This weekly waiver-wire watch column is designed to help you monitor and pick up players in the coming weeks. These are the players you’ll want to add now before becoming the hot waiver commodity in a week or two. Using underlying and advanced metrics, this “watchlist” will help you get ahead of the competition in your league and reap the rewards from your pickups later.
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 entirely different.
The point is that they’ll help you find success in your fantasy league while staying ahead of the curve against your league mates.
Here are waiver wire players to watch and dynasty fantasy baseball advice for this week.
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Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Watch List
Festa, a starting pitcher who checks in as the Twins’ fifth-best prospect in FanGraphs’ ranking of the organization’s top prospects, started the year at Double-A.
In 10 starts spanning 41.2 innings, the right-hander has struck out 10.58 batters per nine frames while allowing just 3.89 walks and 0.86 home runs per nine innings. He does own a 4.75 ERA on the season, but it isn’t always ideal to look solely at minor-league stats for prospects. Furthermore, Festa owns a 3.99 FIP and 11 of the 22 earned runs he’s allowed this season came in two outings in a three-stretch start from May 7 to May 19. Other than that, the former 13th-round draft pick has allowed three runs or fewer in his other starts.
He’s yet to throw more than 5.1 innings in a start this season but is a candidate to see rotation work later at some point this year considering the Twins’ division outlook and rotation picture.
Minnesota, currently leading a significantly underwhelming American League Central, currently has Tyler Mahle, Kenta Maeda and Chris Paddack on the injured list. Mahle will miss the rest of the season due to Tommy John surgery while Paddack is recovering from having the operation last year.
The club owns the top rotation fWAR in the Majors as of the beginning of play Monday, mainly due to Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez and Bailey Ober. Otherwise, the club has received uneven production from the options that have filled in the last spot in the rotation.
Louie Varland, who got off to an encouraging start, has struggled as of late, surrendering 12 hits, 11 earned runs, seven walks and three home runs in his last 10.2 innings.
Meanwhile, Simeon Woods Richardson, arguably Minnesota’s top 40-man roster not currently on the Major League roster, has 36 strikeouts compared to 26 walks in 42.1 innings at Triple-A this season while logging an 8.08 ERA and a 5.84 FIP. He surrendered seven hits, five earned runs, three walks and a home run while striking out five batters in his only appearance in the Majors this season.
Brent Headrick is also in the Triple-A rotation picture. And while he’s been reasonably effective in 8.1 innings for the Twins this season, Minnesota has utilized him as a reliever in all three of his Major League appearances. Furthermore, Festa might have the higher upside of the two.
Per FanGraphs, Festa has the following present and future grades:
- Fastball: 55/60
- Slider: 55/60
- Changeup: 50/55
- Command: 50/60
The right-hander might not be a starter who immediately comes up – or even debuts at any point in the next month – but he’s definitely someone to keep an eye on later in the summer, especially if Minnesota looks for reinforcements to try and separate themselves in the Central.
Story, who has yet to appear in a game in the Majors after having right elbow surgery in January. The infielder, according to a tweet from the Red Sox’s official Twitter account on January 10 “underwent a successful internal bracing procedure of the right ulnar collateral ligament.”
On Monday afternoon, The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey tweeted the following: “Trevor Story said a rough timeline to come back at shortstop is August. Could come back to DH sometime in July but they haven’t decided which route to take. Shortstop or DH are the only options though, not second. He’s at 120 feet and aiming to build up to 150 feet throwing.”
If the infielder does return sometime in July or August, it’s far enough out – at least for fantasy purposes – that other fantasy managers in your league won’t be rushing out to add him off waivers. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from adding him now. In fact, it makes it the ideal time to add the infielder off waivers, especially if you have the bench space or an injured list slot available on your roster.
