Starting Pitcher Chart – May 24th, 2025

May 24, 2025

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.

Mostly board-only for Saturday outside of a handful of comments off the dome before I head to bed. Plus, something is going on with Baseball-Reference where I can’t sum games of data in the gamelogs like normal and I use that feature a lottttt. We do have that feature here, too, but I have some old spreadsheets setup for BRef’s style and I haven’t gotten around to updating to FG’s style so I can use our gamelogs in situations like this.

I’ll probably do a separate post for Sunday. I might make it a Sunday-Monday combo as I would still like to get something up for y’all on Monday despite the site being dark as a whole.

—

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.

Click Here To Become a Member

Starter Notes May 24, 2025

RK	PITCHER	GAME	10	12	15+	IP	ERA	WHIP	K-BB	2025 wOBA RK	NOTE
1	Michael King	SDP at ATL	x	x	x	55	2.59	1.02	21%	11th
2	Max Fried	NYY at COL	x	x	x	62	1.29	0.93	18%	27th	Friday gave us a Coors pitcher’s duel (3-2 COL), will we see a 2nd w/dueling lefties Fried & Freeland?
3	Cristopher Sánchez	PHI at ATH	x	x	x	49	3.10	1.18	20%	7th
4	Bryan Woo	SEA at HOU	x	x	x	57	2.65	0.87	21%	21st
5	Framber Valdez	HOU v SEA	x	x	x	63	3.57	1.13	16%	9th	SEA has cooled substantially vR while ramping things up vL; that said, Framber never leaves the rotation
6	Michael Wacha	KCR at MIN	x	x	x	56	2.86	1.24	11%	19th
7	Merrill Kelly	ARI at STL	x	x	x	58	3.26	1.00	16%	5th
8	Zebby Matthews	MIN v KCR	x	x	x	3	12.00	2.67	12%	26th	He’s been hit aroud a bit in 10 MLB starts but still has an 18% K-BB in that time, plus a 22% mark in AAA this yr; I’m trusting the skills
9	Colin Rea	CHC at CIN		x	x	41	2.38	1.20	13%	7th
10	Hunter Dobbins	BOS v BAL		x	x	32	3.62	1.30	15%	10th	If he keeps the up-down pattern of his L4, this would be a bad one but I don’t buy those kinds of patterns
11	Zach Eflin	BAL at BOS		x	x	28	5.08	1.13	12%	12th
12	Matthew Liberatore	STL v ARI		x	x	52	2.92	1.03	19%	11th	We’ve been being very careful w/ARI and rightfully so, but I think Libby’s earned w/the sparkling 19% K-BB and 3.45 SIERA in 52.3 IP
13	Grant Holmes	ATL v SDP		x	x	51	4.01	1.18	11%	17th	Catching SDP at a great time as they’re sitting 27th in vR wOBA over the last month
14	Jake Irvin	WSN v SFG		x	x	60	3.88	1.16	9%	15th
15	Jack Leiter	TEX at CHW		x	x	36	4.25	1.11	8%	30th	Matchup is a key part of the interest here
16	Shane Baz	TBR v TOR			x	49	5.33	1.41	14%	24th
17	José Soriano	LAA v MIA			x	58	3.57	1.48	8%	20th
18	José Berríos	TOR at TBR			x	58	4.19	1.43	11%	18th	That 1.43 WHIP and 1.4 HR9 could create some major havoc at TBR
19	Quinn Priester	MIL at PIT			x	38	4.66	1.47	2%	29th
20	Tony Gonsolin	LAD at NYM			x	20	4.05	1.30	18%	8th
21	Jeffrey Springs	ATH v PHI			x	53	3.91	1.25	9%	4th	PHI is super tough, but a commenter reminded me that Springs is rolling of late w/just 4 ER in 4 starts this month
22	Mitch Keller	PIT v MIL			x	58	3.88	1.31	12%	25th
23	Jonathan Cannon	CHW v TEX			x	55	3.76	1.31	11%	27th
24	Casey Mize	DET v CLE			x	42	2.53	1.01	16%	22nd	Returning from the IL so as always I won’t blame anyone for skipping
25	Kyle Harrison	SFG at WSN			x	5	3.38	0.94	19%	16th
26	Luis L. Ortiz	CLE at DET			x	48	4.66	1.39	16%	6th
27	David Peterson	NYM v LAD				50	2.86	1.33	12%	3rd	Nothing in his profile backs up this sub-3.00 ERA, looks more like a high-3.00s/low-4.00s guy and LAD could help push his ERA toward that mark here
28	Andrew Abbott	CIN v CHC				35	1.80	1.11	20%	2nd	I know the 20% K-BB is amazing, but the 11% BB scares me espec. once the 89% LOB and 6% HR/FB start to regress… plus, aces-only w/CHC
29	Kyle Freeland	COL v NYY				50	5.68	1.60	13%	1st
30	Cal Quantrill	MIA at LAA				41	6.37	1.54	8%	23rd

Recommendations for Roto 5×5 Leagues