2026 Fantasy Baseball Sleepers: NL Starting Pitching

Welcome back to RotoWire's new feature listing our favorite sleepers by position, with three sleepers and one deep sleeper at every position on the diamond. For the purposes of this series, here's how we're defining "sleeper" and "deep sleeper":

• Sleeper: a player being drafted between picks 150 and 350 who could significantly outperform his draft price
• Deep Sleeper: a player being drafted after pick 350 who could significantly outperform his draft price

So far, we've covered catchers, first basemen, second basemen, third basemen, shortstops and outfielders in this series. With hitters in the books, it's time to look at pitchers for your 2026 fantasy baseball drafts. We'll divide starting pitching into two groups, checking in on the National League Tuesday and the American League on Wednesday. 

Note: The average draft position in this article is taken from all Draft Champions leagues which have drafted over the past month.

Best 2026 NL Starting Pitcher Sleepers

Aaron Nola (ADP 201, P 84)

Nola had settled into a groove the four seasons before 2025 by averaging 214 Ks and 194.2 innings for the Phillies with a high-3.00s/low-4.00s ERA that was usually a slight disappointment compared to metrics like xERA or xFIP, but everything came crashing down last year. Injuries held the right-hander under 100 innings for a full campaign for the first time since he was a rookie during 2015 while a career-worst 1.72 HR/9 led to a bloated 6.01 ERA. By the time Nola went on the IL, he had only produced one win.

Veterans coming off disastrous seasons like that tend to get written off or at least dumped in the "high risk" bucket. However, Nola's injuries were to his ankle and ribs - not his arm - and he's still only 32. Once he got healthy late last season, he looked a little more like his usual self by winning four of his last seven starts with a 4.89 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and 41:11 K:BB across 42.1 innings.

If there's a yellow flag in Nola's profile, it was a decline in his fastball velocity last year with a 91.9 MPH average on his four-seamer that was only one tick below recent recordings. The injuries likely factored into that performance as it was back up to 92.4 over those final seven starts. There are more reasons to believe Nola will rebound than continue last season's swoon where double-digit wins, 200 Ks and palatable ratios would be a flat-out steal in this ADP range.

Logan Henderson (ADP 267, P 104)

Stop me if you've heard this one before. After a surprisingly successful regular season, the Brewers traded away some big names during the offseason and got written off by most prognosticators and projection systems as a result only to come back the next year and remain competitive. This winter, Freddy Peralta was the one sent packing before he got expensive - just as Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader had been before - yet Milwaukee's pitching pipeline still carries plenty of arms clamoring to pick up the slack.

Henderson is at the head of the pack after a 2025 that saw him throw a career-high 103 innings between Triple-A and the Majors with a 120:32 K:BB. His 1.78 ERA and 0.99 WHIP from five starts on the Brewers overstates his ceiling, but the 23-year-old right-hander gets plus whiff rates on a 92.9 MPH four-seamer with good movement and a nasty changeup. Henderson sprinkled in a cutter against lefties that also generated whiffs at better than a 25.0 percent clip, though he threw the fastball and change nearly 90 percent of the time in the big leagues in a case of "let's stick with what's working until hitters figure it out". The big concern is his health as last year ended in early August due to a elbow flexor strain and he also struggled to stay on the mound in the minors - though not due to arm trouble.

Henderson still has things to prove - not least of which is his durability - but the Brewers' pitching development track record earns him the benefit of the doubt that a breakout campaign could well be in the works.

Kodai Senga (ADP 309, P 123)

Let's make it a trifecta of pitchers with significant upside and injury concerns. After a snazzy stateside debut during 2023, Senga barely pitched the next year due to shoulder issues and appeared back in form to begin 2025 dialing up a 1.47 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and 70:31 K:BB through 73.2 innings (13 starts) while trading some strikeouts for weak contact and allowing only four homers during that stretch. Then a poor flip from Pete Alonso as Senga was covering first base in a Jun. 12 outing against the Nationals led to a hamstring injury that completely derailed his campaign. When the 33-year-old right-hander returned a month later, his mechanics were out of sync and was never able to put them back together. Things got so bad that he spent September at Triple-A, even with the Mets trying desperately to hang onto a playoff spot.

The upside is clear with Senga, and not something you typically find in the 300s in ADP. His ghost forkball remains one of the nastiest pitches in the Majors. And even with all of Senga's second-half struggles, he still wound up producing a 41.4 percent whiff rate. He complements it with a four-seamer that averaged 94.7 MPH during 2025 that's down about one from his MLB debut, a cutter that lost some effectiveness after the shoulder issue, and a host of other options that range from an 88.7 MPH sinker to a 68.4 MPH slow curve.

Senga worked with Tread Athletics this winter to regain the pop on his fastball and figure out where his mechanics had frayed. If that work pays off and he stays mostly in one piece in 2026, he'll easily outproduce his ranking.

Deep Sleeper

Justin Wrobleski (ADP 605, P 258)

When you're throwing a dart in the late rounds, you want ceiling - and Wrobleski definitely offers that. The 25-year-old left-hander was mainly used as a multi-inning reliever in the Majors last season where his profile was a mixed bag. On the bright side, Wrobleski was in the 98th percentile in barrel rate and 86th percentile for groundball rate while generating a plus whiff rate (35.2 percent) with a 96.0 MPH four-seamer. Yet he also somehow found himself in the fifth percentile when it comes to hard-hit rate and at the absolute bottom of the league in average exit velocity. Aren't small sample sizes fun?

The end result of a 76:17 K:BB across 66.2 big-league innings is encouraging, though the Dodgers' absurdly stacked rotation doesn't give Wrobleski a clear path to a useful fantasy role. Those things tend to take care of themselves, and that might already be happening this spring. Blake Snell isn't ready for mound work yet while Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Roki Sasaki could all have workload concerns or restrictions while Yoshinobu Yamamoto could be reined in a bit early on after his World Series heroics and 211 combined innings. There will be opportunities for Wrobleski to make spot starts, and those opportunities could become more frequent if attrition hits the veteran arms or he simply pitches too well to go back to long relief.

Emmet Sheehan represents the Dodgers' hot young arm with an ADP of around 120 and plenty of helium. Rather than spending an early-round pick on an unproven upside hurler for the two-time champs, you can use a late-round selection on Wrobleski with less buzz and a less initial secure role with almost as much upside.

Who is your NL top starting pitcher sleeper for 2026? Let us know in the comments below.