Gerrit Cole was a no-doubt bust pick before undergoing surgery for internal bracing of a UCL injury. Picking pitching busts was slightly more difficult with him out of the mix. Nevertheless, the following three pitchers have red flags, causing me to deem them probable busts at their respective average draft positions (ADP). To qualify for this piece, a pitcher had to have an ADP in the first five rounds of 12-team mixed leagues, meaning a top-60 ADP.

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Fantasy Baseball Busts

Garrett Crochet (SP – BOS) | Pitcher #7/35.8 ADP

The Red Sox initially struck gold with a left-handed ace from the White Sox almost a decade ago. Can Garrett Crochet follow in Chris Sale‘s footsteps? Crochet might be able to in the long term, but he has a less extensive track record of Cy Young Award-caliber pitching than Sale had when he arrived in Boston. More importantly, Crochet tossed only 146 innings across 32 starts in his first season as a starter in the Majors.

As a result, the Zeile Consensus Projections have pegged Crochet for only 153.6 innings this year. Excluding Shohei Ohtani, because he didn’t actually pitch in 2024, Paul Skenes (133 innings) was the only starting pitcher inside the top 18 in our value-based ranking metric (VBR) in 2024 with fewer than 162 innings. The top seven starting pitchers also tossed at least 173.1 innings last year.

Crochet was sensational last year. Per FanGraphs, Crochet had six wins, a 3.58 ERA, 2.85 xERA, 2.38 xFIP, 2.53 SIERA, 1.07 WHIP, 5.5 BB% and 35.1 K% in 2024. The lefty’s ERA estimators suggest he could post a better ERA this year if he maintains his elite underlying data.

However, Crochet has downgraded his home ballparks with the trade to the Red Sox. According to our ballpark factors, Fenway Park is tied for the fourth-highest park factor for runs (1.093), and Rate Field (1.020) is 10th. The home park swap is unlikely to help Crochet close the gap between his ERA and ERA estimators.

Crochet can help fantasy baseball teams when he toes the slab. However, he’s likely to fall short of value commensurate with being the seventh-picked pitcher unless he takes another massive leap in innings this season. Last year, even in a superb campaign, Crochet was just the 46th-ranked pitcher by our VBR. The Red Sox should give him more run support than Chicago’s anemic offense, likely helping him earn more than the six wins he tallied last year. Nevertheless, a pick at the back of the third round is too rich for Crochet, and if his pre-2024 control issues — 12.7 BB% in his first 73 innings in The Show — resurface (he’s walked 17.9% of the 28 batters he’s faced in spring training), he could be a monumental bust instead of a small one.

Blake Snell (SP – LAD) | Pitcher #12/47.0 ADP

Blake Snell debuted in the Majors in 2016, and he’s tallied a sub-9.0 BB% once, recording an 8.9 BB% in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The lefty has reached at least a 10.5 BB% five times in his nine-year big-league career, including recording a 10.5 BB% for the Giants last season. Snell’s below-average to downright lousy control is the first fly in the ointment in his fantasy baseball profile.

Second, Snell is the polar opposite of a workhorse. He threw a career-high 180.2 innings in 2018 and 180 in 2023. Those were the only occasions Snell reached even 130 innings in the Majors.

Snell has a lengthy history of injuries. The most concerning of Snell’s injuries is his nearly annual adductor strains since 2021. I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on television. Still, when a pitcher shows me he struggles to avoid injuries and pile up innings, I choose to believe him. More importantly, the projection models also don’t project Snell for a hefty workload this year, with Steamer projecting him for 170 innings and only FanGraphs Depth Charts (160 innings) and OOPSY (161 innings) among publically available free projections also projecting him for 160-plus innings. The Zeile Consensus Projections have him penciled in for 159 innings.

A sizable workload is a pre-requisite for most starting pitchers to finish among the top options in a fantasy baseball season. Again, Skenes (133), Hunter Greene (150.1 innings) and Reynaldo Lopez (135.2 innings) were the only top-24 starting pitchers in our VBR metric in 2024 who pitched fewer than 160 innings, and they had a 1.96 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 11 wins and 170 strikeouts, 2.75, 1.02, nine and 169 and 1.99, 1.11, eight and 148, respectively. Furthermore, Skenes was the only starting pitcher of the three outliers to finish as a top-12 pitcher in 2024. Snell needs one of the outlier seasons from his career to live up to his ADP, leaving him with much more downside than upside at his cost. He should be priced 25-to-30 picks later than his ADP.

Jacob deGrom (SP – TEX) | Pitcher #14/55.5 ADP

The recurring theme for the two previously highlighted busts was a concern about projected innings. Those concerns pale in comparison to Jacob deGrom’s innings outlook for this season. Since spinning 204 innings in 2019, deGrom has pitched 68, 92, 64.1, 30.1 and 10.2.

Steamer is far and away the most optimistic projection model, penciling deGrom in for 152 innings this year, followed by 132 by FanGraphs Depth Charts and OOPSY, 112 by ZiPS Depth Charts and 110 by ATC and THE BAT. The Zeile Consensus Projection is only 120.2 innings for deGrom.

The 36-year-old righty discussed no longer trying to strike everyone out and picking his spots to dial up his velocity in a piece penned by Jeff Passan. Striking out fewer batters would reduce deGrom’s fantasy baseball value, and throwing at lower velocity won’t assure him a healthy campaign. Gamers should tip their cap to the ambitious — or foolish, if you prefer — league mate who drafts deGrom near his ADP if deGrom lives up to the expectations that accompany his ADP. The risk-versus-reward ratio tilts too far toward risk to be worth picking deGrom with a top-100 pick, let alone a top-50 selection.

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Josh Shepardson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Josh, check out his archive and follow him @BChad50.