By ESPN | Created at 2025-03-21 17:19:36 | Updated at 2025-03-21 23:32:08
6 hours ago
Tristan H. Cockcroft
Mar 20, 2025, 08:46 AM ET
The 2025 MLB season begins on Thursday, March 27, with four days of games that conclude fantasy's "Week 1" -- a scoring period which began with the two Chicago Cubs-Los Angeles Dodgers games in Japan. This opening "week" extends through the games of Sunday, March 30.
For fantasy baseball managers in leagues with daily transactions, as is the ESPN standard, lineups will lock at the scheduled start time of each player's game on any given day. If you have not yet drafted, bear in mind that players will be locked in the roster spots you select them with, and statistics from games that have already occurred will be applied retroactively.
This includes all Cubs and Dodgers from the Tokyo Series if you conduct your league's draft between now and Opening Day. You'll still be able to start, sit, IL, add and/or drop Cubs and Dodgers, but those moves will only take effect beginning with the next upcoming game.
For managers in leagues with weekly transactions, all Cubs and Dodgers players are already locked into their roster spots for Week 1 and, for those who have yet to draft, they will lock into the lineup spots in which you select them. You may still start, sit, IL, add and/or drop any player from the other 28 teams until the scheduled start of their first game of the week but, after that, they will lock into place until the start of Week 2.
Weather can be a concern during the season's opening weeks, especially in northern and northeastern cities where temperatures remain low. Six host cities -- Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas City, New York, St. Louis and Washington -- have off days scheduled for Friday as a safety net in case of Opening Day postponements.
Of the eight teams that call a weather-controlled environment their home, the Milwaukee Brewers are the only one who begin the season on the road. Volume seekers should look to the series in Arizona, Miami, Seattle, Texas and Toronto, all of them four-gamers, as the safest choices, with the four-gamer in San Diego close behind.
While most teams have already announced their Opening Day starters, specific rotation plans beyond that for almost every team remain in flux. Expect frequent updates to the Forecaster grids and rankings between now and the opener, but for now, all projected pitchers listed are exactly that, projections based upon team announcements or spring training usage patterns.
A shortened scoring period means that it's impossible for any team's entire rotation to get a starting assignment. Here are some notable names who are not projected to work during the opening weekend, whether for scheduling or health reasons:
Ronel Blanco, Taj Bradley, Jacob deGrom, Jackson Jobe, Jared Jones, Jesus Luzardo, Brandon Pfaadt, Jose Quintana, Max Scherzer, Kodai Senga, Clarke Schmidt, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki (both worked in Tokyo Series)
