Starting Pitcher Chart – September 25th, 2025

September 25, 2025

Shota Imanago throws a pitch from the mound, Spring Training 2025 — Credit: Rick Scuteri-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.

Hit me with any questions in the comments!

Ober in for Ryan, obviously not nearly as interested and consider him really just a Hail Mary option in a decent matchup

—

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 September 25, 2025

RK	PITCHER	GAME	10	12	15+	IP	ERA	WHIP	K-BB	2025 wOBA RK
1	Yoshinobu Yamamoto	LAD at ARI	x	x	x	167	2.58	0.99	21%	5th
2	~~Joe Ryan~~ Bailey Ober	MIN at TEX			x	140	5.32	1.33	14%	24th
3	Carlos Rodón	NYY v CHW	x	x	x	189	3.04	1.06	16%	17th
4	Drew Rasmussen	TBR at BAL	x	x	x	147	2.80	1.01	16%	20th
5	Shota Imanaga	CHC v NYM	x	x	x	139	3.37	0.96	16%	15th
6	Nick Lodolo	CIN v PIT	x	x	x	149	3.44	1.08	19%	28th
7	Framber Valdez	HOU at ATH	x	x	x	185	3.75	1.24	14%	9th
8	Nolan McLean	NYM at CHC	x	x	x	42	1.27	1.01	19%	10th
9	Brayan Bello	BOS at TOR		x	x	161	3.34	1.24	10%	6th
10	Zac Gallen	ARI v LAD		x	x	187	4.70	1.24	14%	4th
11	Braxton Ashcraft	PIT at CIN		x	x	65	2.62	1.19	16%	14th
12	Tyler Mahle	TEX v MIN		x	x	81	2.20	1.13	10%	22nd
13	Cade Povich	BAL v TBR			x	106	5.06	1.46	16%	22nd
14	Parker Messick	CLE v DET			x	34	2.08	1.30	18%	1st
15	J.T. Ginn	ATH v HOU			x	86	4.57	1.32	18%	23rd
16	Janson Junk	MIA at PHI				105	4.27	1.14	14%	3rd
17	Michael Lorenzen	KCR at LAA				136	4.70	1.35	14%	26th
18	Mitch Farris	LAA v KCR				19	6.52	1.45	12%	26th
19	Davis Martin	CHW at NYY				138	4.03	1.27	9%	1st
20	Walker Buehler	PHI v MIA				121	5.13	1.53	6%	13th
21	Bradley Blalock	COL at SEA				55	9.16	1.82	2%	9th
22	Emerson Hancock	SEA v COL				86	5.13	1.42	7%	27th
23	Keider Montero	DET at CLE				86	4.48	1.40	9%	28th
24	Louis Varland	TOR v BOS				68	3.16	1.24	17%	11th

Recommendations for Roto 5×5 Leagues

KEY x: Standard Recommendation | W: Chasing the Win