Starting Pitcher Chart – August 21st, 2025

by
August 21, 2025
Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

The chart includes their performance for 2025, their opponent’s wOBA rank versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far, my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but it’s a much riskier stream for those spots.

These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more valuable focusing on roto.

Starter Notes August 21, 2025
RK PITCHER GAME 10 12 15+ IP ERA WHIP K-BB 2025 wOBA RK
1 Sean Manaea NYM at WSN x x x 32 4.78 1.16 22% 22nd
2 Dylan Cease SDP v SFG x x x 132 4.61 1.31 20% 20th
3 Shota Imanaga CHC v MIL x x x 103 3.06 0.95 16% 8th
4 Lucas Giolito BOS at NYY x x x 106 3.63 1.25 12% 3rd
5 MacKenzie Gore WSN v NYM x x 138 4.04 1.32 20% 20th
6 Quinn Priester MIL at CHC x x 124 3.48 1.24 12% 8th
7 Michael Lorenzen KCR v TEX x 103 4.43 1.30 13% 26th
8 Justin Verlander SFG at SDP x 106 4.23 1.42 13% 18th
9 Brandon Young BAL v HOU x 52 5.68 1.49 11% 24th
10 Clayton Kershaw LAD at COL x 77 3.01 1.20 9% 19th
11 Jason Alexander HOU at BAL x 43 4.74 1.33 9% 17th
12 Patrick Corbin TEX at KCR x 119 4.45 1.38 12% 23rd
13 Jack Perkins ATH at MIN x 33 4.28 1.13 15% 21st
14 Luis Gil NYY v BOS 14 5.14 1.64 10% 12th
15 Chase Dollander COL v LAD 78 6.43 1.57 7% 2nd
16 José Ureña MIN v ATH 31 4.06 1.42 5% 6th

Recommendations for Roto 5×5 Leagues

KEY x: Standard Recommendation | W: Chasing the Win

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Paul is the Editor of Rotographs and Content Director for OOTP Perfect Team. Follow Paul on Twitter @sporer and on Twitch at sporer.

9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Coach73Member since 2017
3 months ago

Thanks Paul but no STL vs TB? (S.Gray vs J.Boyle)

7
Paul SporerFanGraphs Staff
3 months ago
Reply to  Coach73

Very weird that they didn’t appear on my sheet. It’s just an automated thing that pulls in SPs & w/it being Thursday, them being off didn’t stand out to me.

Gray – 3 x auto start
Boyle – 1 x ahead of JV

1