Why Dodgers' Yoshinobu Yamamoto is ranked higher than Cristopher Sanchez in ace rankings

Why Dodgers' Yoshinobu Yamamoto is ranked higher than Cristopher Sanchez in ace rankings originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . The Los Angeles Dodgers have one of the better pitching staffs in all of Major League Baseball, with World Series hero Yoshinobu Yamamoto leading the rotation with Shohei Ohtani and plenty of other great starters behind him.

But, when it comes to Yamamoto's standing across baseball among other aces, his ranking is an interesting one. While he isn't in the same tier as Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, Yamamoto is still a highly ranked starter. According to ESPN's Kiley McDaniel , Yamamoto is ranked fourth in MLB's ace rankings, behind only Skenes, Skubal, and Garrett Crochet.

But he is ahead of Philadelphia Phillies ace Cristopher Sanchez, and McDaniel explained why. Why Yamamoto is ranked slightly better than Sanchez "Yamamoto gets a slight nod over Cristopher Sanchez because he's two years younger and evaluators have a little more confidence in what he'll look like in the medium term," McDaniel writes. The Dodgers righty is one of the better pitchers in baseball and is only 27 years old, compared to Sanchez, who is 29 years old.

Both starters have recently emerged as the aces they are, as Yamamoto was pitching in Japan while Sanchez wasn't a starter for most of his career before 2023. More : Shohei Ohtani deemed more valuable than Aaron Judge in recent ESPN discussion piece Last season, Sanchez posted a 2. 50 ERA in 32 starts across 202 innings pitched with 212 strikeouts, a WHIP of 1.