Collette Calls: Opening Weekend Thoughts

I must admit up front that this particular week's article is a challenging one for me to write every season. It comes as I wrap up draft season, because I play in some leagues which honor the original rules and do not draft until after Opening Day. Over the past four days, I did my final two auctions as well as auctioneered two other drafts, and it's a good thing that I write this column rather than record it because my voice needs at least a day or two off to recover from 12 hours of auctioneering. I'll do it all over again next year, because draft season is my favorite time of year for the comraderie of the live events and for putting the months worth of research into action, only to then fight the urge to immediately cut everyone off to a terrible start on opening weekend or throw away gobs of free agent budget dollars chasing hot starts.

Here are my thoughts on some of the happenings from this past weekend with some looks back to last season at this time to help level set expectations for some as well as cheer others up.

Home Runs

2026 Leaders after Opening Weekend:

• Chase DeLauter - 4
• Brandon Lowe, Luke Raley, Shea Langeliers and Munetaka Murakami - 3

2025 Leaders after Opening Weekend:

• Tommy Edman and Tyler Soderstrom - 3
• Wilyer Abreu, Andres Gimenez and Shohei Ohtani - 2

Lowe, Langeliers and Murakami were each taken inside the top 150 leading into the season, so the early hot start from each must have fantasy managers feeling good. Each of them went in all 483 tracked 15-team drafts from our ADP tool. Raley, however, went in just 59 percent of those drafts, and even the talented DeLauter went undrafted in six percent of them. 

Looking back to last year, and removing the freakishness of Ohtani, none of those other players finished the season with more than 25 home runs. I am not discounting what DeLauter and Raley have done so much as to say these things happen, but it is indeed worth noting that those two players did so in Seattle, where the ball normally does not travel well this time of year. However, cold starts should not be terribly concerning either.

Hot and cold starts are magnified this time of year because everyone is starting at zero. Elly De La Cruz went 43 games without a home run last season, but the national spotlight truly did not shine brightly on that slump until it had gained some serious momentum. Had De La Cruz opened the season with even a 13-game homerless streak, the critiques would have been flying early and often.

The 2025 season began with two games in Tokyo, Japan before opening weekend kicked off in the states, but the following players were homerless in that time period and yet went on to have notable home run totals:

• Cal Raleigh: 0 homers through his first four games but finished the season with 60
• Junior Caminero: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 45
• Pete Alonso: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 38
• Riley Greene: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 36
• Michael Busch: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 34
• Seiya Suzuki: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 32
• Pete Crow-Armstrong: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 31
• Francisco Lindor: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 31
• Corbin Carroll: 0 homers through his first four games but finished the season with 31
• Hunter Goodman: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 31
• Willy Adames: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 30
• Julio Rodriguez: 0 homers through his first three games but finished the season with 30

The homers will eventually come for some of the notable power outages to begin this season just as the homers will soon stop flying each time DeLauter or Murekami launches a flyball. 

Stolen Bases

2026 Leaders After Opening Weekend:

• Kyle Tucker, Nico Hoerner, Jake McCarthy, Jarren Duran, Joey Ortiz, Nasim Nunez, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Victor Scott and Kyle Karros: 2

2025 Leaders After Opening Weekend:

• Oneil Cruz: 5
• Isiah Kiner-Falefa: 4
• Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr.: 3

Kyle Karros would be the most surprising of the group with steals this season considering his father, Eric, was never fleet of foot. His son stole 12 bases in 2024 while playing in Asheville but had just seven steals in 75 contests last season. We can likely chalk up his two steals this weekend to the matchup against Miami, who was the worst team in baseball at controlling the running game last season. Everyone else is someone we should expect to see on leaderboards this year, and I'm hoping people are not straining their hamstrings while running victory laps with the early successes of Nasim Nunez, both on the bases and with an outstanding play in the field:

2025 did see Oneil Cruz go on to lead the National League in steals with 38, but his very hot start got our collective hopes up until his sub-.300 on-base percentage brought things back to reality. Kiner-Falefa went on to steal just 11 more bases over his final 116 games and was shut out in his 19 games with the Blue Jays. As luck would have it, as I was writing this paragraph, Chandler Simpson stole his first base as well as the club's first base of the season. He was also foolishly thrown out later that inning trying to advance to third on a groundball to the left side right in front of him. 

Milwaukee has already picked up where they left off last year, opening the season by attempting 10 steals against the White Sox, converting nine of them successfully. Miami is on their heels, going a perfect 6-for-6 against the Rockies, while the Pirates are the only team without a stolen base attempt so far this season.

Final Random Thoughts

• The Giants must be thrilled the Yankees are leaving town after scoring just one run all weekend against the Yankees. 
• Milwaukee, despite the loss of Jackson Chourio, is firing on all cylinders, scoring 29 runs against the White Sox.
• The Angels enjoyed their time in Houston, hitting nine homers at Daikin Park, with Mike Trout, Zach Neto and the surprising Nolan Schanuel each hitting two. Trout got off to a hot power start last season before his body once again failed him, but Schanuel's work in the offseason to add more loft to his swing have looked good thus far. 
• The Athletics struck out 50 times in a three-game series against the defending American League Champions, with Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman and Eric Lauer each striking out nine or more hitters. The daily leagues or DFS stacks against the Athletics, especially on the road, will be interesting this season.
• The Guardians had their own issues against the Mariners when DeLauter was not hitting home runs, with 47 strikeouts agsinst the talented Mariner staff. That is notable given the Guardians were a league-average club by strikeout rate in 2025. 

I hope more of your teams are doing well than doing poorly early, but please remember that we have a long way to go on this journey throughout the season. We are going to see more streaks, more slumps and more amazing plays. Next week, I will come back to look at the early season batted ball data as I often do. Here's a teaser: Opening Weekend HR/Contact ((HR/(AB-K)) was 4.6 percent over the weekend, which is exactly where it was when I wrote last year's early look into offense.