The veteran had a bit of a down year at the plate in his first season in Boston, hitting .238 with a .303 on-base percentage while adding 16 home runs and 13 stolen bases in 396 plate appearances. And while Story’s walk rate stayed reasonably similar to past numbers, his strikeout rate jumped significantly back to his early-career metrics.
Trevor Story’s Walk Rates and Strikeout Rates:
- 2016: 8.4 BB%, 31.4 K%, 415 PA
- 2017: 8.8 BB%, 34.4 K%, 555 PA
- 2018: 7.2 BB%, 25.6 K%, 656 PA
- 2019: 8.8 BB%, 26.5 K%, 656 PA
- 2020: 9.3 BB%, 24.3 K%, 259 PA
- 2021: 8.9 BB%, 23.4 K%, 595 PA
- 2022: 8.1 BB%, 30.8 K%, 396 PA
- Career: 8.4 BB%, 27.9 K%, 3532 PA
Still, despite the down year and uptick in strikeouts, Story did log the 16 home runs and 13 stolen bases in only 396 plate appearances. It’s worth noting that in his last three full seasons, the infielder has topped 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases. What’s more, in all five of the Major League seasons in which he’s topped 400 plate appearances, Story has hit at least 24 home runs.
Clearly, with a potential later-season return, he’s not going to approach those kinds of numbers for the 2023 season, but he could be a quality source of both power and stolen bases down the stretch – especially considering he gets to play his home games at Fenway Park.
In 188 plate appearances at home last season, Story hit .251 with 12 home runs, an .841 OPS, a .356 wOBA, a .281 ISO and a 123 wRC+.
He has league-winning upside for the season’s final weeks. Or rather, he has the potential to be a significant player in a number of fantasy playoff races and fantasy playoff brackets and now might be the prudent time to add him off waivers before your league mates get the chance.
Dynasty Addition/Trade Target of the Week
Miguel Vargas has been productive enough on the whole this season as a regular in a quality Los Angeles Dodgers lineup to warrant dynasty consideration, hitting .225 with a .329 on-base percentage, six home runs and three stolen bases in 235 plate appearances, adding 30 runs scored and 28 RBI in the process.
And that’s all without mentioning some quality plate discipline metrics. The infielder owns a 12.8% walk rate, just a 19.7% chase rate, a 21.1% whiff rate and a 19.6% strikeout rate.
So all that is good, but it’s another aspect of what Vargas has been doing at the plate, at least more recently, that makes him an intriguing dynasty trade target (or free agent or waiver addition) for fantasy managers in search of long-term infield reinforcements.
From Opening Day through the end of April, Vargas hit .213 with a .354 on-base percentage, however, he had just the one home run during that span and managed only a 3.2% barrel rate and only a 27% hard-hit rate.
It was the 13th-lowest barrel rate in the league among qualified batters during that stretch. Furthermore, only 13 qualified batters had a lower hard-hit rate than the Dodgers infielder during that span.
Since the calendar flipped to May, however, things have changed considerably. From May 1 up to the start of play on Monday, Vargas posted an improved 36.2% his hard-hit rate. Most notably, however, he was sporting a 10.6% barrel rate to go along with five home runs.
The 23-year-old has a long history of high walk rates and reasonably low strikeout rates in the minors, not to mention good batting average production. All three have pretty much been a staple of his stat lines prior to reaching the Major Leagues. What’s been missing, however, in terms of Vargas having impact fantasy upside is the lack of consistent power.
The second baseman’s previous career high for home runs in a season was 23 in 542 plate appearances split between Advanced-A and Double-A during the 2021 season. He logged 17 homers in 520 plate appearances for Los Angeles’ Triple-A affiliate last season and has present and future game power grades of 40 and 45 respectively per FanGraphs. His current and future raw power grade, per the same publication, sits at 45.
If he can maintain a double-digit barrel rate on a regular basis, with all the RBI and run-scoring opportunities afforded in the generally high-powered Los Angeles lineup, Vargas should have no trouble being a top-10 fantasy second baseman year in and year out.
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