Which NL West Team Has the Best Ace in 2025?

Going into 2025, the NL West is a division to watch. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series last year, the San Diego Padres made it to the NL Division Series before being eliminated (by the Dodgers), and the Arizona Diamondbacks are just one season removed from an impressive playoff run of their own.

This offseason, free agent acquisitions have only increased the star power across the division. The Dodgers and Diamondbacks both added new aces to lead their starting rotations, while the Padres and the San Francisco Giants also retooled with top starters.

With Opening Day mere days away, let’s take a look into each team in the NL West, and see how their ace stacks up against their division rivals.

Ranking the Aces of the NL West in 2025

5. Colorado Rockies — Kyle Freeland

2024 Stats

It’s hard to identify an “ace” on the Rockies, especially since the team’s starting ERA has been the worst in MLB for two consecutive seasons.

In fact, Colorado hasn’t really had a bonafide ace since Kyle Freeland‘s 2018 campaign, and while Freeland will get the ball on Opening Day for the second straight year and fourth of his career overall, still calling him an “ace” in 2025 feels very generous.

Since making his major league debut with the Rockies in 2017, Freeland has really only had one strong campaign. In 2018, he posted a 17-7 win-loss record and 2.85 ERA across 33 starts to finish fourth in Cy Young voting, but in the six seasons that followed, he ultimately proved that those impressive stats simply weren’t ones that he could replicate.

In 113.1 innings last year, Freeland went 5-8 with a 5.24 ERA, bringing his career ERA to 4.48 across eight seasons. Despite these underwhelming numbers, the 31-year-old is still considered the Rockies’ No. 1 starter, with Germán Márquez, Ryan Feltner, Austin Gomber, and Antonio Senzatela rounding out the rotation behind him.

Márquez and Senzatela both missed almost all of the 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and while Senzatela managed three starts at the end of the year, Márquez only posted 4.0 innings on July 14 before a stress reaction sidelined him again.

Meanwhile, Gomber led the team with a 2.1 WAR last season, but that still only ranked him 75th across MLB, and Feltner’s career-best 4.49 ERA wasn’t particularly noteworthy.

4. San Diego Padres — Dylan Cease

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Despite swirling trade rumors as the team looked to cut payroll this winter, Dylan Cease is still the Padres’ ace going into 2025 — though he may not be around for long.

The 29-year-old is due to become a free agent for the first time at the end of the season, so with the Padres unlikely to re-sign him to the mega-deal he’ll almost certainly demand, don’t be surprised if Cease is on the move at the trade deadline.

Having firmly established himself as an ace with the Chicago White Sox — including a 2.28 ERA and second-place AL Cy Young finish in 2022 — Cease was traded to San Diego before the 2024 season as Chicago sank deeper into a rebuild.

In his first year with the Padres, he finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting, posted a team-leading 224 strikeouts to mark his third consecutive season with at least 200, and threw a no-hitter on July 25 to become just the second pitcher in Padres history to do so.

Now going into 2025, the Padres have Cease, Michael King (also in his final year of club control), Yu Darvish, and recently-acquired Nick Pivetta locked into their starting rotation, but with Joe Musgrove ruled out for the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery, the final rotation spot is up for grabs.

Randy Vasquez, Matt Waldron, and Kyle Hart are currently battling it out at spring training to be San Diego’s fifth starter, but regardless of who breaks camp, they’ll all likely get a shot at some point this year — especially if Cease, King, or both are traded away midseason.

At least for now, the Padres have Cease as their bonafide ace leading the rotation, but whether that’s still the case at the end of the season remains to be seen.

3. Los Angeles Dodgers — Blake Snell

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Having opted out of the second season of his deal with the Giants, Blake Snell signed a stunning five-year, $182 million contract with the Dodgers this winter, confirming he’ll be staying in the NL West — with his third team in the division — for at least the foreseeable future.

It was one of multiple mega-deals handed out by the reigning World Series champions this offseason, and if Snell gets anywhere near the Cy Young-winning numbers he’s proven himself capable of, he’ll certainly be worth the money.

After making his major league debut with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016, Snell really broke out as an ace in 2018, finishing the season with a league-leading 1.89 ERA — the lowest recorded by an AL pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000 (1.74) — and winning the AL Cy Young Award with 17 of 30 first-place votes.

