This is “The Watchlist.”
“The Watchlist” is a weekly column designed to help you monitor and pick up players in the coming weeks. Whether waiver wire or trade targets, these are the players you’ll want to add now before becoming the hot waiver commodity or trade target in a week or two.
Using underlying and advanced metrics, “The Watchlist” will help you get ahead of the competition in your league and reap the rewards later from your pickups.
The players could be anyone from a prospect in an ideal situation close to the Majors, a reliever in a saves+holds league, or even a starter doing well with misleading surface-level stats like ERA.
They might even be hitters with quality underlying stats. Or they could be none of those types of players and a different kind of player entirely. The point is that they’ll help you find success in your fantasy league while staying ahead of the curve of your league mates.
The payoff might not be immediate, but they should eventually provide significant value, more often than not.
These are some of those players for this week.
Contreras was optioned to Triple-A by the Pirates last Thursday, but that shouldn’t stop you from picking up the rookie right-hander. In fact, someone in your league may have dropped the former Yankees prospect, making him an ideal stash candidate. And it looks like you might not have to wait too long to see Contreras return to the Majors.
There are a few caveats here with Contreras.
One is that he’s been susceptible to hard contact in his time in the Majors. Opposing batters have registered a .380 xwOBA, a .461 xwOBAcon, a 50.3% hard-hit rate and a 13.3% barrel rate against Contreras.
The second caveat is that his 4.89 FIP is close to a run more than his actual 3.78 ERA. The third caveat is that he’s pitching for a Pirates team that, while not anchored to the National League Central cellar, has just 11 pitcher wins from their rotation this season, the lowest total in the Majors.
Ok, so Contreras gets hit hard at times. Many rookies do. His ERA might be a bit unsustainable. That’s fine. He’s pitching for a team that might not give him a ton of pitcher wins moving forward. That’s ok, too, because the upside here is significant, especially in the right matchups.
The right-hander has obviously had his share of struggles early, but he’s thrived and looked dominant at times. In his most recent start, Contreras scattered four hits, a walk, and an earned run in seven innings against the Cincinnati Reds while striking out seven batters, logging a 30% CSW rate, and generating 11 swinging strikes on 90 pitches.
On June 10 against Atlanta, he failed to reach the five-inning mark but allowed three earned runs in 4.2 frames while striking out seven batters and finishing with 18 swinging strikes on 83 pitches. He also turned in a pristine 34% CSW rate that day.
And while it might seem easy to pick out the good outings, it’s also hard to ignore just how effective Contreras’ slider has been. The offering, which has been crucial in the right-hander’s success so far, has a 44.3% whiff rate this season.
The starter has thrown it 28% of the time, 248 times total. It’s quickly becoming one of the best bat-missing sliders in the sport.
Among pitchers who have thrown at least 230 sliders this season, just 10 have a better whiff rate on their slider than Contreras. What’s more, just six of those pitchers are starters.
You’re likely not going to start him every time he takes the mound, and there will be some ups and downs as there are with most all rookies, but in the right matchups, he can be a weekly difference maker for your fantasy team.
Treinen hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since April 14 but seems a decent bet to eventually step into the high-leverage setup role he occupied last season.
In 2021 it was setting up Kenley Jansen, and this year it’s Craig Kimbrel operating in the ninth inning for Dave Roberts club. But while the closers have changed, the fact remains that the role of being the top setup option in the Los Angeles bullpen is an extremely valuable one for fantasy purposes in saves+holds leagues.
Last year Treinen paced Los Angeles and all of baseball with 32 holds. He also registered seven saves and tied with Jansen for the team lead in high-leverage appearances.
This year, while Treinen was out, Hudson led the Dodgers in high-leverage appearances and was second in high-leverage appearances before his injury.
While Evan Phillips, Brusdar Graterol, and Alex Vesia have found success as setup options with Hudson sidelined, Treinen is coming off a two-season stretch in which he had the seventh-best total fWAR (2.3) among all relievers from the 2020 season to the 2021 campaign. As it happens, that was the same fWAR as Kimbrel over the same stretch. Treinen is among the best at what he does and is certainly someone fantasy managers will want to roster ahead of time in saves+holds leagues because his return to the Majors might not be too far off.
Then on Wednesday, AM 570 L.A. Sports’ David Vassegh tweeted that Treinen threw a bullpen session in front of the Dodgers pitching coaches.
