One thing I am trying to be more committed to this season is weekly waiver wire targets articles. It’s a difficult article to get right, and I never want to put out something that isn’t good just for the sake of getting it out. So I’ll have to refine some process of doing this the best way possible.
The Daily Notes will certainly help. I’m primarily looking for widely available standout players in those daily posts. I can build a list during the week while finding players in my morning research and let that be the base of the post. I will also be focused strongly on the upcoming week’s schedule and projections.
I don’t have projections for week one yet, so that won’t be as much a part of this post. After we get started and lineups are made clear, I’ll start the daily script that projects the next ten days worth of games. I believe I started that in the middle of last season, so this will be the first full year with decent weekly projections running. There is a Google Sheet and a Tableau Dashboard with all of that. They’re never perfect, of course. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to project a game that is 5-10 days away. Lineups change, players go on IL and come off of IL, so there are often errors in the projected lineups, but it’s a nice baseline to have.
The goal will be to have the waiver wire articles up each Friday night or Saturday morning since most leagues that do weekly waivers are probably running that on Sunday.
An added motivation for me this year is that I’ve entered two weekly FAAB leagues. Last year, I wasn’t in any leagues like that, so the motivation to really get a strong hold on this was lacking.
For this first post, I’m just looking at some standout names that are the result of recent roster news. We’re seeing rosters become finalized this weekend, and that opens the door for us. There are plenty of low-owned players who have earned a starting role on their team and might be worth a look at the beginning of the year.
I’ll keep this article free, but during the season, this one is going mostly behind the paywall.
Matt Wallner & Trevor Larnach
Wallner: 29% Owned on Yahoo, 6% on ESPN
Larnach: 2% on Yahoo, 1% on ESPN
The Twins open their season with three games against the Cardinals and three games against the White Sox. The Cardinals rotation looks like this:
Sonny Gray RHP
Erick Fedde RHP
Miles Mikolas RHP
Andre Pallante RHP
???
I’m not sure what they’ll do with that fifth spot until Quinn Mathews gets the call, but it’s pretty clear that the Twins will face three righties out of the gate.
They might see lefty Martin Perez in that second series with the White Sox, but as things stand right now, they’re likely to face three pretty bad right-handed pitchers (some mix of Jonathan Cannon, Davis Martin, Shane Smith, and Sean Burke?).
That is huge for Matt Wallner, a guy who slashed .275/.387/.566 against righties last season. He’s one of the game’s better power hitters against righties (18.3% Brl% last year), although there are a lot of strikeouts (34% K% last year) that come in between those long balls. All things considered, Wallner should be started across the board opening weekend, as long as you have the roster spot for him. I wouldn’t be dropping somebody you have big hopes for to get him, but in deeper leagues and any sort of daily changes league, I think Wallner should be picked up. This is even more true in points or OBP leagues, as you saw that .387 OBP last year against righties.
Trevor Larnach is also in a platoon role in Minnesota. His fantasy impact isn’t quite as great as Wallner’s, but he’s in play here as well. Last year, he slashed .261/.340/.441 against righties with a much more solid 22% K% and a 10% BB%. He does not have nearly the same raw power, but he’s more reliable for base hits. He won’t go for the extended slumps that you’ll see from Wallner because of the better contact abilities.
I’d prefer Wallner because I think he can get out of the gate with a couple of homers right away (he is tied for the spring training lead with six right now, so he’s swinging his normal bat), but Larnach is a fine consolation prize.
Matt Shaw, Cam Smith, Kristian Campbell
Matt Shaw: 53% on Yahoo, 45% on ESPN
Cam Smith: 26% on Yahoo, 7% on ESPN
Kristian Campbell: 22% on Yahoo, 14% on ESPN
I’m clumping these three together as the rookies who are likely to make the team out of camp. We’ve already seen Shaw break camp with the Cubs and start the team’s first two games. It’s not a guarantee (yet) with Smith and Campbell, but everything seems to be pointing in their favor.
These three have all of the upside and all of the downside that comes with getting your first-ever reps against Major League pitching. It’s impossible to say which players can make that transition smoothly and which cannot, although clearly, most cannot.
