As this postseason has progressed, an already-existing trend is starting to amplify: pitching staffs are becoming more amorphous in role. Whether it’s elite starters like Michael King and Chris Sale being used as closers on their throw days, journeyman reliever Ray Kerr being deployed as an 11-12 batter, matchup-based starter, or leverage relievers Grant Taylor and Didier Fuentes going multiple times through the order, roles are clearly becoming a little blurrier.

Within that trend, we’re also starting to see more full-time reliever-to-starter conversions. If pitchers like Taylor and Kerr can give you length, why shouldn’t they? Some of the most successful starting pitchers of the past few seasons spent a number of years first as leverage relievers, from Seth Lugo to Clay Holmes to King himself. Even Sale broke in as a great reliever before he became a future Hall-of-Fame starter.

In the past, these conversion projects tended to be limited to “starter repertoire” pitchers, guys who had four or more quality pitches they could throw, including a changeup. But that’s not even true anymore, for two reasons. First, some of the best starting pitchers in baseball who were always starting pitchers never throw changes (or similar pitches like splitters) either. Presumptive AL Cy Young winner Cam Schlittler has literally never thrown an arm-side offspeed pitch in the majors, and presumptive NL winner Jacob Misiorowski threw a grand total of 28 of them all season. And even if you do want your starter to throw a changeup, that’s become a much more easily teachable pitch due to the proliferation of kick-change and split offerings. Clay Holmes didn’t throw a single change as a high-leverage reliever in 2021 through 2024, learned a kick-change grip while transitioning to the rotation, and it’s been one of his best pitches as a starter the last two years.

Within that framework, I thought it would be a fun time to go through three of my favorite reliever-to-starter conversion candidates for the 2027 season. I have chosen to bypass 2026 rookies like Fuentes, Kendry Rojas, and Hagen Smith who were used as relievers but were significant starting pitching prospects before then, and I also skipped some older reliever types like Jeff Hoffman, David Bednar, and Luke Weaver who seem exceedingly unlikely to be converted at this stage of their careers even if in a vacuum they’re really interesting candidates. Two final names are worth mentioning briefly: Louis Varland and Mason Miller are both throwing starter arsenals and have a past history of starting with no obvious health or workload questions, but they were arguably the two best closers in baseball this year, and teams usually just don’t move superstar closers to the rotation lightly.