Top 100 Starting Pitchers: I’m Bringin’ Schwellenbach (2024)

Happy Monday, Razzball faithful!

Yes, I know what you’re thinking.

Dearest MarmosDad, how can you be bringing something back when it is extremely doubtful that it was gone to begin with? Your ‘silver fox’ good looks are second only to your razor-sharp wit and plentiful, perfectly presented puns!

If I had a dollar for every time I had to clarify that I am not, in fact, Justin Timberlake…well, I would still be broke. But you get the gist.

Forget about bringing sexy back…I’m Bringin’ Schwellenbach.

Is this guy the second sexiest Spencer on Atlanta’s 40-man roster? P-to-the-erhaps.

Does he have 15 wins and a 250-strikeout season pace in 2024?

Well, no. But this guy has been in sync since his third big league start way back on June 12th.

Schwellenbach has been figuratively twerking through national league offenses like…

Wait, I don’t think I want to do a GIF search for that one. Let’s just say he’s been pretty awesome.

I mean, just Look at that WHIP…It makes me smile.

Last week I wrote that I wanted to run Schwelly as our lede but was swayed by Bowden Francis’ run at greatness.

Cool beans, MarmosDad, now tell us a story.

Well, Spencer Schwellenbach was drafted in the second round (59th overall) by the Braves in the 2021 MLB draft.

The fact that he has arrived in Atlanta already is pretty amazing, but even more so when you consider that he had Tommy John surgery immediately after the Braves drafted him 3 years ago.

I wanted to dive deeper into Scwellenbach’s resume, but the recency of his draft year, combined with that arm surgery, meant that this Spencer had thrown just 65 pro innings in total before spring training 2024.

Without getting into all of the nitty and the gritty, let’s just say that this kid has shown he belongs in professional baseball, and can thrive in a major league rotation.

Through 15 starts in Atlanta, Schwellenbach has allowed fewer hits than innings pitched, (which is always a good sign), and allowed just 10 home runs in 87 innings.

The 10.55 K/9 would put him in 8th place in the Top 10 of qualified pitchers smack dab in the middle with Michael King and Freddy Peralta on either side.

His 1.86 BB/9? Well, you won’t believe this.

If he had enough innings to qualify, he’d rank 8th in this one too, between noted control artists Nestor Cortes and Pablo Lopez.

The Debbie Downers will point out the 87 innings and say that it’s not a big enough sample size to run a true analysis.

But if Justin Timberlake was looking through his fantasy baseball keeper league waiver wire and his eyes fell on the 6’1” 24-year-old SP, I assume he’d say something like…

“’Cause you’re burnin’ up, I gotta get it fast”.

All I know is…I can’t stop the feeling…that this Spencer might be another receiver of an offseason sleeper post from our resident Fantasy Master Lothario (don’t abbreviate it).

Clearly, anyone in a keeper league should be targeting Sir Schwellenbach for a 2025 protected list if you have off-season trading to look forward to, but where should Spencer Schwellenbach rank in our Top 100 right now? Where do we slot in a rookie who has struck out 61 big leaguers over his last 42.1 innings pitched?

Well, as always, before we get to the list, I need to plug a couple of things for y’all first. If you want to check the spot I usually have open when flipping through my information on Sunday afternoons, you’re looking for that Player Rater leaderboard. This is always a great resource to use if you’re doing research. A bit of this, and a splash of that goes into the prep work for our weekly Top 100 Starting Pitchers list.

Of course, if you’re one of those doubting-your-own-gut-instinct fantasy managers, or simply want to use a great resource that will point you in the right direction every week, The Streamonator is here to help you answer those burning questions.

If you haven’t signed up for it, this should be your go-to reference for the entire season. It will save you a lot of time researching and often includes those “Oh, I never thought about that” solutions. The Razzball subscriptions are well worth the price of admission. If you’re serious about improving throughout the season, check the link, yo.

BIGGEST JUMPERS: Who’s got hops? These are some of the biggest jumpers in value this week.

Logan Gilbert – 6 IP, 0 ER, 4 H, 0 BBs, 10 Ks, 3.09 ERA. I nearly made Logan the lede this week. Don’t worry. It’s coming before the end of the season hits, especially if he keeps these strikeout numbers up. Oh, and the walks? Let’s just say Logan Gilbert and I both walked the same amount of batters in MLB last week. The only question here is does Seattle have one ace or a few? I think we know the answer there already, but I’ll put some more words on it later.

Aaron Nola – 7 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 3.30.

You watch him in a game down in old Phil-ly

Where he carves up hitters. E.R.A. shows threes…

Aaron Nola…N-O-L-A Nola.

Spencer Arrighetti – 7 2/3 IP, 0 ER, 2 hits, 4 walks, 11 Ks, ERA at 4.63. Two weeks in the jumpers section? Wowie! Arrighetti looks like he’s not “arreter”ing anytime soon. Apologies for the French pun, but one can only provide so many pasta plays on words. Speaking of words! As I said last week, I wrote Arrighetti up in a deep dive article in March. Give me the kudos. I hoard them in the corner of my ice hut in the off-season.

Bowden Francis – 7 IP, 0 ER, 1 hit, 0 walks, 5 Ks, ERA at 3.66. Oh yes. Our lede from last week was no big deal. He just posted the second-best monthly WHIP…EVER!

Lowest WHIP – Single Month
MLB History (Min 4 starts)

Bowden Francis (Aug 2024) 0.41
Jack Taylor (Sep 1902) 0.47
Jacob deGrom (Jun 2021) 0.48 pic.twitter.com/XGJpaS2RCl

— Chris Black (@DownToBlack) August 30, 2024

AND he nearly ripped off the second no-hitter in Blue Jays history in the process?