They all have very impressive minor-league resumes:
Career Minor League Stats
Shaw: 681 PA, .301/.380/.515, 17.5% K%, 10.1% BB%, 28 HR, 44 SB
Smith: 134 PA, .313/.396/.609, 17.9% K%, 11.2% BB%, 7 HR, 2 SB
Campbell: 569 PA, .326/.436/.548, 20.4% K%, 14.1% BB%, 21 HR, 25 SB
The thing that, in my view, gives them a chance to be at least decent right out of the gate is those strong K% and BB% marks. All three guys have K-BB% below 8%, a nice thing to see from a minor league hitter.
There are no guarantees. If I had to bet on it, I’d say all three guys struggle a bit early on, but there is a very real upside with all three names. With Smith and Campbell, maybe you want to wait to just make sure they’re on the Opening Day roster, but I’d say there’s a 75-80% chance of that happening for both guys right now.
Victor Scott II
4% on Yahoo, 2% on ESPN
It was announced Sunday morning that Scott would be the Cardinals’ Opening Day centerfielder. This same exact thing happened last season, and a bunch of people rushed out to add him and spent some serious cash to secure him in the first FAAB run. That did not work at all last year, as Scott slashed just .085/.138/.136 in 65 PAs before being demoted.
But it’s much too early to give up on the 24-year-old speedster. It doesn’t hurt that he’s had a heck of a spring.
49 PA, .366/.469/.756, 4 HR, 5 SB, 18.4% K%, 16.3% BB%
There are many, many cases of guys showing out in spring training just to fall flat immediately upon the regular season starting. But it’s pretty tough to not want to take another chance on a guy who stole 95 bases in a single season (2023).
If Scott can notch even a .325 OBP this year, he’ll quickly find his way to the top of the Cardinals lineup and just might win the stolen base crown. I’m giving him a look in roto leagues, but I’m not going to hold on very long if none of these gains with the bat carry over from spring into the regular season.
Ben Rice
7% on Yahoo, 3% on ESPN
He got his first chance in The Show last year and was pretty bad outside of a three-homer game. Last year:
MiLB: 355 PA, .273/.400/.567, 24 HR, 20% K%, 16% BB%
MLB: 178 PA, .171/.264/.349, 7 HR, 27% K%, 11% BB%
He had a three-homer game in the Majors, but he was useless outside of that game. He is having himself a huge spring, and there is room in the lineup for him now with Giancarlo Stanton starting the year on the IL. He’ll get some DH reps along with some days filling for Paul Goldschmidt at first, and he might even catch a couple of games a month if they need it.
The raw power is there, but Major League pitchers had his number last year. It will be interesting to see what he can come up with this year.
Jackson Jobe
44% on Yahoo, 20% on ESPN
He has officially made the Tigers rotation, and that has the ownership climbing in a hurry.
If you were drafting today, I’d actually be on the fade side of Jobe. The name value is there as a former first-round pick and top pitching prospect in baseball. However, the numbers just haven’t been there. He posted just a 26% K% in the minors last year and has a 17% mark this spring with a high walk rate to boot (10%). The fastball is super heavy, but it has not gotten many whiffs to this point. And the prospect guys I trust aren’t overly excited about him in the short term, either.
That said, maybe I’m wrong, and I do think he should be more than 40% owned. The kid has the talent to someday be an ace, so maybe he’ll craft that faster than I’m guessing he will. There’s a reason he was the #1 pitching prospect in baseball, and that might be worth a shot early on.
Reds Bullpen
Alexis Diaz will start the season on the IL. I have a feeling he is not going to get that Reds closer job back. This is a guy who posted a 9.9% K-BB% last year. He’s never had any command of the baseball, the strikeout rate dropped a ton last year, and his spring was just a disaster.
The question is, who do the Reds replace him with? Roster Resource guesses at a committee of Emilio Pagan and Graham Ashcraft. Here are the numbers:
There is no clear front-runner, and I do imagine you’ll get a mix of guys getting saves early on. The two guys with closer experience here are Pagan and Taylor Rogers. Rogers is a lefty, so they’ll likely want to use him to get some of those tough left-handed bats out in the 6th-9th inning (wherever they come up).
In a standard league, I’d say just avoid this situation altogether until something is made clear. But if you’re really scrambling for saves on waivers, I’d give it a shot in this order for now:
Pagan
Ashcraft
Rogers
Long-term, Ashcraft would be my bet. He’s a failed starter with huge velo. His stuff seems to play into a bullpen role nicely, so I could see him being the guy who eventually takes that job for the long haul.
SP Streamers
I got ahead of this a couple of weeks ago with this article, but here’s a list of decent pitchers in good matchups to start the year.
