No matter how much baseball changes, the value of the top tier of starting pitchers is undeniable. So, let's take a look at the top starters in baseball, with some of my opinion included but mostly based on thoughts from scouts and front office executives I polled going into the season.
I felt like the group of pitchers who deserve to be on this list got a bit smaller this season as longtime stalwarts such as Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom fell off for various reasons, leaving a group of six slam dunk aces and another six whose place on the list could be debated.
We're seeing a swell of young pitchers jumping onto the list or veterans fine-tuning to the best version of themselves, often by adding pitches to fill out their arsenal -- one of the five superpowers that pitchers can leverage.
Here is my ranking of MLB's true aces for the 2025 season.
The slam dunk aces
1. Tarik Skubal, LHP, Detroit Tigers
Skubal is the defending AL Cy Young winner. The 28-year-old won the award unanimously and is the leading favorite to win it again. In the past four seasons, his average fastball velocity has climbed from 94.2 to 97.6 mph, at ages when velocity usually peaks and starts to fall for most pitchers, so his continued rise was basically impossible to predict.
He also throws his two fastballs over 50% of the time and his changeup more than both breaking balls combined. Both tendencies are a bit unusual for a front-line starter in today's game -- but that's also what you get with aces: They're outliers.
2. Paul Skenes, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
It sometimes gets forgotten that even though Skenes was the top pitching prospect of the decade before he was drafted No. 1 overall in 2023, he still needed to learn a new pitch (a splinker) -- it would become his best one -- and then beat command expectations at the big league level before he could become one of the best pitchers in baseball.
This was true with Tim Lincecum and Justin Verlander before him: The gap from elite prospect to ace still includes at least a bunch of small adjustments and usually one new pitch to make that leap. I covered those in my scouting-focused feature on Skenes last season. To me, making that leap so quickly is what's most impressive about Skenes. OK, that 93-95 mph splinker is pretty cool, too.
3. Zack Wheeler, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies
Wheeler is about to turn 35 years old and his velo is slipping a bit for the fourth straight season, but he's still securely on this list because he racks up innings among the league leaders and performs well in the playoffs.
4. Garrett Crochet, LHP, Boston Red Sox
Crochet is coming into his peak years with a fresh extension on a new team, but he also can't get into the top reaches of this list just yet because he has made only 35 career big league starts.
But proof that he can post a ton of innings just isn't there right now, but all of the indicators suggest he should be here for a while. I also broke him down when describing the superpowers of aces who changed teams this offseason, explaining why extension and velocity make Crochet what he is.
5. Chris Sale, LHP, Atlanta Braves
Sale just turned 36, already had one period in the wilderness during his career and has the lowest velo of anyone listed so far. That said, he also won the NL Cy Young, nearly unanimously, and posted an absurd comeback season that harkens back to his classic prime years, so he has a spot in this group until he actively loses it.
6. Framber Valdez, LHP, Houston Astros
Ground ball-oriented starters without huge strikeout rates aren't the most exciting or appreciated pitchers. But Valdez's mid-90s sinker is still deadly, he's been a clear front-line starter for three-plus seasons, and he has made 16 playoff starts. He is steady and he is going to get paid when he hits free agency after the season.
Tier 2: The second-tier aces
7. Cole Ragans, LHP, Kansas City Royals
To me, the six starters above are the game's slam dunk aces on both evidence and history. That top group gives way to a group consisting of both veterans who are just past their peaks and some speculative picks who aren't consensus choices from the evaluators I spoke with. This group could be pretty different by midseason depending on how these starters progress and starts with a pitcher who has been dominant without a large sample size to bank on.
Ragans is fourth in baseball in WAR behind Sale, Skubal and Wheeler over the past two seasons. But his entire career is made up of those 35 starts plus 12 late in 2023, as Ragans was a failed/stalled prospect who went from soft-tosser to front-line starter when his velo spiked 4.5 ticks in the 2023 season.
Like Crochet near the top of the list, this ranking is projecting Ragans to consolidate those gains and continue evolving and improving, but we're now at essentially a season and a half of him being one of the best pitchers in the game, so Ragans has earned the ace label.
8. Logan Gilbert, RHP, Seattle Mariners
I know I'm old because when Gilbert comes up, I still think about scouting him at Stetson in 2018 when scouts were wondering whether his draft-year velo dip was tied to his big pitch counts every Friday.
His velo is up five ticks since then, so it's safe to say that usage was a big reason, but he is now one of the most notorious tinkerers in the league (in a good way), fine-tuning his grips, pitch shapes and usage to optimize what he's doing at all times. Doing that while throwing 185-plus innings three years in a row makes him an ace.
9. Corbin Burnes, RHP, Arizona Diamondbacks
Burnes is unique among this group of pitchers, relying on a cutter as his primary pitch as part of a supinator's arsenal. He's in the first year of a six-year, $210 million deal and has had a rocky first two starts, but has four-plus years of bulk innings at a front-line starter level. Burnes is now 30 years old and the velo of his cutter is starting to slip, so his effectiveness in the first half of this season is something to monitor.
10. Dylan Cease, RHP, San Diego Padres
Cease has been circling ace status for years -- basically every season since his 2021 breakout year. He finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting last season behind Sale, Wheeler and Skenes, so it's safe to say the consensus is that he's an ace now, if he wasn't before.
While he's been a top-20 pitcher in the sport for a while, Cease has a 12.91 career ERA over three postseason starts, and even though his core components (strikeouts, walks, ground ball rate) are pretty stable year-to-year, his ERA has bounced all over the place throughout his career.
11. Cristopher Sanchez, LHP, Philadelphia Phillies
Last season, Sanchez was in the "just missed" group that I outline below, just needing one more tick of stuff or command to break into this tier. His sinker velo is up two ticks this season and he now has the look of a breakout, à la Ragans and Crochet (and you could include Skenes) over the past two seasons. He threw 181⅔ innings last season with a 3.32 ERA, so this isn't totally speculative, but I'd expect Sanchez's strikeout rate to increase from last year's 7.6 K/9 to drive the better outcome.
12. Spencer Strider, RHP, Atlanta Braves
He hasn't completely returned from elbow surgery yet as he's still in Triple-A, but Strider should be coming up soon. His velocity in those two rehab starts has been one tick below his standard, but every other indication is that Strider is back to his old self, and even if he's a notch behind his normal level this season, he still belongs on this list given his track record and the highs he showed before surgery.
The pitchers who just missed
You could take the same approach that I did with Strider when it comes to Shohei Ohtani, but the Dodgers star's layoff has been longer, his highs on the mound weren't quite as high and his bulk-inning upside isn't as great given his two-way exploits.
Gerrit Cole is a perennial ace, but he is out for the season after taking a step back last year. I think he'll return next year and be an ace once again, but he'll also be 35 years old and that's a year-plus away, so Cole also goes into the wait-and-see bucket with Ohtani.
Hunter Greene was close to making it this time as a rising star, but I ultimately settled on Sanchez as that type of ace, and the Cincinnati Reds starter is a strong candidate for a spot in the next iteration.
There are a number of pitchers you could argue for inclusion, either waiting for a season with more bulk innings, more health, or just another season of evidence (Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Spencer Schwellenbach). Or, they're just at the top of the next group and need to take one more step to make it into the top dozen starters in the game (Blake Snell, Logan Webb, Max Fried, Michael King, George Kirby, etc.) like Cristopher Sanchez seemingly has.