Fantasy baseball's Week 3 begins mere hours after a total solar eclipse passes over a dozen U.S. states on Monday.
Ohio, the site of the first game of the week, at Cleveland's Progressive Field, is one of those states. Fortunately, the Chicago White Sox at Cleveland Guardians game has a 5:10 p.m. ET start time, roughly two hours after the eclipse's projected path for totality passes by and more than 45 minutes following its conclusion locally.
The cosmic event has had an impact upon the baseball schedule, as the Miami Marlins at New York Yankees game at New York's Yankee Stadium, which was originally scheduled to be the week's first game with a 2:05 p.m. ET start time, has been pushed back to 6:05 p.m. ET, more than an hour and a half after the eclipse's conclusion locally.
That Guardians game represents the team's home opener, one of three teams remaining to play their home openers during Week 3 (Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays).
There's good news for fantasy managers in weekly leagues in that no team is scheduled for fewer than six games. Eight are set to play seven times, including the Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies and Texas Rangers.
Bear in mind that the Reds, as well as the aforementioned Guardians and Red Sox, are northeastern teams that play the entirety of their weeks in cities with greater risk of poor weather. The Baltimore Orioles, White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Brewers, Twins, Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates also play their Week 3 schedules in cities with weather risk.
It could be a week of late-signing pitcher debuts. Blake Snell is aligned to make his first starts for the San Francisco Giants in what will be a two-start week, concluding with a road start against his original team, the Tampa Bay Rays. Michael Lorenzen, who threw a successful 70-pitch rehabilitation start for Triple-A Round Rock on April 4, could debut for the Rangers on either Tuesday or Wednesday against the Oakland Athletics. Starts by the Arizona Diamondbacks' Jordan Montgomery and White Sox's Mike Clevinger, however, will probably wait another week.