I don’t think that enough baseball fans have been talking about the Colorado Rockies, who are now 4-24 in this early stage of the season and have lost seven straight games. If that putrid form continues, Colorado will finish with a record of 23-139, the worst record in baseball history by 17 games.
At some point, the Rockies are probably bound to pick it up and get to a merely bad but not historically incompetent pace. But until they demonstrate some signs of life, they’ll continue to appear in daily targets columns. Here is an Atlanta Brave, plus seven other players who you should be targeting for your DFS lineups in tonight’s 10-game featured slate. As usual, all eight players come from different games.
Set your DraftKings fantasy baseball lineups here: MLB $225K Bat Flip [$50K to 1st]
PITCHER
Stud
Freddy Peralta, Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago White Sox, $10,300 – Colorado’s absolute futility has taken some of the attention off the White Sox, who still have a worse winning percentage (.250) than they did last season, when they came within one loss of becoming the second-worst team in modern MLB history. But Chicago still has the worst OPS in the league, has hit the third-fewest home runs, and owns the third-worst offensive run probability added. And Peralta is really good; he’s given up two or fewer runs in five of his six starts, and though he got roughed around a bit in his most recent outing to the tune of three runs in five innings (7.1 FPTS), it came against a pretty solid offense in the San Francisco Giants.
Value
Reese Olson, Detroit Tigers at Houston Astros, $7,700 – There are many cheaper options than Olson on tonight’s slate, but with a couple of teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Athletics, for instance — opting for bullpen games, you’re going to get a lot more length value out of a pitcher like Olson, who went 7.1 innings in his most recent start, giving up no runs and just two hits (32.7 FPTS) in a 6-0 win over the San Diego Padres. He hasn’t given up a run in either of his last two outings, dropping his season ERA to 3.29, among the best of the pitchers around his price point. This season, the middling Astros have recorded the league’s seventh-worst OPS, sixth-fewest walks, and fifth-fewest homers.
INFIELDER
Stud
Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Miami Marlins, $6,300 – Ohtani has had a mediocre season by his standards, posting an OPS more than 10 percentage points worse than it was in either of the last two seasons, when he won MVP, and he hasn’t hit a home run for nearly two weeks. But he’s put together three straight solid games, going six-for-11 across that span with four runs scored, three doubles, one triple, four walks, and two stolen bases (19 FPTS per game). Miami starter Sandy Alcantara ($7,000) is still recovering from Tommy John surgery and sports a 6.56 ERA so far. He’s given up two or more walks in four of his five starts and a home run in three of them.
Stud
Eugenio Suárez, Arizona Diamondbacks at New York Mets, $4,500 – On Saturday, Suárez completed one of the rarest and most impressive feats in baseball when he became the 19th player ever to hit four home runs in one game. In the 8-7 Arizona loss to the Atlanta Braves, Suárez went four-for-four with four runs, five runs batted in, and four bombs (58 FPTS), the cherry on top of an excellent series for him. Meanwhile, Mets starter David Peterson ($7,800) has pretty good, but he’s occasionally prone to extra-base hits, ranking in the fourth percentile in hard-hit percentage and the 11th percentile in average exit velocity. Another long ball incoming for the league leader?
Value
Drake Baldwin, Atlanta Braves at Colorado Rockies, $3,400 – Baldwin has been competing with time behind the plate with Sean Murphy ($5,300), who’s been the regular starter and has done fairly well as of late. But with right-hander Germán Márquez ($5,000) on the hill for Colorado, it’s fairly likely that the left-handed Baldwin will get more opportunities. He has gone a solid three-for-seven over his last three games, raising his batting average to .260, and his hitting numbers should keep him in the lineup even if he’s gotten off to a slow start to his MLB career defensively. Both Márquez’s fastballs and breaking balls rank in the bottom decile by run value, and he’s also prone to giving up hard hits. Plus, Coors Field is the league’s most hitter-friendly park.
OUTFIELDER
Stud
Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners vs. Los Angeles Angels, $5,100 – The 24-year-old Dominican has struggled mightily to begin his 2025 campaign after finishing in the top 10 in MVP voting in each of the first two seasons of his MLB career. He’s slashing just .196/.308/.366, and the one saving grace is that his 15 walks tie for the 32nd-most in baseball in the early going. But he’s started to show some signs of life, getting a hit in seven of his last eight games, and despite going one-for-six on Saturday, he did manage to hit a solo homer (14 FPTS). He still swings it fast and runs fast, and Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz ($5,500) has already given up five homers this season.
Stud
Wyatt Langford, Texas Rangers vs. Athletics, $5,000 – Langford has been on quite the hot streak in recent weeks; in his last 10 games — a stretch that dates back to the start of the month because he missed nearly two weeks with an oblique injury — he’s slashing .378/.452/.730 with three home runs, four RBI’s, and three stolen bases (11.2 FPTS per game). Meanwhile, the Athletics seem to be opting for a bullpen game, with Jacob Lopez ($6,000) having not pitched more than 1.2 innings this season. Unfortunately for the Athletics, their bullpen has the eighth-highest WHIP and given up the fifth-most walks, so it could be an opportunity for the 23-year-old to continue his hot start.
Value
Ceddanne Rafaela, Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays, $3,500 – Rafaela is a youngster worth a flyer against the ultimate boom-or-bust pitching staff of the Blue Jays. Toronto’s WHIP is above average and its strikeout rate is actually the fifth-highest in all of baseball. But the Blue Jays have given up the league’s second-highest home run rate and a faster-than-average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage. While Rafaela doesn’t swing the bat particularly quickly, he’s been excellent at finding the barrel and is slightly above-average at producing hard hits. He’s also improved year by year, with his expected wOBA increasing across each of his first three MLB seasons.