Mitch Keller at MIA
Tylor Megill at HOU
Jose Soriano at CWS
Sean Burke vs. LAA
Luis Severino at SEA
Andrew Heaney at MIA
Max Meyer vs. PIT
I’m not really looking to roster someone like Mitch Keller all year. The whole picture ends up being “meh”, but yeah, I’d like to get him for this first start in Miami this weekend.
The guys I might be looking at more for the long haul would be Megill, Soriano, Burke, and Meyer.
There will be many more low-owned SPs to talk about, and that will be the main focus of the daily notes for the first 2-3 weeks of the season. If there are early-season gems to be found, we will find them.
The Just-In-Case Block
Writing a newsletter like this is made difficult by the diversity of leagues out there. I have people reading this who are playing in 30-team dynasty leagues, and then some people playing in 10-team leagues with their co-workers who really don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s hard for me to know what kind of league depth to target. So I’ll try to kick in a section like this every week with the “just in case they’re actually available in your league…” targets.
Here are some names currently under 50% owned on Yahoo that I think should be close to universally owned:
Jesus Luzardo (42%) - potential SP2 for fantasy
Gavin Williams (50%) - could not have had a better spring, huge frame, great fastball, good secondaries
Byron Buxton (37%) - at least until he gets hurt, right?
Max Scherzer (49%) - must start when he’s healthy
Grant Holmes (29%) - has made ATL rotation, looks strong
Jorge Soler (49%) - strong OBP & power source
Luis Rengifo (48%) - as long as he’s healthy and in the OD lineup
Christian Encarnacion-Strand (38%) - speculative power add
Maikel Garcia (33%) - if you need steals
Drew Rasmussen (52%) - Not many people seem to agree with me, but I think this dude is a stud
Dustin May (32%) - Dodgers SP5?
Joc Pederson (20%) - for daily changes league; elite power bat vs. RHP
Mitch Keller (32%) - first start in Miami
Trevor Story (31%) - 20/20 guy
Michael Busch (31%) - decent OBP league target (12-teamers or deeper)
JJ Bleday (26%) - solid bat, added HR upside in new park
Garrett Mitchell (20%) - 25/25 threat if he can keep the K% in control
Joey Ortiz (15%) - infield depth, solid player with upside
There are so many more enticing names, but those are my favorites from what I’m seeing right now.
Super Deep League Considerations
We’ll do the flip side of that last block as well. Here are guys I’d not be thinking about in a 12-teamer, but just a little something for you 15+ team league psychos.
Richard Fitts (2% on Yahoo) - fastball is averaging above 96mph this spring, and he’s gotten a ton of whiffs this spring. He’ll be the Red Sox #4 starter after injuries to Bello and Giolito. That gets him a tougher matchup against the Rangers, but the stuff does look enticing.
Drake Baldwin (7% on Yahoo) - a pretty good add in two-catcher leagues, but it is unclear what the playing time situation will be.
Gavin Sheets (2% on Yahoo) - he’s made the Padres roster after a huge spring. He did show the ability to hit homers in his time with the White Sox, but overall, he looked more like a AAAA bat. Maybe the Padres have found something with him? He will most likely be a very part-time player, but he’s a guy to keep an eye on.
Colin Holderman (2% on Yahoo) - the Pirates have not named David Bednar the closer. I do think Bednar gets the first chance, but he was awful last year, and Holderman is good.
Griffin Canning (2% on Yahoo) - injuries, along with his strong spring, have earned him a job in the Mets rotation. I doubt it works out, but there’s enough potential for an add in deep leagues.
That will wrap up the first of many “Waiver Wire Targets” articles I’ll write this year. Please leave your feedback. Let me know what you liked, what you didn’t, and if you have any other ideas for what I should do with this bad boy.
I’ll admit that today’s wasn’t my best work. I threw this together in about one hour here on Sunday afternoon. Now I need to go do something with my kids. Goodbye!
Very good article Jon. This will be appointment reading for me each weekend.
I’m in two 15 teamers (one on Yahoo and one on NFBC) and 4 12 teamers spread across Yahoo, CBS, NFBS, + one 12 team dynasty.
I like the notes about closers for Cincy and I’m sure other teams will be featured as things arise. I also like the SP streamers and just in case articles.
All of it is useful though.
Jon - great read - thank you. I followed your draft guide and advice as best I could and I'm quite happy with the turnout - I have a handful of dudes listed above and have tagged the others. I also appreciate you answering questions on Discord, keep up the great work, sir!