Major League Baseball

Need to draft a pitching staff from scratch? Here's whom you should pick

Updated May. 28, 2021 11:34 a.m. ET

By Jake Mintz & Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writers

Who are the shut-down, no-doubt aces in MLB right now? We're doing a little draft to find out.

Alrighty, friends, here are the ground rules for this exercise. We’re going to go back and forth making selections for our "if the playoffs started tomorrow five-man pitching rotation." We’re drafting players for the purpose of starting a postseason game tomorrow, so injured players such as Justin Verlander are off the board. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume that each of our fake teams has an identically average bullpen, offense and defense.

Because he was born 5 months, 25 days earlier, Jordan gets the first overall pick.

Jordan: Jacob deGrom

Obviously I’m taking Jacob deGrom. When Jake said I had the first pick, I felt like those Pelicans staffers when they won the Zion Williamson lottery:

Sure, the recent nagging injuries are a bit worrisome, but as far as on-field performance and dominance goes, deGrom is in a class of his own right now, whether he’s facing actual big leaguers or Low-A hitters. And don’t worry: My imaginary team will surely provide the run support he deserves.

Jake: Gerrit Cole

Yeah, I also would have taken deGrom. I think if Gerrit Cole had the first pick, he might have taken deGrom. But alas, by virtue of my youth, I’ll have to settle for only the second-greatest pitcher currently breathing air on this spinning globe.

Cole had an odd 2020 in which he was undeniably good but not quite the mind-melting force of dominance he’d been in 2019. Well, this year he’s just 100 percent, obscenely back to being that dude.

I highly recommend watching him face the Orioles whenever that lopsided matchup happens next. It’s like watching LeBron against a gaggle of middle schoolers. It’s flat-out not fair. Besides deGrom, Cole is as ace-y as aces get: an enormous, broad-shouldered, sturdy boy with a hair-raising fastball, pinpoint command and secondary stuff so dirty it needs a baby wipe.

There was really no other legitimate selection to be made here.

Jordan: Yu Darvish

Whatever clicked for Darvish midway through the 2019 season has held up and then some. Since the 2019 All-Star Break, Darvish is fourth among pitchers in fWAR, at 7.3, behind only deGrom, Cole and Shane Bieber. A second-place finish in the NL Cy Young last season reestablished Darvish as part of the upper-echelon of starting pitchers in the world, a distinction he hadn’t held since his first couple of years in Texas. I’d love to see Darvish dominate on the biggest stage and shed whatever stink is still on him from the extremely unfortunate circumstance that was the 2017 World Series. He was solid for the Cubs against the Marlins in October, but I’m loving what I’ve seen from him so far in San Diego and would feel very confident in his ability to deliver a quality outing.

Jake: Clayton Kershaw

Reports of Clayton’s pitching death were highly exaggerated. A few years ago, when his velocity dropped precipitously, there was understandable concern about what the second half of his Hall of Fame career would look like. But he’s now on year four of averaging 91 mph on his fastball and is showing no significant signs of decline, thanks in part to the elite spin rate on his heater. While the "Cooperstown Curve" gets all the hype, it’s really Kershaw’s slider – which he has been throwing 47% of the time – that has enabled his recent run of form. He has learned how to dominate with diminished heat, and besides injuries, there’s no reason he can’t keep doing this into his mid-30s. This might be a bit of an overdraft, but if I need 20 outs from a starter to save the human race tomorrow, I feel great with Kershaw out there.

Jordan: Max Scherzer

I’ll be honest. I was a bit worried after 2020 that we might finally be seeing Scherzer decline even a little bit, but he’s right back at it this year. His fierce competitiveness is unmatched, and the stuff remains elite, even if the velocity has ticked down a bit (and he can still hit 97 when he really wants to). Plus, if this imaginary draft is happening on the bleachers, and all my options are sitting right in front of me, I’m not about to be the guy willingly choosing to pass over Max Scherzer. That seems like a bad idea.

Jake: Shane Bieber

The reigning AL Cy Young has had a weird season so far. He’s still striking out tons of hitters, and his stuff looks the same as it did in last year’s sparkling shortened campaign. But he’s also walking the farm and giving up more hard contact than we’re used to. All that considered, I still feel good about The Biebs turning things around and think he’s still capable of dominance any time he takes the mound. Lastly, I know his postseason start last year against the Yanks was a cheeky disaster, but he isn't the kind of pitcher who gets obliterated. Despite his lackluster numbers, he has yet to allow more than three runs in a start so far this year.

