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Week 3 gets off to an earlier-than-usual start due to Patriots Day in Boston, as the Boston Red Sox play their traditional pre-Noon game. This year, first pitch is scheduled for 11:10 a.m. ET. Fantasy managers need to remember this earlier start time, especially those of you in leagues with weekly deadlines.
Speaking of those Red Sox, despite a tough Monday assignment against Lucas Giolito, their right-handed hitters should be in good shape on offense entering Week 3. The Red Sox are scheduled to face three left-handed starting pitchers, with two of them projected to be Yusei Kikuchi and Justus Sheffield, and they'll play all of them at Fenway Park, where righties get a bit of a boost thanks to the Green Monster. This is a great week to get Enrique Hernandez (75.5% available in ESPN leagues) into your lineup, and it might be the week in which both Bobby Dalbec (84.8%) and Hunter Renfroe (92.1%) finally break through. Certainly all three belong in any fantasy lineup considering how much the matchups skew in their direction.
The Chicago White Sox, the Red Sox's Patriots Day opponent, align for a potentially brilliant week on the pitching side, with potentially the week's most consistently favorable pitching matchups among the six-game teams. After the Monday weekend wraparound series finale in Boston, the White Sox travel to Cleveland for a two-game series before returning home to host the aforementioned Rangers for three. Lance Lynn (strained trapezius) is expected to miss one start while on the injured list, that being the team's Wednesday game, and depending upon the identity of his fill-in, that pitcher could warrant streaming consideration. Two-start Giolito and closer Liam Hendriks, meanwhile, are mainstays in any fantasy lineup. Carlos Rodon will make his first start since his no-hitter, in a rematch against the team he no-hit, Cleveland, but this time at their stadium. After fellow no-hit club member Joe Musgrove lasted just four innings and 81 pitches in his first start fresh off his 112-pitch masterpiece, Rodon could be on a bit of a pitch limit for this one. After all, he threw 114 pitches in his own gem. Nevertheless, Rodon's average fastball velocity is up noticeably between two regular-season starts and one Statcast-tracked spring training start. He's getting more extension on his pitches (heightening the effect of his improved velocity), and my past research has indicated that it's actually the pitcher who garners the edge in a starting-pitching rematch against a recent, familiar opponent. The Forecaster grades Cleveland's lineup bottom-10 against left-handers, so it's worth keeping Rodon in there despite the workload worry. Dallas Keuchel (projected Friday versus the Texas Rangers, a bottom-five-graded offense against lefties) appears to be aligned for a big start and Dylan Cease (Wednesday at Cleveland) is also in good shape. Get them all into your lineup and, if you can exploit daily transactions, relievers Michael Kopech (63.8%), Garrett Crochet (89.2%) and Aaron Bummer (96.1%) have all pitched well enough that they should also be in there for these standout matchups.
The Red Sox lead the way among the four teams scheduled for seven games during Week 3, a group that also includes the Los Angeles Angels, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. In a week where four other teams are scheduled to play only five times, those four teams enjoy a volume boost, which is always appealing in weekly fantasy leagues. The Angels are projected to face nothing but right-handed pitching -- a boon to new cleanup man (and locked-in fantasy option) Jared Walsh. Depending upon the health of Houston Astros hitters -- note that there's a good chance Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Alex Bregman could all rejoin the lineup before the teams' series begins on Thursday -- Angels pitchers would also be aligned for a big week. Shohei Ohtani (blister) is expected to rejoin the Angels' rotation on Tuesday, and while he might be on a limited pitch count, he gets an extremely favorable matchup in the process.
The Padres might have the worst imaginable seven-game schedule -- and that's not speaking from a simple Week 3 perspective, but rather the whole year. Check out a portion of these projected opposing starters: Brandon Woodruff (Monday), Corbin Burnes (Tuesday), Walker Buehler (Thursday), Clayton Kershaw (Friday) and Trevor Bauer (Saturday). All of them stand excellent chances at finishing among fantasy baseball's top-20 starting pitchers by year's end. This isn't a week to lean on Padres hitters who provide limited counting-number contributions (HR, RBI, R), like Jake Cronenworth, Jurickson Profar or Ha-Seong Kim.
Shifting to those five-game teams, among this week's list are the Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, Colorado Rockies and Toronto Blue Jays. Remarkably, none of these teams projects terribly despite the short schedule, and the Rockies in fact still have one of the week's best for offense. That's due to all six of their games coming at home, in hitters' heaven Coors Field. They'll play the first two against an Astros team that could still be missing those aforementioned key contributors. Garrett Hampson (38.3%) might be contributing more speed than offense to his fantasy teams, but his Week 3 matchups flip those advantages around. This could be the week in which slow-starting C.J. Cron (46.0%) gets his season on track.
The three-game, week-ending trip to Coors is a much bigger boon for the Philadelphia Phillies offense, at least from a weekly-matchups perspective. There isn't a lot on Philadelphia's hitting side that you can exploit from a free agency perspective, but mind the matchups and start each of their regular Nos. 1-7 hitters (each of whom is rostered in at least 78.9% of ESPN leagues) accordingly. Leadoff man Andrew McCutchen is the least-rostered of that bunch, but great weekly matchups like these are usually a run-scoring dream for players in his position.
One of the reasons that we've got more teams playing fewer games during Week 3 is the larger percentage of interleague contests on the schedule. The Pittsburgh Pirates play their entire six-game week at American League venues (Detroit's Comerica Park and Minnesota's Target Field), and the addition of the designated hitter should buoy playing time for Phillip Evans' (61.8%). The Los Angeles Dodgers also pick up the DH for two week-opening games at Seattle, which is always a help for a lineup as deep as theirs, and the Braves could sneak an extra bat into the lineup if they, as expected, shift Marcell Ozuna to DH for the two week-opening games at Baltimore. Conversely, the Astros lose the DH in their two games at Coors, which is bad news for Alvarez, even if he's able to return from the injured list in time. Barring a big, positive turn of events for him before Monday, he's probably best kept on shallow-mixed benches. The Orioles, meanwhile, might limit Ryan Mountcastle and DJ Stewart to pinch-hitting duties for one game apiece of their week-opening series at Miami's LoanDepot Park, which is enough to keep both off the shallow-mixed radar.
Do you believe in the Kansas City Royals, who entered play on April 16 first in the American League Central? Their Week 3 schedule says that you should, at least if you're leaning on either their pitching staff (generally for streaming purposes) or the right-handed boppers in their lineup. The Royals are projected to face three left-handed starters in their six games, which is good news for Michael Taylor (46.0%) and the slow-starting Jorge Soler (32.3%). Two-start pitcher Brad Keller (94.2%) also gets a pair of matchups -- versus the Tampa Bay Rays and at the Detroit Tigers -- that is well worth exploiting if you play in a league where the volume of starts is king.