.png?w=1280)
Ranking the Best 25-and-Under SPs Driving Historic MLB Season
In the first half of the 2020s, young pitching talent lagged behind young hitting talent. In fact, it was kind of a dry spell for hot young arms in MLB.
Not anymore.
If it feels like talented young hurlers are suddenly everywhere, that's because they are. The 25-and-under crowd, specifically, is having a historic season so far in 2026, with a collective 3.77 ERA that a park- and league-adjusted version of the stat ranks as their best season since the 1930s.
The right thing to do, then, is honor the best of the best of these youngsters by ranking them. And after first touching on some honorable mentions, we'll do so by sizing up the eight best 25-and-under starting pitchers in the league.
Honorable Mentions
1 of 9
Connelly Early, Boston Red Sox
Age: 24
Early has a 2.80 ERA after 15 major league starts, which goes to show how successful he's been at bamboozling hitters with his six-pitch mix.
He's probably been a little too effective at preventing runs, given that he actually gets hit pretty hard and has mostly avoided damage via an 88.3 strand percentage this year. At worst, though, he looks like an effective mid-rotation starter.
Nolan McLean, New York Mets
Age: 24
In terms of pure stuff, McLean is in the top one percent of pitchers in MLB. The fastball zips up there in the mid-90s, and anyone who follows Rob "Pitching Ninja" Friedman will know just how much his pitches move.
It's therefore odd to see him saddled with a 4.21 ERA through 12 starts this year. He's the anti-Early in that his strand rate is unsustainably low at 65.0 percent, but runs are going on the board either way.
Payton Tolle, Boston Red Sox
Age: 23
Tolle has a 2.61 ERA through seven starts this season, and his peripherals include a WHIP under 1.0 and a 4.2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It's a small sample size, but this is ace-caliber stuff.
There is also something to be said about the pure entertainment value of Tolle as a presence on the mound. He's a big, excitable dude whose approach to pitching is to go "Here it is, hit it" with his mid-to-high 90s heat. It's pretty great, honestly.
Justin Wrobleski, Los Angeles Dodgers
Age: 25
Wrobleski has handled 62.2 innings for the Dodgers and turned in a 2.87 ERA. He "only" throws 93.8 mph on the heater, but it's one of those that gets on hitters quicker than the velocity indicates.
That said, what we have here is not a strikeout maestro. His 16.0 strikeout percentage is third-lowest among all pitchers with at least 60 innings pitched.
8. Taj Bradley, Minnesota Twins
2 of 9
Age: 25
2026 Stats: 10 GS, 56.0 IP, 47 H (6 HR), 65 K, 21 BB, 3.21 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
Taj Bradley was a hot-shot prospect with the Tampa Bay Rays, but they never really figured him out before shipping him to the Twins last July. And even now, you can make the case he's still a work in progress.
Even so, Bradley is one of those guys whose stuff is so good that you wonder how anyone ever gets a hit off him.
He's gotten his fastball as high as 100.3 mph this year, and he can and will use it to simply blow hitters away. He also still has the cutter with which he made a name for himself as a prospect, and it's holding hitters to a .184 average.
Then you have the splitter and the curveball, each of which boasts a whiff rate over 40 percent. At an average of 90.8 mph and late off-the-table movement, the splitter is proving especially difficult for hitters to square up.
7. Parker Messick, Cleveland Guardians
3 of 9
Age: 25
2026 Stats: 12 GS, 69.1 IP, 53 H (6 HR), 74 K, 21 BB, 2.21 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
There's a stat at FanGraphs called "Stuff+" that effectively measures the quality of a pitcher's offerings. And according to this stat, Parker Messick's stuff is short of average (100) with a score of 96.
And yet, his results don't lie about how much he's been mowing hitters down in 2026. All his key performance indicators skew toward above-average, including his walk and strikeout rates and basically all measures of contact quality.
It makes sense if you simply sit down and watch him pitch. He throws strikes and is multiple kinds of deceptive, as he hides the ball well with his mechanics and throws six different pitches at hitters.
The changeup is undeniably the star of the show. It's one of those that just seems to die as it reaches the hitting zone, and it has a 44.7 whiff rate and a 24.3 hard-hit rate to vouch for how hard it is to square up.
6. Kyle Harrison, Milwaukee Brewers
4 of 9
Age: 24
2026 Stats: 10 GS, 51.2 IP, 39 H (3 HR), 61 K, 14 BB, 1.57 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
Kyle Harrison's first 194.2 innings in the majors yielded a 91 ERA+, so it's little wonder that he got passed around from San Francisco to Boston to Milwaukee in less than a year.
Well, leave it to the Brewers to still see raw talent and figure out the exact way to refine it. The result is more or less the pitcher that was promised when Harrison was a hot-shot prospect a few years ago.
His fastball velocity is plenty good enough at 94.9, and the four-seamer plays up because of his low release and the rising action of the pitch itself. He's getting a 30.8 whiff percentage on it, second to only Jacob Misiorowski among starters.
That pitch alone makes for fun viewing, as Harrison can go right at hitters who have no chance. His slurve only adds to the fun. It's a rare pitch type in general, and his is holding hitters to just a .109 average.
