If there's ever a time for fans of every MLB team to feel optimistic, it's during spring training -- the tough times of the year before are in the rearview mirror, everyone has a clean slate and there's an infinite number of players reporting to Arizona and Florida in the best shape of their respective lives.
We can be optimistic all we want about the 162 games that lie ahead, but numbers and projections help give us a little substance with regard to the optimism with certain players more than others. That's where numberFire's season-long MLB projections can help.
According to our projections, the following 10 starting pitchers are expected to see a rise in their fantasy value during the 2017 campaign. To figure who is getting bigger boosts than others, we'll be using our nF fantasy score, which takes a player's projected statistics and adjusts them to score across all categories by weighting them evenly. Once we have that score, it's then adjusted based on position and position scarcity.
Just as did with hitters from earlier this week, we're setting some parameters here. Starting pitchers had to have a projection of at least 150 innings to be considered.
So, who could be climbing the ranks over the next few months?