When drafting for the 2025 fantasy baseball season, getting the right starting pitchers is crucial to building a championship roster. While talent is always a factor, understanding workload concerns, injury risks, and team strategies can make or break your draft.

In this 2025 Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide, we’re diving into starting pitchers to fade at their current ADP, helping you avoid risky investments and maximize value. From Fantasy Baseball ADP 2025 trends to Fantasy Baseball Pitcher Rankings 2025, we’ll analyze why some big-name arms—like Blake Snell, Spencer Strider, and Hunter Greene—may not be worth their draft price. 

 

 

 

When it comes to fantasy baseball, innings are king, and you will see that a majority of my fades have nothing to do with talent but about worries about the number of innings they will get, whether from injury, role, or team construction. Let’s get into some of the starting pitchers I am fading at their current ADP.

SP Fantasy Baseball ADP - Starting Pitcher Fades 2025

LA Dodgers (Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, & Tyler Glasnow)

This has nothing to do with how incredibly talented the Dodgers are and the upside that each of these pitchers has. I think that all four of these guys are going to be excellent on a per-inning basis, but the real question is how many innings you will get. 

I think there is a really good chance that not a single one of these guys surpasses 130 innings. You can still draft these guys in certain circumstances. If you pair them with safer big-inning guys, you could take a shot on them with how great they could be. 

I am also more willing to go after them in shallow leagues where it will be easier to replace the innings that you will miss from them, but for the most part, I am not drafting these guys unless they fall past their current ADP because at where they are going I want someone who I can count on to get more innings. 

 

 

 

Chris Sale, Atlanta Braves

Chris Sale was a great target in drafts last season because he was incredibly cheap, and it paid off handsomely as he went on to win his first Cy Young and throw 177.2 innings. Now you don’t get such a discount, and there is a lot of risk for someone you have to pay full freight for. 

This was the first season since 2017 that he threw over 160 innings, and he didn’t end the season healthy. We don’t know how healthy he is going to be coming into this season, and while he could repeat and be fantastic again, there is a lot of risk for a 35-year-old with this kind of injury history to pay this high of a price for it. 

The talent isn’t in question, so if you can get a discount or are ready to absorb the injury risk, then he can still be worth drafting, but I am hesitant to take him this early. 

Framber Valdez, Houston Astros

Framber is different from many on this list because he isn’t someone you should be worried about getting innings. He is still someone who can be good for certain builds because of the number of innings you cannot on with solid rations, but he just doesn’t hold the upside of other pitchers being drafted around him. 

The Astros team around him has gotten worse, especially when it comes to their defense, which especially hurts Framber as a ground ball pitcher and could hurt both his ERA and WHIP. His win total could also be lower than it has been for the last few years if the offense takes a step back as well, which it very well could. 

He won’t give you elite strikeout rates, and I am worried that even if you can count on 175+ innings from him, it just won’t carry the same value as some of these other high-upside pitchers could get you in far fewer innings. If you need a good innings eater with solid rations I would rather wait and take Logan Webb later instead of paying this price for Framber Valdez. 

 

 

 

Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds

Hunter Greene had a fantastic 2024 season, and the young flame thrower has a lot of people excited about what he can do to follow it up, but I am worried that there is no way he can repeat what he did in 2024. 

He cut his HR/9 from 1.53 in 2023 to 0.72 in 2024, backed by a 6.9% HR/FB rate, which is extremely unlikely to hold, especially considering he pitches in the best home run park in all of baseball. The cut in his WHIP down to 1.02 was heavily driven by his ridiculously low BABIP of .237, which also seems due for some regression. 

He should still get plenty of strikeouts, but I don’t expect we will see anywhere close to the 2.75 ERA and 1.02 WHIP he posted last season, and I am not willing to pay the price he is going at with all the concerns that I have. 

Spencer Strider, Atlanta Braves

The last time Spencer Strider was on the mound, he was the best pitcher in baseball. He is still so young that there is a clear path to him being the best pitcher in baseball again, but I don’t think it will happen this season. Strider is returning from surgery that removed him early in the season last year. 

This wasn’t our usual TJ, Spencer Strider had internal brace surgery, and the reality is we know much less about this surgery than TJ, as far fewer pitchers have had it. While there will obviously be limits to his innings this season, and he will likely only throw around 100-130 innings, I am also worried about the quality of those innings.

Will he be himself immediately, or will he struggle with his command initially, as we usually see with guys returning from injuries? I am still all in on Strider long-term, but I am just not willing to pay his current ADP for such an unknown of what we will get from him this season. I won’t be surprised if he is the best pitcher on the mound in the second half of the season, but it likely won’t happen on any of my teams this season.