Jordan: Brandon Woodruff

Even after he made the All-Star team, I remember watching Woodruff in the 2019 NL wild-card game vs. the Nationals in complete awe of how dominant his stuff was, considering he was mostly known to that point as That Guy Who Homered Off Kershaw In The Postseason. He threw only four innings in that game, but I came away realizing then that he’s way too good to carry that Kershaw dinger label forever. Woodruff's 4.2 fWAR is tied for fifth among starting pitchers since the start of the 2020 season. He’s one of the best pitchers in baseball now, and I’d feel great about giving him the ball if October began tomorrow.

Jake: Corbin Burnes

I mean, the guy struck out 58 batters this season before issuing a walk, which, according to my sources, is ... very good. His success has come by way of a devastating, 95 mph cutter that he tosses more than half the time. There’s certainly less of a track record with Burnes than with some of the other names on the list, so some might be wary of slapping the "ace" label on him after only two months of elite chucking. But I’m a believer. The Brewers clearly know how to develop sturdy starters who throw gas, Burnes had a good prospect pedigree, and again, you can’t fluke your way into 58 strikeouts without a walk. Also, Jordan took one of the Brewers, and I didn’t want to make it through this draught beer-less.

Jordan: Tyler Glasnow

This might be the riskiest pick for my rotation, but I’m such a big believer and have seen enough improvements that I couldn’t resist taking 6-foot-8, 100 mph-throwing Tommy Shelby. He finally added a third pitch in a nasty slider – consider how good he already was as a starting pitcher with just two pitches – and his control continues to improve. There are safer selections on the board, but I’ll take the guy capable of making any big-league lineup look completely helpless on the right day.

Jake: John Means

Is this an Orioles fan homer selection? Potentially. But take a glance at Means’ numbers, and there’s no denying that he has thrust himself into the upper crust of starters so far this season. He doesn’t have as long a track record as these other arms and doesn’t strike as many batters out, but he has proven start after start that his 2019 All-Star campaign was no fluke. Sure, he can be a bit homer-prone, but who isn’t nowadays? Means’ no-hitter was against a dreary Mariners lineup, but he has had outstanding outings against the Red Sox, A’s, Yankees and Mets, all of whom look like playoff teams. Early season WAR is notoriously finicky, and WAR isn’t the best metric to evaluate pitchers, so I’m cherry-picking like a window-washer here, but Means is second overall (hitters and pitchers) in Baseball Reference WAR right now.

Let's see how our staffs stack up.

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Who didn’t get picked that we considered taking?

Trevor Bauer

The reigning NL Cy Young has been pretty much what the Dodgers backed the Brinks Truck up for in the offseason. His ERA is right around 2, and he’s striking out a bucketload of batters, as per usual. That said, we have concerns that whenever MLB cracks down on his nefarious, military-grade supergoop, his spin rate numbers – and perhaps his other numbers – will drop. Yes, we know nearly every pitcher is using some kind of sticky stuff, but very few if any have demonstrated spikes in spin rate remotely close to Bauer’s the past two seasons. He probably should have been taken here, but like many MLB teams in free agency last winter, neither of us wanted to pull the trigger, and we kept kicking it back to each other until we were done.

Zack Wheeler

We might have laughed when Phillies owner John Middleton insisted in the offseason that he wouldn’t trade Wheeler for Babe Ruth, but that hyperbolic defense of the right-hander is starting to look a bit more reasonable. On this year’s performance alone, Wheeler is clearly worthy of being one of the first 10 arms off the board. We’d just like to see it for a bit longer before we hop on board.

Walker Buehler

It seemed like we were all ready to crown Buehler as the official ace of the Dodgers before Bauer signed, Kershaw reminded us that he isn’t going anywhere and Julio Urias emerged this season as a frontline starter in his own right. That’s not to say Buehler couldn’t reach that level sometime soon, but he hasn’t taken that next big leap quite yet, so we left him on the board.

Lucas Giolito

Call us in a month. After a few typically impressive starts to kick off the season, the kindest starting pitcher in baseball hit a road bump, including an ugly outing at 11 a.m. on Patriots Day in Boston, where he clearly didn’t have it, and Tony LaRussa just let the horror movie keep playing.

He has been much better in his past two starts, and we're sure he’s going to be quite all right.

Aaron Nola

The longtime Phillie perpetually fluctuates between being the worst ace in baseball and being the best not-an-ace in baseball — not that the distinction matters to Nola and the Phillies because whenever the lanky Louisianan is on the mound, his club is in the game. The overall numbers are good, not great, but when Nola is on his game, he belongs higher on this list. He just has a few too many ‘meh’ outings for our liking.

Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman, creators of the Twitter account Céspedes Family BBQ, write about all things baseball for FOX Sports.