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It's here! It's finally here! The 2021 Major League Baseball season -- a full, 162-game season -- begins on Thursday, April 1, with a quadruple-header on ESPN: Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees at 1:05 p.m. ET, Los Angeles Dodgers at Colorado Rockies at 4:10 p.m. ET, New York Mets at Washington Nationals at 7:09 p.m. ET (now postponed, TV plans TBA), and Houston Astros at Oakland Athletics at 10:07 p.m. There's an additional game on ESPN+: Atlanta Braves at Philadelphia Phillies at 3:05 p.m. ET. For you baseball fans, it's a heck of a week of televised baseball. Besides those Opening Day games -- and all 30 big-league teams do play on Thursday, making it a true Opening Day for all -- Week 1 gives us (pending any schedule or rotation changes) 2020 postseason hero Ian Anderson's first start of 2021 (Sunday, April 4, at 1:05 p.m. ET on ESPN); Shohei Ohtani's first pitching start of 2021 (Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN, April 4 at 8:37 p.m. ET); another ESPN quadruple-header on Monday, April 5; a possible Jacob deGrom-Aaron Nola matchup, as each will pitch either on Tuesday, April 6, at 7:05 p.m. ET on ESPN, or Wednesday, April 7, at 4:05 p.m. ET on ESPN+; and another potential Ohtani start on Sunday, April 11, at 1:07 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
With the Thursday start to the season, it's a lengthier "Week 1" of the fantasy baseball season, extending 11 days -- beginning with the 15 games on Thursday, April 1, and concluding with the Sunday Night Baseball game on April 11. Leagues with weekly lineup deadlines will lock lineups for the entirety of Week 1 at the start of each team's first scheduled game, and will not allow changes to take effect again until Monday, April 12. In addition, head-to-head matchups will extend for that entire 11-day period. ESPN leagues with daily lineup deadlines, however, will still lock players at the start times of each of their respective games each day.
What you'll see in the 11-day, rolling pitching grid are projections for teams' rotations. Not all teams have named all five (or six, in some cases) starting pitchers, and many have not yet declared the order of their Nos. 2-5 starters, including the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Nationals. Keep checking back with that page, as rotations will be updated as news breaks. In addition, as with seasons past, expect an at-least-once-daily update to the Forecaster pitching and hitting pages, keeping you abreast of the projected ratings for the upcoming 10 days.
Eight teams are scheduled for 10 games during Week 1: The Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, San Diego Padres Rockies, Dodgers, Athletics and Blue Jays. Two teams are scheduled to play only eight times: The Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals. The disparity in the number of scheduled games gives those first eight listed teams a volume advantage, but it's not as disadvantageous for Cleveland as you might think, being that they'll play six of their eight games against the Detroit Tigers (one at each team's home ballpark) and two at home against the Royals. Cleveland has also decided upon only four starters through at least April 11, so their top three, Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale, will each still get a pair of starts. Other than their left-handed members of lefty-righty hitting platoons (Jake Bauers and Ben Gamel) who probably won't see many starts in a week where the team is scheduled to face four left-handed starters, Cleveland players are still well worth keeping active.
The Rockies play each of their first seven, 15 of their first 21 and 25 of their first 41 games at Colorado's Coors Field. That's a huge advantage for them on the hitting side. They'll need it, as they're first scheduled to face the Dodgers' rotation front four of Clayton Kershaw, Trevor Bauer, Walker Buehler and Julio Urias, a group that has a collective 4.88 ERA and is 12-of-33 (36%) in quality starts at Coors but 2.87 and 379-of-615 (62%) everywhere else in their careers. C.J. Cron, who slugged .702 in 53 plate appearances with a 97.0 mph average exit velocity (in charted games) during spring training, needs be activated in all leagues for this schedule. Nos. 1-2 hitters Raimel Tapia and Ryan McMahon are also well worth activating, as they might well sit against Kershaw and Urias but start against the seven projected right-handed starters. On the mound, Rockies ace German Marquez is one of the few pitchers aligned for a three-start Week 1, and while two of those assignments come at Coors (one of which is against the Dodgers), he's worth the start in any league that leans heavily upon volume (innings and strikeouts particularly).
