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.
Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Watch List
Carlos Rodon (SP – CWS)
Rodon being mentioned here is more if someone in your league dropped him following an uninspiring start.
After missing time due to injury to start the year, the veteran left-hander pitched to an unsightly 7.33 ERA and a nearly identical 7.38 FIP in his first six starts (27 innings), striking out 25 batters while walking 18 and giving up eight home runs.
Rodon’s season-long numbers – which include a 5.97 ERA, a 6.80 FIP, 7.88 strikeouts per nine innings, 4.78 walks, and 2.39 home runs surrendered per nine frames – aren’t much better. They certainly pale in comparison to the 30-year-old’s last two seasons, in which he logged an ERA south of the 2.90 mark with at least 11.90 strikeouts per nine frames in both 2022 and 2021.
- Carlos Rodon In 2021: 132.2 IP, 2.88 ERA, 2.65 FIP, 12.55 K/9, 2.44 B/9, 0.88 HR/9
- Carlos Rodon In 2022: 178 IP, 2.88 ERA, 2.25 FIP, 11.98 K/9, 2.63 BB/9, 0.61 HR/9
Some home run regression was perhaps expected to a degree, considering Rodon’s last two home stadiums and the park he now calls home.
Per Statcast, Oracle Park had the sixth-lowest home run park factor for MLB stadiums with an 84 metric. Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field (110) was decidedly much higher, but nowhere near Yankee Stadium, a ballpark with a 118 home run park factor that’s the third-highest in the sport in the last three seasons -also per Statcast.
However, the spike in home runs and walks (in particular) has been unideal.
That’s all potentially led to fantasy managers dropping Rodon en masse.
Now’s the time to add him back. Because while his season-long metrics are still very much not great, he’s been decidedly better as of late.
Rodon has surrendered just three earned runs in his last 10.2 innings, striking out eight batters in the process. In his most recent outing, the former Giant logged a 31% CSW rate and seven strikeouts while limiting the Tampa Bay Rays to four hits, two walks, and two earned runs in 4.2 innings.
He’s not back to the form that made him an All-Star and a Cy Young contender in each of the last two seasons, but the 30-year-old could be starting to turn a corner. It’s hard to find starters with his upside on the waiver wire this late in the season, making Rodon an ideal bench stash if he was dropped.
Abner Uribe (RP – MIL)
As far as stash candidates go for potential saves, there are few better right now than Abner Uribe.
The 23-year-old, in his first Major League season, has – in short – been excellent for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Uribe has turned in a 1.93 ERA and a 2.68 FIP in 18.2 innings spanning 19 appearances. He’s added a save and four holds in the process while striking out 22 batters compared to 10 walks allowed.
Armed with a power sinker that averages 99.3 MPH and a slider sporting a 58.1% whiff rate, Uribe has the potential to be a dynamic reliever, and he’s more or less performed as such so far.
The key bit here, however, is the save.
Devin Williams is entrenched as Milwaukee’s closer. That’s not going to change any time soon. The veteran has logged 31 of the club’s 40 saves, with no other reliever having logged more than three.
But Uribe is the only reliever besides Williams to log a save since the start of August. That it’s just the one save is irrelevant, but it could point to more ancillary save looks for the right-hander down the stretch and potentially position him to take over for Willimas in the event of an injury. Of course, that last bit is obviously speculative, but he’s clearly a trusted late-game option for the Brewers.
Since making his Major League debut on July 8, Uribe is tied with Williams for the second-most appearances among Milwaukee relievers and is third behind Williams and Joel Payamps in high-leverage appearances.
Dynasty Addition/Trade Target of the Week
That Martin Maldonado is still getting significant playing time for the Houston Astros shouldn’t deter you from looking to acquire Yanier Diaz in dynasty and keeper formats.
If anything, the veteran’s looming presence on Houston’s roster for this season should only help you as it might give the manager who rostered Diaz cold feet – to a degree – moving forward about the young catcher.
Regardless, though, Diaz has been very good for the Houston Astros this year. And is well worth a look in dynasty formats.
League winners are often discussed in redraft formats. Players with the potential to win a league for you this season. Diaz certainly has that type of upside, but he’s got the upside to potentially do that regularly in future years if he keeps this up.
The catcher is batting .284 with 19 home runs and a .304 on-base percentage in 313 plate appearances entering play Monday.
That’s all well and good, but it’s the kind of quality contact he’s making that’s really eye-opening here.
As a quick aside, here’s a blind resume test:
- Player A: 313 plate appearances, .368 xwOBA, 12.6% barrel rate, .436 xwOBAcon, .292 xBA, .559 xSLG, 17.6 K%, 43.7% hard-hit rate, 19 home runs
- Player B: 362 plate appearances, .388 xwOBA, 16.0% barrel rate, .509 xwOBAcon, .272 xBA, .521 xSLG, 28.7 K%, 51.9% hard-hit rate, 19 home runs
- Player C: 504 plate appearances, .382 xwOBA, 11.8% barrel rate, .465 xwOBAcon, .293 xBA, .535 xSLG, 22.2 K%, 51.1% hard-hit rate, 20 home runs
- Player D: 570 plate appearances, .370 xwOBA, 11.6% barrel rate, .437 xwOBAcon, .275 xBA, .493 xSLG, 22.3 K%, 51.3% hard-hit rate, 21 home runs
Player A, as you can probably guess by the exact plate appearances, is Diaz. Player B is Mike Trout. Player C is Fernando Tatis Jr. Player D? Paul Goldschmidt.
The gulf in plate appearances between Diaz and then Tatis and Goldschmidt naturally raises questions about sample size and sustainability in a larger role moving forward – Maldonado, per Spotrac, is a free agent after the season. But if anything, more plate appearances would only boost his fantasy upside and ceiling given how productive he’s been so far, both from a surface-level stat standpoint – Diaz has more home runs than Bo Bichette, George Springer and Christian Yelich despite nearly 200 fewer plate appearances than each – and from an underlying metrics standpoint.
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