His second career-making season came in 2023 with the Padres, when he led the majors in ERA (2.25), hits-per-nine-innings (5.8), and walks (99) to win the NL Cy Young Award, becoming just the seventh pitcher in MLB history to receive the award in both leagues.

Snell signed with the Giants for 2024, and even though paternity leave and two stints on the injured list meant he got off to a slow start, he still ended the season with a 3.12 ERA and 145 strikeouts in 104 innings of work. Knowing he could land a multi-year deal if he tried his luck again in free agency, the 32-year-old opted out of his contract with San Francisco after just one season.

Going into 2025 with the Dodgers, Snell leads a fierce rotation boasting Yoshinobu Yamamoto, newly-acquired Rōki Sasaki, Tyler Glasnow, and — as recently confirmed by manager Dave Roberts — Dustin May. Tony Gonsolin and Bobby Miller were both contending to be the team’s fifth starter at spring training, but after Gonsolin suffered a “hiccup” with his back, May was given the nod.

2. San Francisco Giants — Logan Webb

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Logan Webb is going into his seventh major league season with San Francisco, and his fourth consecutive season as the team’s Opening Day starter.

“He’s our guy,” Giants manager Bob Melvin told MLB.com’s Maria Guardado about the decision to once again give Webb the ball on Opening Day. “He came up in the system. There’s a lot to love about Logan. It’s not even going to be a conversation.”

Over the last few seasons, Webb has firmly established himself as an ace that San Francisco can rely on — not only in performance, but also in durability.

In addition to finishing sixth in Cy Young voting and earning his first All-Star selection last year, Webb became the first Giants pitcher since Gaylord Perry in 1969 to lead the NL in innings pitched for two consecutive seasons, having pitched 216.0 innings in 2023 and 204.2 innings in 2024.

At the end of last year, the Giants knew they had to retool their starting rotation around Webb before this season, especially since co-ace Snell exited to free agency and subsequently signed with their division rival. As such, the Giants added former Cy Young winner Justin Verlander and 28-year-old right-hander Jordan Hicks to the roster, locking in Webb, Robbie Ray, Verlander, and Hicks as the team’s top four starters in 2025.

The fifth role in San Francisco’s rotation is still in contention — and it’s a close race. Landen Roupp appears to be the frontrunner to land the role after a strong showing at spring training, but Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong are still very much in the conversation.

1. Arizona Diamondbacks — Corbin Burnes

2024 Stats

In one of the most unexpected moves of the winter, the Diamondbacks signed superstar ace Corbin Burnes to a six-year, $210 million contract at the end of December, adding one of the best pitchers in MLB to their already extremely impressive rotation.

Having debuted with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2018, Burnes won the NL Cy Young Award in 2021 after leading the majors in ERA (2.43), strikeouts per nine innings (12.6), home runs per nine innings (0.4), and strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.88).

By the time he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles at the end of 2023, he’d already earned three consecutive All-Star selections and twice been named to the All-MLB First Team.

Despite Burnes’ 181 strikeouts last year marking the first season since 2020 that he hadn’t struck out at least 200 batters, he still finished fifth in AL Cy Young voting, and his impressive 31.6% hard-hit rate put him in the top 5% of all MLB pitchers.

He was selected as an All-Star for the fourth straight year, and went into the winter as the best free agent pitcher on the market, having finished four out of the last five seasons with a sub-3.00 ERA.

While the Diamondbacks’ signing of Burnes was a major move to prove they’re ready to take on the AL West, it did create an issue in that the team now has too many starters. Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and — if he can stay healthy — Eduardo Rodriguez are locked into the rotation as a fierce trio behind Burnes, but the decision of who will take the fifth spot is a brutal one, with Brandon Pfaadt, Ryne Nelson, and Jordan Montgomery all in contention.

Pfaadt is yet to reach his potential in the majors, but the Diamondbacks seem committed to developing him into a game-changer, which is exactly what he seems destined to be.

Nelson had a breakout year in 2024, and it’d be easy to argue that he’s already earned a rotation spot after being the team’s best starter through the final two months of the season.

Montgomery has the weakest argument to get the role — especially after his disastrous campaign last season — but considering how much he’s getting paid, the Diamondbacks likely want to get at least some return on their investment (and a comeback certainly isn’t out of the question).

Regardless of who ends up being Arizona’s fifth starter, the addition of Burnes has turned an already impressive rotation into possibly the best one in MLB. The Diamondbacks are ready to go back to the World Series, and they’ve got their ace to lead the way.