Underdog MLB Best Ball: Pitcher Fades (February 2026)

Drafting players that are going to return positive draft-day value is the name of the game in best ball, and it's even more important in MLB best ball, where positions blur together to give us a multitude of decisions on what player archetypes to construct our roster around.

But sometimes, the drafting public gets too far in front of their skis, and the result is a player who is going way earlier in drafts than they probably should unless they hit their highest ceiling outcome.

Here are three of my Underdog MLB best ball pitcher fades that I won't be drafting at their current costs.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Los Angeles Dodgers

Current ADP: 45.1 (Mid round 4)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Late round 6

Starting off with the spiciest take I've got. You're welcome!

This is not about Yamamoto. He is an elite pitcher. His stuff is insane. He's going to pitch well. But! How much is he going to pitch?

Here's what we believe to know right now, and what it means for this game we play:

1. The Dodgers will be rolling with a six-man rotation for the entirety of the year. We play a weekly game. There will be times where pitchers could pitch twice in a given week, which is extremely valuable. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will not be afforded those opportunities, while many others around him will.

2. The Dodgers have won the NL West. Congratulations! It's possible they take their foot off the gas at times, especially during our best ball playoffs, to keep their best players healthy for the postseason. That's less impactful for hitters, who can still play five out of six games in a week, and more impactful for pitchers, who could straight-up take a zero without being hurt.

That's way too much downside risk for me to justify a top-four-round pick on a player.

Spencer Strider, Atlanta Braves

Current ADP: 86.6 (Early round 8)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Mid round 9

We saw one spring training game last season where Spencer Strider struck out a bunch of minor leaguers and the collective "we" (but not me!) were back in. Then he pitched in the regular season and it did not go well. Most notably, the fastball velocity was down significantly from his pre-injury numbers. I'm not convinced it's ever coming back.

Can he still be an effective pitcher if he doesn't have his elite fastball? Sure. And there's a scenario where I'm just wrong and he returns to his pre-injury form. That's what others are betting on. I'm willing to take that bet at a cost, too, but not in the range of one of my favorite undervalued targets.

Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee Brewers

Current ADP: 112.2 (Early round 10)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Early round 13

This one hurts to write. Please be wrong for my own sanity.

The problem here is two-fold. One, Jacob Misiorowski has never thrown over 100 innings in any level of professional baseball. That goes all the way back to 2020. Six seasons, never topped his career high of 97.1 innings. We are simply not going to get the volume necessary here. If you told me he was going to pitch 120 innings, I would call that a ceiling outcome. Again, hope I'm wrong!

Justifying that more is him absolutely fading in the second half of last season - and by second half, I actually mean after three starts in June. From July onward, his ERA was above four in every month - including a disgusting 9.58 in August.

Go Brewers, but this is something separate from that, and in this case, he's just not a fit for what we need from our pitchers.

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