When the 2025 MLB season arrives next week, some of the game’s top aces will take the mound in new uniforms. This also means some fan bases will be rooting for top pitchers they haven’t seen much before — and that’s where we can help.
Whether you are a New York Yankees fan looking to appreciate Max Fried, a Boston Red Sox fan hyped to see Garrett Crochet, or pulling for one of the other aces in new places, here’s our scouting report on the top five star pitchers on new teams — including the superpower that makes each of them special.
Roki Sasaki, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Roki Sasaki ESPN
Superpower: Kills spin on an otherworldly splitter
Pitch mix: Four-seam fastball, splitter, slider
Max velo: 100.5 mph in MLB debut, up to 102 mph in the past
Acquired: Signed for a $6.5 million bonus
It took all of one spring training outing to see that a standout characteristic of Sasaki’s may have just turned into his superpower.
His splitter has been his best pitch for a long time, and it was already one of the best in the world, but the splitter he’s throwing now is quite different from the one he threw in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. In his first spring outing, his splitter averaged 518 rpm at 85.8 mph, compared with the WBC splitter that was around 1,100 rpm at 91 mph. Both of these versions are elite pitches, but the new version may solve two problems at once.
Sasaki is a low-spin pitcher, on every pitch, and that will likely never change. He ran into trouble last year in Japan by trying to manufacture more sweep on his slider, which caused him to throw it a few ticks slower and also led to him cutting his fastball more, or moving to his glove side. This made both pitches worse because Sasaki was basically trying to do something that isn’t natural for the kind of pitcher he is. How a team would correct Sasaki’s hand placement, delivery and more to correct his fastball shape and bring his slider back to its old self was the thing he cared about most when teams were pitching him why he should sign with them.
Somewhere south of 1,000 rpm, a splitter becomes more of a knuckle splitter because it does some of the things a knuckleball does: mainly, move unpredictably. Sasaki’s splitter, in part because of him cutting the ball more last season, had close to the shape of a bullet spin/gyro slider. Now that this splitter still has that same style and direction of spin but with much fewer rpm, the movement has a huge variance. The pitch will literally vary from the velocity and horizontal cut of an average MLB slider to the arm-side run and velocity of an average splitter, with more sink than average in both circumstances, occasionally with the sink of an average curveball.
Because his already elite splitter is now two different pitches in one, that makes fixing his slider a less pressing issue. It appears Sasaki has some control over the horizontal direction of which way his splitter is darting (as Lance Brozdowski pointed out, the movement profiles group a bit based on hitter handedness), so Sasaki could just ditch the slider he threw last year completely and add a bullet spin/gyro cutter around 90 mph that would fill a hole in his arsenal. Low spin also means more sink and his fastball shape still isn’t great (his velocity is what makes it effective), so it would make sense for him to throw more two-seam fastballs, leaning even further into the low-spin trait.
Corbin Burnes, RHP, Diamondbacks
Corbin Burnes ESPN
Superpower: Supination
Pitch mix: Cutter, curveball, slider, changeup, two-seam fastball, sweeper
Max velo: 98 mph
Acquired: Signed for six years, $210 million
You probably think that you don’t know what supination means, but you actually do: It just means being gifted at glove-side movement. Sasaki isn’t a supinator, gifted at arm-side movement, so throwing a sweeper isn’t a natural thing for him. It’s so natural to Burnes that everything he throws cuts, relative to league averages. His cutter, slider, sweeper and curveball make up 81% of pitches he threw last season.
The development playbook for a supinator is to throw at least three breaking balls to take full advantage of that innate ability, throw a cutter instead of a changeup, and then figure out a fastball shape that works because he might have trouble getting ride up in the zone.
Top 100 MLB prospects » | 101-200 »
Ranking all 30 farm systems » | Team top 10s »
Bold predictions » | Fantasy: Names to watch »
Burnes also throws a solid sinker and changeup, which are mostly used so righties can’t lean over the plate expecting everything to cut. Burnes’ two-seam fastball has roughly average movement but is three ticks harder than the average righty’s two-seamer, so it’s a solid pitch due to velocity but also keeps hitters honest versus his bread-and-butter pitch: the cutter. That pitch is a tick harder than the average big league four-seam fastball (yes, Burnes also throws everything hard and that helps) with 3 inches of sink and 11 inches of cut more than average.