5. Trey Yesavage, Toronto Blue Jays
5 of 9
Age: 22
2026 Stats: 7 GS, 37.0 IP, 26 H (0 HR), 39 K, 17 BB, 2.19 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
Even if Trey Yesavage only has 10 total regular-season starts in the majors, that's not counting the five he made in his coming-out party last October. So, there's that. And also the fact that he's been really good.
The extreme over-the-top release is Yesavage's hallmark, and hitters still don't seem to know what to do with it. He would arguably be the king of the uncomfortable at-bat even if he didn't have good stuff.
And he does, of course. He only throws a fastball, splitter and slider, but he mixes them well and is close to flawless when he goes to the split. For his career so far, it has a 50.3 whiff percentage and a .138 average.
Walks remain an issueโhe issued seven free passes his last time out aloneโbut a pitcher can get away with that when both making contact and making good contact are difficult. So far this year, he's in the 81st percentile with his whiff rate and the 95th percentile with his hard-hit rate.
4. Chase Burns, Cincinnati Reds
6 of 9
Age: 23
2026 Stats: 11 GS, 64.1 IP, 42 H (8 HR), 72 K, 20 BB, 1.96 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
Starting pitchers generally need at least three pitches to be successful. But if you prefer someone who keeps it even more simple than that, Chase Burns is your guy.
He throws fastballs and sliders. And sometimes other pitches, granted, but mostly fastballs and sliders. As in, close to 95 percent of the time. Those are his hammer and chisel, respectively.
And why not? The fastball goes as high as 101 mph, and he's gotten the slider as high as 95 mph. Facing him is a pure reaction time test, and those velocities alone make it difficult.
Hitters are hitting in the .100s against both pitches, with a 53.2 whiff percentage against the slider. That's the highest of any pitch that any starter has thrown at least 200 times.
3. Cam Schlittler, New York Yankees
7 of 9
Age: 25
2026 Stats: 12 GS, 72.0 IP, 48 H (3 HR), 81 K, 13 BB, 1.50 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
So, you want to face Cam Schlittler. Except you don't, because he bears an uncanny statistical likeness to last year's NL Cy Young Award winner:
It's astonishing stuff for a guy who only throws fastballs, even if he does borrow a page from Lance Lynn and Bartolo Colon before him by altering the shape. Four-seamers, sinkers and cutters move differently, and Schlittler throws all three.
We can get nerdy and talk about how hitters face the impossible task of telling the three apart as they come out of the exact same tunnel. But it's the velocity, stupid. He goes as high as 101 mph, and 77.1 percent of all his fastballs are over 95 mph.
At least for now, the bottom line is that Schlittler is the runaway favorite for the AL Cy Young Award. He would be the Yankees' second different winner in the last three years.
2. Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee Brewers
8 of 9
Age: 24
2026 Stats: 12 GS, 71.0 IP, 37 H (4 HR), 108 K, 19 BB, 1.65 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
The strikeout percentage record by a starter in a full season is 39.9 percent, set by Gerrit Cole in 2019. Jacob Misiorowski is within striking distance at 39.6 percent.
If anything, the surprise is that his strikeout rate is that low. With an average speed of 99.8 mph and a max speed of 104 mph, he's probably the hardest-throwing starter ever. And that's only looking at his fastball.
At 94.5 mph, he also has the hardest slider ever recorded. And the curveball at 87.4 mph? Yup. That, too.
Considering that Misiorowski also gets 7.5 feet of extensionโonly Logan Gilbert can say the sameโout of his 6'7" frame, he's perhaps the best possible argument that the mound should be farther away from home plate than 60 feet, six inches.
1. Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates
9 of 9
Age: 24
2026 Stats: 12 GS, 65.1 IP, 44 H (6 HR), 75 K, 12 BB, 2.89 ERA
What Makes Him a Must-Watch
Paul Skenes' ERA is over 2.00. Not just for this season, but also for his career at 2.12. Perish the thought!
One kids because that's still a ridiculous figure for any 67-start span, much less the first 67 starts of his career. Only Dwight Gooden (2.00) has done better in the live-ball era, which began in 1920.
Otherwise, the only real complaint one can file against Skenes is that his pitching style doesn't have the sheer electricity of a Burns, a Schlittler or a Misiorowski. He throws hard, sure, but you really have to get granular to appreciate how it's as much about fooling hitters as it is about overwhelming them.
Skenes is more about locating and sequencing, as four of his seven pitches have averages in the .100s this season. And if his ERA eventually comes to resemble his 2.25 xERA, he'll have a real shot at denying Misiorowski the NL Cy Young Award.
Given all this and what Skenes did in 2023 and 2024, he's the safe pick as the best pitcher in baseball right now. He's also basically the living embodiment of the answer to one of the great questions in recent MLB history: What if Greg Maddux threw hard?
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
.jpg?w=600 "Top NFL Free Agents ๐")
.jpg?w=600 "WWE Clash in Italy Grades ๐")
.png?w=600 "New NBA Mock Draft ๐")
.jpg?w=600 "NFL blockbuster trade may be close")
.jpg?w=600 "Clash In Italy Winners-Losers ๐")
.jpg?w=600 "Cap Space For Each NFL Team ๐ฐ")
