Justin Masterson

Veteran pitcher Justin Masterson agreed to a minor league deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday, Jon Heyman of MLB Network reported. Adam Berry of MLB.com later confirmed the news.  

The Boston Red Sox designated pitcher Justin Masterson for assignment Sunday, according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe. 

Shoot for Jon Lester—even if you miss, you'll land Rick Porcello, Wade Miley and Justin Masterson.

OK, so that's not exactly how the saying goes. But it is the reality for the Boston Red Sox, who whiffed on a chance to bring back Lester at the MLB winter meetings but did manage to revamp their starting corps, which posted an unsightly 4.36 ERA in 2014.

The MLB offseason figures to be a busy one for many teams across the league, and we can expect to see many familiar faces in new places once the dust settles.

Cleveland Indians pitcher Justin Masterson tossed the first immaculate inning of his career in the fourth inning of Monday's game against the Boston Red Sox. Per ESPN.com, a pitcher must strike out all three batters on just nine pitches in order to get credit for an immaculate inning, one of the rarest single-inning accomplishments in baseball.

After winning 92 games and a Wild Card berth in 2013, the last thing the Cleveland Indians would want to do is trade away staff ace Justin Masterson, who is currently the lone projected starter with at least one full big league season under his belt. If anything, they need to add another reliable starter to the mix.

Picking out quality starting pitching for your fantasy baseball team can be a fickle enterprise, given how difficult it is to project how well any given MLB hurler will fare from year to year.

Not to mention how few and far between aces tend to be.

Since the Cleveland Indians parted ways with CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, they have been in search for one thing: pitching. 

We're not talking about just any kind of pitching, either, but the kind of pitching that can help the Tribe get back to the top of the American League Central Division and back into the postseason.

Until the recent wave of new-age statistics were introduced to baseball fans around the globe, the only way fans could decide what type of season a pitcher had was by looking at wins, ERA and WHIP.

Over the last decade, however, stats such as batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and home run-to-fly ball ratio (HR/FB) have allowed fans to get a better glimpse into which pitchers were plain bad and which were just having some bad luck.

So which five pitchers are the best bets to bounce back in 2011? Let's examine the numbers.

Spring Training is well underway, and after assessing what the Indians have to offer in terms of position players here, it's time now to take a look at the team's pitching.