The Young and Modern Old Soul Hurlers – PC’s picks for coolest pitchers under 28

Rankings
Written By John Crowley

Christy Matthewson – New York Giants, 1912, Colored Photograph https://www.pinterest.com/pin/40602834125965681/

It’s 2001 and I’m six years old in southern New Hampshire on a warm summer day. New England basements are cool and AC isn’t built-in like it has to be south of the I-10. We have this old, seafoam green carpet that looks like the inside of a Champion sweatshirt went through too many dryer cycles, and the TV is playing some Red Sox day game with Jerry Remy’s voice like the crackle of a gramophone. We were Sox fans and these were summer days – hanging out with dad in the basement eating peanut butter toasted bagels and washing them down with red gatorade – the kind that comes in the powder you mix yourself. 

When the Sox game was over we’d play catch and talk about the greats. What was really special was when dad would put on the Ken Burns baseball documentary. We must’ve watched it a hundred times. I was young but loved history, and the genteel, museum tour guide in Burns’ baritone wove with the windows-open breeze of a northeast summer perfectly — the stuff of daydreams. I learned about Christy Matthewson and Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. I’d take my dad’s tan, leather work gloves and pretend the right one was a Dead Ball era baseball mitt and we’d play catch. I’d impersonate Bob Fellers’ big lean back and try out the side-arm-ish sling of Walter Johnson in the backyard. 

I see now that some players (they all happened to be pitchers) really shone in memory. There was something indelible about their story – the idiosyncratic windups, the fact that thousands long ago clamored to fill stadiums to see them pitch – and today, millions seek millions of dollars for one of their baseball cards. It got me thinking – aside from stats and a conversation on, “who will get into the Hall of Fame” – what pitchers of today would be talked about or imitated by kids a hundred years from now in their backyards? Sure, Verlander, Scherzer, and Kershaw – first-ballot no-doubters headlining an immaculate old guard – but are there any new names? Whom are the new pitchers that we’ll remember when they’re old? 

It’s hard to rank starting pitchers. Within “aces”, there are sub-categories of the workhorse, the IL-philic (Tyler Glasnow), and those either just making it to the IL (Gerrit Cole) or coming back from it (Shane McClanahan, Spencer Strider). Workhorses are the Framber Valdez and Logan Webb types that gobble innings via sinkerball groundouts. We like those, especially if you’re a GM trying to win the division with 162 games to go. But today, perhaps most succinctly to say: this list is going to do something different. This list is the top five, coolest-and-nastient-stuff aces with a flair for the historic – namely: these are the young cats you might be most excited about saying you got to see pitch at a baseball game, one day. That’s right. We’re going to be subjective. We’ll be so subjective that we circle back around to the universal – and we’ll throw in some fun archetypes to make that work. We won’t call this a ranking of stuff+, WAR, wins or WHIP – we’ll just leave it as it is: these are the youngest, top five most likely arms to make a Ken Burn’s-esque baseball documentary one-hundred years from now.

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The Statesman: Tarik Skubal – Detroit Tigers

Firstly, his name is Tarik Skubal. It’s unique and sounds a lot like “screwball”, so we have some historic-sounding potential there already. With a 30% K rate over a workhorse-worthy 192 innings in 2024, Skubal pitched his team almost all the way to the ALCS. He has a high leg kick and mid-game intensity you usually only see with closers – but he isn’t a loose cannon. He drops in 100 MPH fastballs and 87 MPH changeups that share the same pitch tunnel and arm slot making good hitters look foolish. For a guy that post-K fist pumps with the vein-bulging energy of that early 2010’s meme, Skubal has a historic composure about him – like a guy that’s plugged into the bigger picture. Indeed, in an interview with Slab Lab, he states, “how you do anything is how you do everything”. That’s timeless wisdom and not just some sports personality screen-saver. Moreover, Tarik actually wrote a letter to the entire city of Detroit, thanking them for their support in the 2024 playoffs. He didn’t just talk baseball – he made it civilizational. He wove together Detroit’s economic difficulties, the Tigers’ 0.2% playoff chances, and his own ninth-round pick, injury-wracked odds at making the big leagues with only one Division 1 baseball offer. He wrote to Detroit, not just to the fans of Comerica park. That’s legendary. I’d love to be able to say that I saw Skubal pitch, and who wouldn’t? He’s a young, Cy Young award winner that might single-handedly carry the timeless, Detroit Tigers franchise to a World Series.

