UPDATE: Cleveland Guardians starting pitcher Tanner Bibee (food poisoning) has been scratched for today’s game against the Kansas City Royals. Ben Lively will start instead.
Spring is in the air. The flowers are blooming, the snow has turned to rain, and, most importantly, the gloves are popping. After a long offseason — full of celebration for the Los Angeles Dodgers and misery for the other 29 fanbases — the MLB season is back.
With 18 teams in action on DraftKings’ featured slate, DFS players will have no shortage of options for star players. But that’s not what this column is about; instead, I’ll discuss cheaper options with high upside.
Set your DraftKings fantasy baseball lineups here: MLB $500K Opening Day Special [$100K to 1st].
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SP Yusei Kikuchi, Los Angeles Angels at Chicago White Sox, $6,900
Because it’s Opening Day, all the league’s star pitchers are in action, making Kikuchi — a journeyman southpaw — the second-cheapest starting pitcher on today’s slate. The 33-year-old has undergone a mid-career renaissance, developing a lethal curve that he introduced into his arsenal in 2023. He got fairly unlucky when throwing the pitch in 2024, with opponents’ batting average and slugging percentage both being significantly higher than their expected batting average/slugging percentage, but combined with his faster-than-average slider, Kikuchi has a 97th-percentile breaking pitch arsenal, per Statcast. His second half of the 2024 season, in which he posted a 2.70 ERA over 10 starts after a midseason trade to the Houston Astros, marked the best pitching of his career. Over his 10 Houston starts, he averaged 23.7 FPTS, which would’ve tied for the second-most of any pitcher on tonight’s slate with Paul Skenes ($10,000).
Now set to make his first start with the Angels — and the first Opening Day start of his career — Kikuchi couldn’t ask for a kinder introduction to his tenure in Los Angeles. Last season’s White Sox squad finished 41-121, the second-worst record in baseball since 1960, and the numbers were astounding. They scored only 507 runs, nearly 100 fewer than the second-worst team, and they also recorded the fewest hits, drew the fewest walks, and got hit by the fewest pitches. Plus, it’s not like they made any significant improvements to their roster over the offseason. Kikuchi already ranked near the top of the league in walk avoidance and whiff rate last season, and he should draw plenty of whiffs from the White Sox today.
OF MJ Melendez, Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Guardians, $3,400
Melendez has been in the lab this offseason after struggling with inconsistency at the plate in 2024. He slashed just .146/.266/.236 in September and finished with a 25.1% strikeout rate, and he also walked at his least-frequent rate of his three-year MLB career. Those changes have paid off so far with a solid spring training, as he slashed .241/.305/.444, although he still struck out 18 times in 59 plate appearances. He also showed off that despite his technical changes, his power still remains, as he recorded two home runs, two triples, and a double during spring training. For Melendez, a net-negative defender, maintaining a hard-hit rate in the upper quartile of the league will be critical.
He’s a value play today because of his matchup advantage against the right-handed Tanner Bibee. In 2024, Bibee had relatively extreme splits, holding right-handed batters to an elite .190/.241/.338 slash line and conceding just eight home runs in 316 plate appearances, but against southpaws, that was a different story. He allowed a .263/.320/.460 slash line and gave up 14 bombs in 394 plate appearances to lefties, although he arguably got unlucky with a .328 batting average on balls in play. Meanwhile, Melendez mashed righties while struggling against lefties, hitting all 17 of his home runs against right-handed pitchers and slashing just .164/.176/.219 against southpaws.
SS Willy Adames, San Francisco Giants at Cincinnati Reds, $4,300
Although Adames is the most expensive player on the Giants, he’s just the 10th-most expensive shortstop on the slate overall, which makes him good value for a player who finished 10th in NL MVP voting in 2024. He was San Francisco’s prized offseason addition, inking a seven-year, $182 million pact to become the most expensive signing in franchise history. Adames is one of the most powerful shortstops in the league, finishing third among regular shortstops with 32 home runs and seventh in slugging percentage in 2024. He also walks fairly frequently, finishing with the 32nd-highest walk percentage among 130 qualified batters last season, and he’s the rare right-hander with reverse splits, posting an .851 OPS against righties in 2024.
Greene, meanwhile, is a flamethrower and former top prospect who, despite his undeniable arm talent, has a tendency to be wild. He led all of the major leagues last season by hitting 19 batters, and he also ranked in the top half of the league in walks per nine innings. Greene, as always, did an excellent job of inducing strikeouts in 2024 and, for the first time in his career, also limited home runs. He might’ve made a serious run at the NL Cy Young Award if he hadn’t gotten injured in August, and my colleague Garion has high expectations for him this season. But he has a tendency to start the season slowly — even during his 2024 debut, he allowed two runs, five hits, and four walks in just 4.2 innings of work — and he’s had fairly putrid stats during spring training so far. Also, he was ever-so-slightly worse against right-handed batters than southpaws during the 2024 season.
