Left-handed starter
There is legitimate depth among the available left-handed starters, including three of the only seven players this year to have received a qualifying offer. All three – Patrick Corbin, Dallas Keuchel and Hyun-Jin Ryu – are expected to decline those offers.
Keuchel, who will be 31 next year, made a league-leading 34 starts and pitched 204.2 innings, so his durability is beyond question. His 12-11 record and 3.74 ERA may present concerns since they represent declines both from his 14-11 and 3.66 career averages and also from his 2017 marks of 14-5 and 2.90..
That may make Corbin the trendy pick. He went 11-7 with a 3.15 ERA across 33 starts and 200 innings for the Diamondbacks, and he is not yet 30.
Ryu was 7-3 with a 1.97 ERA for the Dodgers, but he only made 15 starts. His post-season performances, four starts and a 5.21 ERA, probably didn’t help his marketability, although that fact that Dave Roberts kept giving him the ball demonstrated that the Dodgers at least had faith in him.
A fourth excellent option will be J.A. Happ, coming off a 17-5 record and 3.65 ERA for the Jays and Yankees. Since asserting himself as a valid rotation option in 2016, Happ has gone 47-21 in 88 starts. The only downside: He’s now 36, so a two-year or at most a three-deal is probably the best he can hope for.