2. Brewers: Peralta, Woodruff, Civale, Cortes, Meyers
The Milwaukee Brewers have really managed to pull together a solid roster despite the big-name departures over the last two years (Corbin Burnes, Devin Williams, Willy Adames). Their rotation ranking here is built around Woodruff being healthy relatively early in the season. Peralta is a top-of-the-rotation guy, and one of the trio of Civale, Cortes and Meyers are bound to outperform their outlying statistics.
Meyers, in particular, was rather brilliant on the stat sheet last year - his underlying Statcast data wasn't great, but he could be a Kyle Hendricks-type game manager. Cortes was a nice get for one year of Williams; he was expendable with the Yankees but has been quite useful the last four years.
3. Cubs: Steele, Imanaga, Taillon, Boyd, Rea
Justin Steele was just ranked 88th by MLB.com in their league -ide player rankings. I'm not sure why prognosticators around the league don't value him. After all, he's got four straight years of performance with elite back-of-the-card stats and his advanced metrics generally back them all up. As with all aces, staying healthy is critical but he seems to be in a good spot heading into 2025.
Shota Imanaga probably will give up a few more home runs this year, and it would be difficult for him to replicate his superb rookie season. However, his ability to get hitters to chase while also limiting walks is very real and isn't impacted by park factors or luck. The compact lefty is a solidly above-average MLB starter. Jameson Taillon is a little more difficult to project with the ups and downs he's had in his career. That being said, he's been good for nearly 1.5 years now. I'd prefer him to be in the #4 slot in the rotation but the Cubs were too budget-focused to make that happen.
Boyd, Rea and Javier Assad will get the most starts at the back end. Boyd is at least intriguing after his bounceback campaign. Unlike Imanaga's patented dropping fastball, Boyd generates an elite amount of horizontal break on his four-seamer. I wish the Cubs staff had some velocity in it. If they are serious about stretching out Nate Pearson and Ben Brown, I wouldn't be surprised to see one of them grab a spot relatively early if they are ready to go 75-80 pitches at minimum. Trotting out five or six starters in a row that average 92 MPH is not a recipe for success against teams. At least the bullpen this year should have plus velocity to mix it up a bit.