Unique traits or outlier abilities are what the most savvy pitching development teams are looking for in the low levels of the minors and amateur baseball right up to the majors, and Burnes’ combination of plus velocity, the feel to throw strikes with six different pitches and a big supination inclination makes for a unique ace.
Blake Snell, LHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Blake Snell ESPN
Superpower: Vertical planes, created by his delivery and arm speed
Pitch mix: Four-seam fastball, curveball, changeup, slider
Max velo: 98 mph
Acquired: Signed for 5 years, $182 million
I just spent a lot of space going into pretty nerdy areas about pitch movement, pitch design philosophy, and stuff you can only see in a spreadsheet or with a high-speed camera. Snell is a little more straightforward to explain.
He throws really hard, from a high slot, and he’s tall (6-foot-4), which means his fastball comes in fast and seemingly from the sky. That means he can manipulate the vertical break of a pitch easily and to great effect. When pitches move that fast and have big gaps in their movement, that equals lots of whiffs and goofy swings, but also more pitches in the dirt if not executed properly. That’s the Blake Snell experience.
Explained with some numbers: Snell is fourth among big league lefty starters in average fastball velocity, fourth in terms of highest arm slot among big league lefties, and fractions of an inch away from the highest release point among all big league left-handed pitchers.
His fastball has a 19-inch induced vertical break (IVB, or measure of rise/sink). Two pitches are fairly close but differentiate by their horizontal direction — his changeup is at 10 (while running to his arm side), his slider is at 5 (while cutting to his glove side) — while his curveball is at minus-10 inches. Every pitcher does a version of this, but Snell’s highest vertical breaking pitch (i.e. the least sink) breaks 4 inches less than average, and his curveball breaks 3 inches more than average, while both are a few ticks harder than average. His arm speed, arm slot and height all work together to give him a unique profile.
Max Fried, LHP, New York Yankees
Max Fried ESPN
Superpower: Execution of a deep repertoire
Pitch mix: Four-seam fastball, curveball, two-seam fastball, changeup, sweeper, slider, cutter
Max velo: 98 mph
Acquired: Signed for 8 years, $218 million
Fried is a supinator like Burnes (and Snell, for that matter), but doesn’t have elite velocity or spin rates as his way to turn that innate ability into success. Fried instead throws seven distinct pitches, all average or better in quality, and all with a plan to bridge a gap in his arsenal, or be used in specific locations and for specific scenarios. His superpower is his command of this deep arsenal, while his giftedness in cutting the ball better than the average pitcher is merely what his execution of this plan looks like.
His sinker and changeup run to his arm side (similar to Burnes) and are thrown a combined 30% of the time, while his four-seam fastball has natural cutting action. His cutter, slider, sweeper and curveball are the complement of the above-average differently shaped breaking balls you’d expect from a supinator.
Garrett Crochet, LHP, Boston Red Sox
Garrett Crochet Garrett Crochet
Superpower: Velocity
Pitch mix: Four-seam fastball, cutter, sweeper, changeup
Max velo: 98 mph
Acquired: Traded from White Sox
This one may seem the simplest, because when you think about why an ace is an ace, the first thing you probably think of is a guy that’s throwing harder than everyone else. Crochet is the hardest-throwing lefty starter in baseball, and he also has among the best extension in the game (how far in front of the rubber he releases the ball).
The 2025 fantasy baseball season is here! Get the group together, or start a brand-new tradition.
Join or start a league for free >>
These two things are related in that his lower half creates the power for the velocity and also the extension that allows him to increase the perceived velocity of the pitch, and get further down the mound to create a better (read: flatter) plane for his fastball to play up in the strike zone. A flat fastball may sound like a bad thing to you, a thing you learned in Little League, and in some ways it is — it’s the easiest kind of pitch to hit a flyball or home run off of — but when located well and thrown really hard, it also creates the most whiffs and pop-ups, which are near-automatic outs in the TV league. Craig Kimbrel and Tyler Glasnow are great examples of extension and velocity doing the heavy lifting to create hard-to-hit fastballs.
It isn’t just his fastball that comes in fast. Crochet’s cutter is four ticks faster than the average lefty cutter, the sweeper is also four ticks harder, and his changeup is six ticks harder than the average changeup.
In the minds of many fans, an obsession with velocity and throwing as hard as possible every pitch is ruining baseball, but it turned Crochet into an ace and is about to line his bank account once the Red Sox want to talk extension.