Weather can and probably will be a factor during Week 1, and perhaps throughout the entire month of April. The Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Tigers, Yankees, Phillies and Nationals, northern teams that utilize open-air stadiums in cities that sometimes face cold temperatures and/or precipitation in April, all spend the first seven days of the season at home. The Minnesota Twins, in the most precarious position as far as cold weather is concerned, play three home games during the April 8-11 weekend. Brace for the possibility of postponements, and bear in mind that teams often push the rescheduled games back in the calendar. For example, rain is in the forecast on Opening Day in both Boston and New York, threatening rain delays or postponements. Update: The Red Sox's Thursday opener has already been postponed until Friday.
With the designated hitter no longer in play in the National League, interleague games again have an impact on your planning. Addressing the DH position itself, Nelson Cruz won't have his usual lineup spot for the Twins' season-opening, three-game series at Milwaukee's Miller Park. That's a knock on his Week 1 fantasy value (albeit not enough to definitively bench him). Meanwhile, the overflowing Padres lineup will benefit from having the DH during its week-ending three-game series at Texas' Globe Life Field, bolstering the playing time of Jake Cronenworth, Haseong Kim and Jurickson Profar, and putting all three on the 12-team-mixed radar. The San Francisco Giants, meanwhile, also gain the DH for three season-opening games at Seattle's T-Mobile Park, which is a boost for their crowded infield. Wilmer Flores, Tommy La Stella, Evan Longoria and Donovan Solano all get a boost in 15-team-mixed.
It's the Dodgers, however, who get a big boost on the hitting side -- they grade out at a league-best 10 for Week 1 -- thanks to a few of the aforementioned factors. First, they get those four season-opening games at Coors, then they gain the DH during a three-game, April 5-7 trip to Oakland's RingCentral Coliseum, which is a boost for a team that loves to mix-and-match and might always have a fantasy-relevant bat riding the bench at the start of each game. Yes, it's a tougher-than-usual week for Dodgers pitching -- Coors, the DH in place of the pitcher for those Oakland games and three more against a potent Nationals lineup -- but the bats are the story here. Second base combatants Gavin Lux and Chris Taylor had great springs and should pick additional plate appearances in the Oakland games, so get both into your lineups.
A few teams have yet to announce scheduling for the back end of their rotations, so lefty/righty matchups aren't yet easy to discern. During Week 1, however, it's best to go with your best matchups. Nevertheless, with the lefty/righty information we have, Cavan Biggio could be in for a big week, as his Blue Jays could face as many as nine righty starters and he has been slotting in at No. 2 in their potent lineup with George Springer (oblique) potentially IL-bound for the season's first few games. Spring training standout Josh Rojas might similarly excel, as he should get the Diamondbacks' starts against right-handed starters (and they're scheduled to face eight of them), with 3-of-10 total games happening at Coors. The Pirates, too, shouldn't be outright discarded -- not when they're set to face nothing but right-handed starting pitching and with leadoff man Adam Frazier coming off a torrid Grapefruit League campaign. He and Colin Moran are 15-team-mixed starters.
Many more rotations than I anticipated at spring training's dawn are sticking to five pitchers, and in fact, the Braves (thanks to a planned April 6 bullpen day), Indians, Royals and Miami Marlins are rolling with only four starters during Week 1. The likelihood of six-man rotations, especially as we get deeper into the year, might wreak havoc with your planning, and more so in leagues where there's an advantage to leaning on two-start pitchers. The Red Sox might not have Eduardo Rodriguez (dead arm) make any starts at all. The Yankees are pushing Jameson Taillon back to April 7, putting him in line for only one Week 1 start. The Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers are planning piggyback outings with the former starting Rich Hill (with Chris Archer set to come on in relief) on April 3, which makes projecting the remainder of their weekly rotation challenging.