With the MLB beginning to settle in for the long regular season ahead, some teams are separating themselves at the top and bottom of the league. The NL West, in particular, looks to be a bloodbath, with four of the seven teams with the best records in the NL in the division. But hey — at least the Colorado Rockies have won two games in a row and now look like merely a run-of-the-mill embarrassment.
Friday brings the start of the weekend and, for the most part, the start of new series of games. With six-man rotations becoming more and more common, many teams will send their best pitchers to the hill, although I’ll stop myself from picking the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($10,300) for the fourth straight Friday. In his stead, here are two pitchers, three infielders, and three outfielders you should be targeting in tonight’s action.
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PITCHER
Stud
Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers at Los Angeles Angels, $10,500 – After unanimously winning last season’s AL Cy Young Award, Skubal has turned things around after a rough first two starts and reclaimed his brilliant form. Over his last four outings, he’s combined for 24 innings pitched, 15 hits, two earned runs, one walk, and 30 strikeouts (27.38 FPTS per game). Some of these outings came against pretty solid competition, too, including the New York Yankees. The Angels, meanwhile, have posted the seventh-worst OPS, drawn the fewest walks, and scored the seventh-fewest runs while striking out the fifth-most times. That’s a dream matchup for a pitcher who strikes out tons of batters — he’s third in the AL so far this season in strikeouts per nine innings — but doesn’t walk many.
Value
Logan Allen, Cleveland Guardians at Toronto Blue Jays, $6,000 – In the days that they had Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnación, I associated the Blue Jays with a team of sluggers capable of hitting towering home runs into the bleachers of the Rogers Centre at will. That hasn’t been the case this season, though; Toronto has hit just 21 homers over its first 31 games, the second-fewest in the league, and has the fourth-worst slugging percentage. It’s unlikely to get another against Allen, whose propensity to induce soft contact has been one of his best attributes this season. He’s had a trio of ace-level starts (one earned run in 16 innings) sandwiched between two poor ones, and I feel confident that he’ll bounce back today.
INFIELDER
Stud
Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals at Baltimore Orioles, $5,800 – Witt has gotten off to an excellent start so far in 2025, slashing .331/.407/.521 and leading all of the major leagues in doubles, just one season after finishing second in the AL MVP race. He’s also in exceptional recent form, having recorded 10 or more FPTS in each of his past three games, including a one-for-three, one-homer, two-walk, three-RBI (24-FPT) performance last night against the Tampa Bay Rays. Meanwhile, Baltimore’s pitchers have conceded the second-highest ERA this season, something that Dean Kremer ($5,500) hasn’t helped by giving up five or more earned runs in each of his past two games.
Stud
Tyler Soderstrom, Athletics at Miami Marlins, $4,700 – One of this season’s breakout stars has had a bit of a power drought, as he hasn’t gone deep since a solo shot against the Chicago White Sox on April 17. But his overall stat line for the season is still rather good — .289/.351/.554 and an impressive nine homers — and in baseball, you can get out of slumps just as quickly as you can enter them. A two-for-five (eight-FPT) performance last night demonstrates that Soderstrom might be on the rise again. Miami’s pitchers, meanwhile, sport the league’s highest ERA and have given up the third-most homers. Marlins starter Valente Bellozo ($5,800) was rather prone to home runs in his rookie season in 2024.
Value
Willy Adames, San Francisco Giants vs. Colorado Rockies, $3,600 – Adames was San Francisco’s prized offseason acquisition after finishing 10th in NL MVP voting last season with the Milwaukee Brewers, but he’s gotten off to a fairly slow start, slashing just .218/.298/.306 so far this season. Still, he’s starting to turn it around somewhat; over his last 10 games, his slash line has improved and he finally hit his second homer of the season on Tuesday against the San Diego Padres. In the first game of the series, he went two-for-four and scored a run (eight FPTS) and should be effective tonight against Antonio Senzatela ($5,000), who has given up four or more earned runs in three of his last four starts.
OUTFIELDER
Stud
Teoscar Hernández, Los Angeles Dodgers at Atlanta Braves, $5,400 – Hernández is in the middle of quite the tear at the plate, and he’s been arguably the most dangerous of the Dodgers’ ridiculously stacked top four. He’s now recorded 14 or more FPTS in seven of his last eight games, hitting four homers across that stretch and having five multi-hit games. To be fair, none of the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Marlins has an elite pitching staff, but then again, neither does Atlanta. Grant Holmes ($7,200) gave up six earned runs in just five innings (four FPTS) in his last start against the Arizona Diamondbacks as he was the primary victim of Eugenio Suárez’s four-homer game.
Stud
Seiya Suzuki, Chicago Cubs at Milwaukee Brewers, $5,300 – Suzuki, like Hernández, is hot at the plate for a team that might be the best bet to win the National League as one of the Senior Circuit’s best teams despite a ridiculously difficult schedule at this point. In his last 10 games, Suzuki is slashing .302/.333/.791 with five homers, 13 RBI’s, and eight runs scored, and he had a two-bomb (32-FPT) performance last night against Pittsburgh. Although Shohei Ohtani ($6,300)‘s mark of 58 won’t be touched any time soon, there’s a reasonable chance that Suzuki could pass Hideki Matsui’s 31-homer season in 2004 and become the second-most prolific single-season Japanese slugger. Brewers starter Quinn Priester ($6,600) is coming off a rough start, giving up five runs (-1.4 FPTS) in an April 26 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Value
Trent Grisham, New York Yankees vs. Tampa Bay Rays, $3,900 – Grisham isn’t an everyday player because New York already has three fairly reliable outfielders in Aaron Judge ($6,500), Cody Bellinger ($4,500), and Jasson Domínguez ($4,000). But in recent games, Grisham has started to get a few more opportunities in place of the slumping youngster Domínguez. He’s on a four-game hit streak and has hit bombs in two of his last four games, and the Bronx Bombers’ torpedo bats are starting to wake up once again. Rays starter Ryan Pepiot ($7,800) ranks in just the fifth percentile in overall pitching run value and tends to give up hard hits, so the slugger should be well-suited to take advantage.