YardBarker – Tarik Skubal

The Quarterback: Paul Skenes – Pittsburgh Pirates

We’ve already noted here at Painting Corners that Skenes linking with Brent Strom as his pitching coach could add to his lore-story both with Strom’s championship experience and pitching physics. That argument serves as a counter-weight to the Stephen Strasburg comparison of a lighting-arm 1/1 first-rounder that flopped from injury, as Strom’s teaching could spell not just tactical tips, but long-term durability too. Secondly, Skenes just looks great. Yes, that is objectively true. In fact, he has that same “whippy” and lackadaisical effort of Walter Johnson. Here’s a clip and some insets for comparison. 

Walter Johnson – Washington Senators                    Paul Skenes – Pittsburgh Pirates

Skenes’s stats are wild – but his whole, 6’6” 260 lbs, 22-year-old profile is wilder. A former Air Force fighter pilot cadet whose body was made for the mound, Skenes led LSU to an underdog-ish College World Series in 2023 against a Florida Gators lineup chock-full of first-round draft picks from Jac Caglianone to Wyatt Langford. For me, at least, Paul Skenes was the first time in my life that baseball football-ed. When you watch the NFL draft, there’s this instant gratification you get if your team has a high pick – odds are, that guy is going to plug in at a starting position next season and move the needle. Draft rankings usually translate to instant impact in the NFL. Fellow LSU Tiger, Joe Burrow, right after winning his sport’s college national championship, led his Cincinnati Bengals to their third Superbowl as a rookie in 2022. 

That’s exceptional stuff by Burrow, but it’s not something you buzz about in articles and talkshows for the next two years because it’s thinkable. In baseball, on the other hand, being drafted in the first round usually means an obligatory trip to Double-A ball and a couple years of farmwork before becoming a finished product. Enter Paul Skenes. Drafted number one overall, Skenes spent but a few months and ended up third place in the NL Cy Young vote with only 133 innings pitched. That doesn’t happen. His memorable, archetypal physique atop the mound, coupled with triple-digit speed and devastating stuff warrants the young Skenes as a must-see for anyone at a major league game. 

The Freight Train: Hunter Brown – Houston Astros

A fiery, mean, 6’2”, 220 lb Detroit kid out of no-where’s-ville Wayne State, Hunter Brown has earned the nickname Diesel. Like a big train rolling down the tracks, he picks up speed as he goes on. From a farm system that’s ranked the worst in baseball to becoming the ace of a playoff staff, Brown’s journey to the big leagues shows that prospect rankings are not weighted for scouting and coaching. Brown snuck under the radar, making his debut in 2022 that culminated in him throwing a shutout inning in the ALDS game three, 18-inning odyssey in Seattle. Brown had a hot start in 2023, cooled off, and came into 2024 looking real bad. In his first 11 starts, Brown had a 6.18 ERA – the second worst in the MLB.

Hunter Brown 2024 pitch mix - https://imgur.com/a/rd44Fkh

Then, on May 5th, Brown debuted a sinker that changed everything. Alex Bregman had suggested it to Brown as a way to keep righties from hovering over the plate – a palette cleanser to emphasize the elite 4-seam’s spice. In his next 5 starts, he pitched an MLB-best 0.29 ERA. From May 5th until the end of the season, removing 2 bad starts in that span – July 6th against the Twins (7 ER) and September 11th against Oakland (5 ER), Brown threw a 1.91 ERA across 131 innings. Without the butter knife, it’s still a 2.51 ERA over 147 innings pitched with an 11-5 record. Brown had bloomed.

BaseballReference – Hunter Brown 2024 season splits https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=brownhu01&year=2024&t=p 

That’s a transformation, but then he entered 2025 elevating his fastball velocity from 97 to 99 MPH. So far in 2025 he has a 0.78 WHIP and 18 K’s across 18 innings with a 2.00 ERA. Again, this piece isn’t just about the numbers. It’s factoring in that a young kid who grew up a Detroit Tigers fan and mimicked his delivery off of his boyhood idol, Justin Verlander, got to pick JV’s brain in the dugout for 2 seasons. It’s taking into account how visibility fired-up Brown gets as he starts to throw 100 MPH as the game goes on, finishing stronger than he started. A true Verlander-esque delivery with a high 90’s slider and elite fastball while playing for a franchise that excels in pitching development – these all comprise the eye test of why Hunter Brown is so fun to watch.