Even if Treinen’s return is in August, he’s worth a look as a stash candidate in saves+holds leagues. The upside is simply too great to ignore. What’s more, Treinen could be a worthwhile saves stash for managers in deeper leagues or those with the bench or injured-list space.
Hudson logged five saves earlier this year, and the team has gone with somewhat of a committee approach in terms of saves when Kimbrel hasn’t pitched in save situations, with Brusdar Graterol logging three saves and Phillips, Vesia, and Yency Almonte each registering a save each. Graterol, it’s worth noting, was placed on the injured list on Thursday due to right shoulder inflammation.
And this is all without mentioning Kimbrel’s uneven pitching at times this season. He’s been much more effective than his 4.50 ERA would indicate, with a 1.98 FIP and the 12th-best strikeout rate (34.1%) among qualified relievers. Still, his results have run hot and cold at times, and he’s thrown a clean inning in just seven of his 32 appearances entering play on Thursday. He’s also given up 19 hits, 11 earned runs, and 10 walks in his last 18 innings.
If the Dodgers ever make a change at closer ahead of the playoffs when Treinen is back from the injured list, the former A’s reliever would seem like the best option. At worst, he’ll be a strong source of ancillary saves.
Whitlock could return from the injured list much sooner than Treinen, and while he’s worthy of being picked up in fantasy leagues for different reasons, he’s got plenty of upside all the same.
The 26-year-old had a breakout rookie season with Boston in 2021, making 46 appearances out of the bullpen and throwing 73.1 innings. He didn’t wrack up holds in the same manner that Treinen did. Nor did he log a number of ancillary saves.
But, what Whitlock did that proved to be crucial for his fantasy value was help lower weekly ERA and WHIP numbers for fantasy managers.
The right-hander pitched to a 1.96 ERA, a 2.84 FIP and a 1.10 WHIP in those 73.1 innings. He finished the year in the 85th percentile in xSLG, walk rate, barrel rate, xERA and xwOBA. In short, he’s very good at what he does.
He initially opened the 2022 season in the bullpen but soon moved to the rotation, where he made 10 starts. With activation from the injured list on the horizon, it looks like he’s returning to the relief role that made him such a valuable fantasy pitcher last season.
Whitlock was solid as a starter this year, with a 4.15 ERA, a 3.60 FIP, 8.77 strikeouts per nine innings and 2.08 walks per nine frames in 39.2 innings of work. But he’s elite as a reliever. Case in point, before switching to the rotation this year, the 26-year-old threw 9.2 innings out of the bullpen. He faced 35 batters, struck out 11 of them and gave up just four hits, two walks and an earned run.
Whitlock is the reliever for you if you’re looking for a reliever to help lower your fantasy team’s ERA number every week while chipping in with strikeouts and the occasional save. He was arguably the best reliever in fantasy at doing just that last season and now looks set to return to a similar role.
Back at the Major League level after being optioned to Triple-A earlier in the season, Baddoo did nothing but produce while with Detroit’s top minor league affiliate in Toledo.
The outfielder hit an even .300 with a .405 on-base percentage, a 14.5% walk rate, a 19.8% strikeout rate, a .200 ISO, three home runs and seven stolen bases.
And while you shouldn’t read too much into minor league stats, Baddoo showed in Triple-A everything that made him a potential building block for the Tigers and a likely impact player in fantasy baseball. The getting on base at a high rate and the ability to log both home runs and stolen bases.
Baddoo collected a pair of hits in his return to the lineup on Tuesday and should continue to get regular playing time moving forward. Detroit doesn’t exactly have a set third outfielder to start alongside Riley Greene and Robbie Grossman at this point, and Grossman could, speculatively speaking, be traded in the coming weeks.
Most fantasy managers probably dropped Baddoo earlier in the season. Now’s the time to beat them to the punch in picking up the Tigers outfielder.
Despite cooling off considerably in the second half of last season, this is the same player who turned in a quality fantasy campaign with fairly consistent playing time.
Playing above Advanced-A for the first time, Baddoo hit .259 with a .330 on-base percentage, 13 home runs and 18 stolen bases in 461 plate appearances as a rookie. If he can keep his strikeout rate down as he did in Triple-A, he could very well provide a similar impact as the season progresses.
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