Baseball Teams to Target with Fantasy Pitchers: White Sox, Rockies, Pirates and More

As much as we want stars on our rosters, fantasy sports are often about middling players and finding the right matchups. A poor hitting team makes opposing starting pitchers much more appealing in fantasy, and those hurlers go from free agents to owned maybe just for one day.

Part of the process of identifying streaming pitchers is knowing which offenses to target. Even the best pitchers are risky against a team like the Dodgers; you don't want Jose Quintana in your lineup when he takes on LA, but he is worthy when facing the Pirates.

That's what we're doing here today, is identifying which teams are worth targeting to start the season based on 2024's numbers. Things change in the offseason, but as you'll see, not that much has changed with most of these poor offensive teams from last year.

Let's look at the process I used for finding the teams to target, which teams stood out, and who they face over the first weekend of the season. Most stats are from MLB.com, including the 2024 numbers and rankings.

Process

I used nine offensive stat categories from last season: runs scored, hits, doubles, home runs, strike outs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS. I counted the number of times each team appeared in the bottom 10 to see which teams were regularly at the bottom of most categories.

It's not perfect, and it doesn't take into account much for advanced stats, but teams who are generally low in every statistic are rarely hiding a higher level of play. This is a fairly simple way to identify the worst offenses that we should be targeting with opposing pitchers.

Teams to Target

Every time I did this throughout last season, there were usually around 10 teams that stood out as targets. When going through the final 2024 stats, exactly 10 teams were in the bottom 10 in at least six of the nine categories (67%).

Bottom 10 in all nine categories

• Detroit Tigers
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Tampa Bay Rays

Detroit had ups and downs, sometimes looking like a team ready to improve but then usually falling back to a bottom-10 level. We expect them to be better, but the numbers point toward this being a vulnerable offense; I'll be at least tentatively looking to target the Tigers right away, who first play against the Dodgers.

Pittsburgh is a usual suspect. They have a little upside with some young players, but there are still plenty of holes in the lineup. The Pirates will be one of the top teams to target early in the season, and they start against the Miami Marlins.

After at least competing for the playoffs for most of the past decade, the Rays bottomed out a bit last year. Their pitching kept them in a middling wild card race, but the lineup was one of the worst in the league. It's easy to expect them to figure it out, but I thought that for a big portion of last season as well. Tampa starts off with three games at home against the Rockies (so they won't get the Coors Field bump).

Eight bottom 10s

• Chicago White Sox
• Los Angeles Angels

These teams were just as bad as the nine-category group, particularly the White Sox. If you don't remember, Chicago set the record for most losses in a season last year. Things aren't going to be much better this year.

LA made a few moves to raise their floor, and they surely hope Mike Trout can stay on the field a little more often. Travis d'Arnaud, Yoan Moncada, and Jorge Soler were added in free agency. None of the three are going to turn this group alone, but the level of play is better. The lineup is still weak enough to target.

The White Sox and Angels start the season playing against each other, with three games in Chicago.

Seven bottom 10s

• Athletics
• Seattle Mariners
• Texas Rangers

The A's not having a home label for the next few years until they get to Las Vegas is going to be really annoying. The team should be better, as they made moves to improve through both trade and free agency, but a lot of that work went toward the pitching staff. The biggest offensive move might have been Gio Urshela taking over third base, hardly exhilarating stuff. I will be looking to target the A's, who first play against the Mariners.

Speaking of that Seattle team, they wasted a top-five performance from their pitching staff last season by putting up bottom-five offensive numbers. As usual, the team didn't put much money into the roster, so things are going to look similar in 2025. There are still rumors that they might trade from their strong pitching to improve the lineup.

Texas seems like an odd team to show up here, but they took a big step back as a group from their World Series year of 2023, partly beset by injuries. Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, Wyatt Langford, Evan Carter, Adolis Garcia; this hardly seems like a team that is going to be a bottom unit again if they stay healthy. I'm going to be skeptical of targeting Texas unless we see them start the season slowly again. The Rangers play four games at home against Boston to kick things off.

Six bottom 10s

• Cincinnati Reds
• Miami Marlins

Cincinnati has some fun players led by shortstop Elly De La Cruz. The electric De La Cruz wasn't enough to bring up a below-average offense in 2024, though. Infielder Matt McLain is back after missing all of 2024, and they brought in Gavin Lux and Austin Hays. That's not enough to point toward a big upgrade until we see it. The Reds start out against San Francisco.

I had a fun little game going last season in which I followed how long it took a portion of the Miami team to overtake Luis Arraez in hits and runs for the Marlins after he was traded to the Padres at the beginning of May. It was the end of the season before double-digit players reached those one-month marks from Arraez, showing how little talent was present. It's going to be more of the same for the Marlins, who play against Pittsburgh to open the season.

A Special Case

• Colorado Rockies

The Rockies, unsurprisingly, have the starkest difference in numbers between home and away games. They hit like a top-five team when playing in Colorado last year and a bottom-five team away from home: the Coors Field effect is real.

Colorado is a great team to target in away games but stay away from them (and anyone else) when they play at Coors Field. The Rockies start the season in Tampa Bay for three games then play three in Philadelphia, so the first week is a good time to grab streaming pitchers starting against Colorado.