Fantasy Baseball Week 3 will begin a bit later than the Week 2 morning start in Boston, with the first game on Monday, April 25 starting at 6:10 ET. Before we get into Week 3, it would be wrong to not congratulate Miguel Cabrera (1B, about 5% owned), who became just the 33rd player to join the 3,000 hit club. Miggy is easily one of the best to ever play the game, but don't go crazy signing him in fantasy in 2022.
Coming off a relatively good week of matchups, the Oakland Athletics are in for a rough week as the only team scheduled to play just five games. They will play the Giants in a two-game series on the road and then come home to face Shane Bieber and the Cleveland Guardians. Oakland's Frankie Montas (SP, 99% owned) and Sean Murphy (C, 75% owned), who we wrote about last week, are their only relevant players in Week 3.
Four teams play six times, most notably the San Diego Padres who will play the Cincinnatti Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates. This schedule mostly favors San Diego's left-handed hitters, with four of their projected opponents, Vladimir Gutierrez, Zach Thompson, JT Brubaker, and Mitch Keller, all struggling against such hitters in their careers. For week 3, we will target Eric Hosmer (1B, 64% owned) and Trent Grisham (OF, 34% owned).
Of the teams playing on all seven days, three of them will play all seven at home - St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, and Toronto Blue Jays. Naturally, we will target hitters from each of those lineups. Meanwhile, the Arizona Diamondbacks also play on all seven days, but should be avoided as much as possible with tough matchups slated against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Cardinals, including matchups against Walker Buehler and Adam Wainwright, respectively.
In this post, I will also always discuss a few more players that I will be targeting on the waiver wire and who are currently available in most leagues:
- The Seattle Mariners pitching staff has started the 2022 season strong, currently ranking seventh in team ERA. They head to Florida this week to play in two hitter-friendly parks, in Tampa Bay and Miami. We will target Matt Brash (SP, 76% owned) and Chris Flexen (SP, 55% owned for these matchups.
- Another starting pitcher worth mentioning this week is Colorado Rockies' Chad Kuhl (SP, 21% owned). Kuhl will have his ups and downs throughout the season but is certainly worth rostering for now while he is hot.
- Last week, we wrote about Los Angeles' Gavin Lux (2B, SS, OF, 79% owned) and we wanted to include him again here after his ownership spiked 20%. Lux seems poised for a big season while hitting in a loaded Dodger lineup. He currently ranks just outside the top 100 players overall in standard-scoring leagues.
- Another shortstop worth adding is Seattle Mariners' JP Crawford (SS, 30% owned), who currently ranks as a top 70 player overall.