Erik Halterman

Opening Day is still over a week away, but the 2024 MLB regular season nonetheless begins Wednesday morning at 6 p.m. ET. It's a confusing situation, but the Seoul Series gives us the opportunity to see regular season baseball one week early and also to play regular season DFS one week early, so I'm not complaining.

Tyler Glasnow is an expensive choice to captain your Wednesday DraftKings showdown lineups, but it's hard to pass him up, writes Erik Halterman.

This article is part of our Spring Training Job Battles series.

2024 MLB Predictions: RotoWire Staff Picks for Divisions, World Series and Awards

The first few weeks of the season are one of the best times of the year as a baseball fan. After nearly five months without a meaningful game, there's suddenly so much baseball being played that you couldn't possibly watch it all even if you refused to sleep. Even if your team gets off to a slow start, the return of background-noise baseball is worth celebrating.

Wednesday features a full, 15-game baseball schedule, but with games spread throughout the day, just seven are included on DraftKings' main evening slate. That number has since shrunk to six, with the Mets-Braves game in Atlanta already rained out. We're left with a small slate that's short on reliable pitching at the top.

Last week's top riser Shane Bieber needs Tommy John surgery and will be out until the middle of next year. So will Eury Perez. So will Spencer Strider, most likely, though we're still waiting official confirmation there. That trio joins an elite group featuring pitchers like Sandy Alcantara, Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, Clayton Kershaw, Shane McClanahan and Brandon Woodruff on the shelf to start the year. Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes are the only active Cy Young winners who are currently available to pitch.

We've entered the part of the year where the leaderboards already look quite recognizable in many categories. The top three in WAR according to FanGraphs? Mookie Betts, Jose Altuve and Juan Soto. Top in homers? Mike Trout and Marcell Ozuna. Top in steals? Brice Turang, with Ronald Acuna and Corbin Carroll among those who trail him by just one.

What started as a quick bit of research for this week's MLB Barometer introduction turned into a full-length article. As a result, my next MLB Barometer will be delayed by a few days, but enjoy this article on the most exciting rookie pitcher in baseball instead.

Chris Sale is one of several players who have sustained surprisingly strong starts through the first quarter of the season.