited to 107 innings over 23 starts in 2019, and his ERA climbed to 4.29. But if you ask any hitter about which left-hander has the best pure stuff in the majors, his name always comes up. (And by the way: Our top 10 is comprised entirely of right-handers.) Hembekides made this case for Snell: His standard numbers regressed last season, but the underlying numbers indicate that he was still elite. In fact, his xwOBA was better in 2019 than 2018.
Mike Soroka, Atlanta Braves: The right-hander emerged as the Braves' ace in a year in which the club limited the innings count for the 22-year-old, and he finished second to Pete Alonso for the NL Rookie of the Year.
Zack Greinke, Astros: The future Hall of Famer is unlike just about anybody else on this list, still controlling hitters with guile at age 36.
Yu Darvish, Chicago Cubs: He seemed to learn a lot about himself last year, pitching spectacularly in the second half, when opponents batted just .199 and had a .612 OPS; he had 118 strikeouts in 81⅔ innings. Nobody has ever questioned his stuff -- a pertinent question is whether he can carry over his success into 2020, particularly after the extended offseason.
Luis Castillo, Cincinnati Reds: He lives to trick hitters with his changeup, and he does it a lot.
Tyler Glasnow, Rays: If he is healthy and can replicate what he did early last year -- a 1.78 ERA in 12 starts -- he would be one of the best starters in the majors. Nobody has better stuff.