The Artist: George Kirby – Seattle Mariners

There’s this false dichotomy between being a Maddux and being a flamethrower. Kirby breaks that trend. His 1.05 WHIP average across back-to-back 191 innings in 2023 and 2024 boldly states, “a lot of command with a side of unhittable”. But, it leaves one wanting, as it shows room for improvement. However, this stat belies the fact that this is still a young guy who, up to 2025, doesn’t yet have a wipeout, strikeout pitch. He relies on a 96 MPH fastball with pinpoint accuracy 35% of the time, but as pointed out at FanGraphs, Kirby needed to develop something like a slider as his teammate Logan Gilbert did, which skyrocketed his (Gilbert’s) strikeout rate. Why is Kirby on this list if he isn’t a finished product, yet? That’s actually part of the reason. Moreover, Eno Sarris of The Athletic broke the story that in spring 2025, Kirby did add a new pitch – the cutter. Here he is trying it out in spring training. The cutter can run in and jam lefty bats, and create a different look that would make it harder for hitters to camp on his fastball – just like Hunter’s new 2-seam.

Baseball Savant – George Kirby’s 2024 walk percentile ranking https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/george-kirby-669923?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb

Even still, this whole piece is about a je ne sais quoi eye-test in addition to the numbers. Kirby is a walking paradox (but not walking batters) of control and power. Here’s a video of George Kirby setting the MLB record with 24 consecutive strikes to start the game while looking effortless at the same time. The way he seems to lob in high-velocity right where he wants it (9.05 K / BB ratio in 2023) makes him look like Maddux with heat. As amicably stated by The Couch GM, “George Kirby is the Bob Ross of baseball, painting those happy little backwards K’s on the edges of the strike zone.” For me, I love to sit back and watch him calmly paint. 

The Blacksmith: Logan Gilbert – Seattle Mariners

Logan Gilbert threw 157 strikeouts at Stetson University (Go Hatters), ranking him the #1 NCAA pitcher in 2018. He became the 14th overall pick in the 2018 draft and is still just 27 years old. Echoing our earlier glib and profound reminder, baseball isn’t football; it takes a couple years for diamonds to surface. To help with that, Gilbert is always tinkering with pitches and changing his usage. We’ll cover this trend more in subsequent articles, but, like a lot of pitchers, Gilbert headed over to Driveline to get in the lab. Here’s a slow-motion clip of him testing out his new splitter he developed at Driveline with pitching director Chris Langin, there. Gilbert was a quick study in 2024 when he honed his slider. He ended up throwing it more than his 4-seam, and with great results, especially when he was a fastball-first prospect with a 65 grade 4-seam fastball. Here he is topping the Slider+ rankings in the second half of last season (2024).

Gilbert makes this list not just for elite pitch shapes and being a master of his craft. This list is also about the historical, the idiosyncratic, and therefore the personal. Gilbert leads the pack with elite extension. When you watch him pitch, you’re mesmerized by how much he closes himself off to the plate and hides the ball with how long his arm gets. I can see kids playing backyard baseball imitating his memorable style for years to come, reminiscent of how I’d do impersonations of Dontrelle Willis at Little League practice. And, Gilbert is already yielding legendary results to go with his quirky form.

Baseball Savant – Logan Gilbert MLB 2024 percentile rankings https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/logan-gilbert-669302?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb 

Finally, Gilbert has an alter ego he wears on the mound that he calls, “Walter”. According to Gilbert, it started off as a joke in college, but has now become an angry persona he wears when he’s pitching. It’s not just a passion for pitching – it’s a whole character he starts to play in real time. Elite pitch shapes with a real shot at Cy Young potential put Gilbert into the conversation. However, it’s also his sincerely-intense, theater kid energy and memorable delivery that lock in Logan as an arm to remember.

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There you have it. The five archetypes: the statesman uplifting his city, thequarterback leading his franchise as a rookie, thefreight train chugging on pure diesel, the artist painting his canvas with a paradox of laconic alacrity, and the blacksmith – tinkering with his tools to craft his swords. These five pitchers are backed up by their lights-out numbers, but we remember them for the physical shape they take in our memory – the high leg kick of proud Skubal, the effortless, Walter-whip of staunch Skenes, the cool tactician in Kirby, the warrior’s bellow from Brown, the lanky genius that is Logan (or Walter, depending on who’s out there). These five arms are legitimate aces of any staff, and ones that could be remembered for years to come. Sometimes, it’s just about an eye test – you intuitively know that when these guys take the ball, you’re in for a show – you lean in, put your phone down, and take notice with hushed grace. I look forward to seeing all of them pitch in my lifetime.

*Stats are as of April 11, 2025

John Crowley
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PC Top 10 Starting Pitchers in MLB