Is he a Top 50 SP overall? Probably not. But is he a Top 50 SP the rest of the way? Well, watch this clip and let me know the 50 names that are better than him right now.

Bowden Francis, K'ing the Side in the 1st. pic.twitter.com/sQyJsuIXUH

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 18, 2024

Sean Manaea – 6.2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 0 BB, 11 Ks, ERA at 3.51. Here’s a fun ratio to check out: Manaea is striking out one batter for each strand of his luxurious, Troy Polamalu-esque head lettuce. Yes, maybe a bit hyperbolic, but Manaea is up over a strikeout an inning now with this late-season surge. And speaking of Troy Polamalu…I don’t even know if I could name 10 NFL players, but you know who can? YOU! If you get Rudy’s NFL draft guide and subscription HERE! (Good Lord, I nailed it again!)

Caden Dana 95 (NR) – This was my note for Caden Dana this week: Check the start. Link the second half write-up that I forgot to tag the kids in. Feel shame. Tell you to take a flier on Dana in both keeper and ROS leagues. Quickly reference “the key master and gatekeeper”. Nod my head that one person may get the Ghostbusters reference. Shrug that that person will likely not be Sigourney Weaver. For the record, Dana had a very solid debut against Seattle yesterday. 6 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 4 BBs, 4 Ks. The really surprising part? Anaheim let Dana throw 95 pitches. Even more surprising? His arm did not fall off…yet.

But perhaps the MOST surprising thing was watching this clip from the MLB Network with Greg Amsinger and Buck Showalter talking about which pitcher Caden Dana looked like. Watch this one, then click on the link from my second-half write-up to see which name I mentioned a month ago. Ha!

I assumed he would say Jered Weaver…but he didn’t! (sorry for the crummy audio quality too).

BIGGEST DUMPERS: With apologies to Cal Raleigh, these are some of the biggest dumpers (in value, not pants size).

Paul Skenes – 5 IP, 2 ER, 6 baserunners, 6 Ks, ERA at 2.23. Please, before you get out the pitchforks and torches, hear me out. Paul Skenes is still a Top 10 Starting Pitcher and will be for the rest of the year. I wouldn’t say Mr. Livvy Dunn is slowing down, but I would say to not bet your 401K on him throwing another complete game shutout this year. Blame that nasty ‘innings management’ monster if you want to go out hunting at midnight.

Garrett Crochet – I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall in that White Sox clubhouse. 3.1 innings was enough of a stretch to hang a loss on Crochet yesterday. The atrocious line from that start? 3.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 1 HR, 0 BB, 8 Ks. Yep. That’s right. Crochet struck out 8 of the 10 batters he retired and STILL TOOK THE LOSS in a 2-0 start vs NYM. I’m sorry WhiteSox fans because I’m late to the party here but at what point did it shift from comical to sad or vice versa? Another 57-pitch outing means we probably shouldn’t count on many wins the rest of the way…but we already knew that.

Joe Musgrove – 6 IP, 3 ER, 8 baserunners, 3 Ks, ERA at 4.44. Musgrove isn’t necessarily a dumper. Depending on what your starting rotation looks like, he may be a jumper. The Padres’ SP was probably never available on your waiver wire, especially since there are likely players in your league who think he’s still an ace. If you play in a league with IL spots, he’s not available either. But he’s looking pretty decent since his return from injury and is more than just a streamer as long as the Dads keep steaming through people.

Taj Bradley – I jokingly referred to this Ray as ‘Tumblefish’ last week as a nod to S.E. Hinton’s 1975 novel, and Taj ran out another rotten fish head of a start last week to tumble even further down our rankings. There aren’t many rays of hope left when you’ve allowed 31 earned runs in 28.1 innings and have fully imploded in each start since July 31st. If you haven’t benched him or dropped him yet, you’d better do it fast before he gets stabbed by Johnny in the park. This Outsider went from gold to garbage pretty quickly.

Ryne Nelson – 6 1/3 IP, 2 ER, 8 hits, zero walks, 4 Ks, ERA at 4.22. If you’re a Nelson truther, I’m sorry. But I think you knew this was coming. Getting replaced in the rotation by Jordan Montgomery is like trading in your nice, good-looking partner for Baba Yaga (I honestly don’t know why that reference popped into my head, but here we are). That change is not a MmmmBop. (And three minutes after I typed this note on the phone, that song came on in the car on our 5-hour drive back from the boy’s Provincial Championships. The Gods of Nelson are watching…always.)

DJ Herz NR (90) – 4.2 IP, 4 ER, 2 BBs, 5 Ks. Someone jammed up this DJ’s turntable with peanut butter and poop emojis.

Zebby Matthews NR (92) – 2 IP, 10 H, 9 ER, 1 BB, 5 Ks. We watched some of this one in the hotel lobby on Saturday night with parents from my son’s travel baseball team. When casual fans are commenting on how surprised they are with the number of runs the Jays scored early, you know it’s not a good thing for the opposing pitcher.

WHEE! – The following players zoomed on to the list this week!

Matthew Boyd

Cody Bradford

Caden Dana

David Peterson

Bobby Miller

Jack Leiter

OOF! – The following players dropped off the list this week!

DJ Herz

Zebby Matthews

Jameson Taillon

Vicente Bellozo

Tyler Mahle

Michael Lorenzen

That’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed it! Next week, I’ll post the Top 100 Starting Pitchers with some write-ups on some of the arms that I think need a bit more attention than others or cherry-picking names to highlight as we progress through the last couple of months of the season.

Drop some comments in the chat if you’re feeling extra fired up about some of the names I do (or don’t) have here. Have a great week!

Follow me @marmosdad on Twitter/X and Bluesky @marmosdad.bsky.social