This is ‘The Watchlist.’
This column is designed to help you monitor and pick up dynasty fantasy baseball players in the coming weeks and months. Whether they’re waiver wire or trade targets, these are the players you’ll want to add now before becoming the hot waiver commodity or trade target, whether that’s later in the offseason or when spring training rolls around.
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.
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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 against your league mates.
Fantasy Baseball Watchlist
Eloy Jimenez (OF, DH – TB)
Oftentimes, the right player on the right Minor League deal in the right scenario team-wise can lead to an outsized fantasy impact. Or rather, someone who comes with little risk for fantasy managers and has quality potential.
This winter, Eloy Jimenez is one of those players.
Of course, with the aforementioned thinking, it’s a fairly specific needle to thread, but it’s worth a look for Jimenez for fantasy managers with deeper benches or an extended allotment of minor league slots.
Dating back to last July, the Rays have traded away a number of Major League contributors. Randy Arozarena, Zach Eflin, Isaac Paredes, Jason Adam, Amed Rosario, Shawn Armstrong, Jeffrey Springs, Jose Siri and Jacob Lopez.
Arozarena, Paredes, Siri and Rosario’s departures, in particular, stand out considering that outside of Christopher Morel (acquired in the Paredes deal) and recent offseason signing Danny Jansen, Tampa Bay hasn’t made any Major League additions.
Of course, with prospects like Carson Williams and Curtis Mead nearly ready for the Majors, the Rays aren’t short of near-MLB-ready options.
Still, the Rays’ lineup could use some more production, particularly if they end up trading the likes of Yandy Diaz and Brandon Lowe before Opening Day.
Enter Eloy Jimenez, who signed a minor league deal with the Rays, per a tweet from ESPN’s Jesse Rogers on December 23.
Tampa Bay’s lineup depth falls off considerably after Diaz, Lowe, Junior Caminero and Josh Lowe. And while they’ve since signed Danny Jansen, there’s certainly a need for someone with Jimenez’s potential at the plate.
The veteran has more often than not provided above-average ISO numbers in the past. He’s topped a .200 ISO in three of his five seasons before 2024.
The former White Sox and Orioles outfielder and designated hitter has missed time due to injury in the last handful of years, logging more than 350 plate appearances just once (in 2023 when he collected 489 plate appearances) in the last four campaigns.
Despite that, the power production has mostly been there. There’s the aforementioned ISO production, but Jimenez has also logged a barrel rate of at least 9.3% in each of his five seasons before the 2024 campaign.
In terms of 2024, Jimenez’s production fell off in an injury-shortened season. Traded by the White Sox to the Orioles midseason, the slugger hit .238 with a .289 on-base percentage, (OBP) six home runs and three stolen bases in 349 plate appearances.
And while his barrel rate dropped to 7.8%, there were still a few encouraging signs. The 28-year-old registered a 49% hard-hit rate and a 92 miles per hour (MPH) average exit velocity. Both finished in the 90th percentile league-wide. His 73.9 MPH average bat speed was promising as well. Elsewhere, he logged just a 9.7% whiff rate, a .382 xwOBA and a 54% hard-hit rate against four-seamers.
The problem with all the general hard contact is that plenty of it was on the ground. Jimenez logged the highest ground-ball rate of his career at 56.9%.
The ground ball rate illustrates the floor, which is on the low side of things. But as a zero-risk dynasty addition, Jimenez could benefit considerably from opportunity in Tampa Bay. If he’s healthy, there’s a 20-home run upside here in the first half with quality RBI potential as well.
Despite missing time due to injury in years past, Jimenez still averaged a little over 17 home runs on an average of a little over 355 plate appearances from 2019 to 2023.
Andrew Vaughn (1B, DH – CHI)
Let’s switch to Eloy Jimenez’s former team and former teammate in Andrew Vaughn.
The Chicago White Sox, like the Rays, have spent the better part of the last six or so months trading away many veteran players for prospects or young players for the future:
Erick Fedde. Tommy Pham. Michael Kopech. Eloy Jimenez. Paul DeJong. Garrett Crochet.
Where this differs from the Rays, who appear to be doing something akin to a relatively quicker reset to build around the likes of Junior Caminero, Carson Williams and others, is that the White Sox are still very much in the tear-things-down phase where they accumulate as many players for the future as possible.
That, in theory, could make Vaughn a trade candidate at some point. Though that is all purely speculative on my part.
The former third-overall pick will be a free agent after 2026, per Spotrac.
He’s never consistently torn the cover off the ball — fun fact, Vaughn’s xwOBA in each of the last three seasons has been exactly .319 — but the first baseman has shown enough promise at the plate where it’s not hard to envision him finding fantasy relevance if he’s traded to a better team, complete with a better lineup and a need at first base.
The 26-year-old finished in the 70th percentile in xSLG (.440) last season and was close to achieving that feat in both barrel rate (9.3%, 63rd percentile) and hard-hit rate (43.3% hard-hit rate, 67th percentile).
He’s sporting a collective 9% barrel rate since the start of the 2021 season, a number that’s ahead of the likes of Bo Bichette, Ketel Marte, Christian Yelich, Josh Naylor and Jose Ramirez and just behind the likes of Mookie Betts (9.2%) and Randy Arozarena (9.2%) during that span.
In fact, looking at his splits in the last four years, he’s provided eerily similar numbers to Bichette.
Andrew Vaughn Since 2021:
- 2,258 plate appearances
- 72 home runs
- 20.3 K%
- .162 ISO
- .253 average
- .310 on-base percentage
- .315 wOBA
- 9% barrel rate
- 46.1% hard-hit rate
Bo Bichette Since 2021
- 2,234 plate appearances
- 77 home runs
- 20.3 K%
- .167 ISO
- .287 average
- .330 on-base percentage
- .338 wOBA
- 8.9% barrel rate
- 47% hard-hit rate
Now, not every batted ball is the same and Bichette has also chipped in significantly more in the way of stolen bases. While it might be unreasonable to expect Vaughn to suddenly start producing like an elite fantasy option, there are enough encouraging things in the first baseman’s batted ball data to suggest his fantasy ceiling might improve elsewhere if he’s traded in real life.
Now might be the time to acquire Vaughn in dynasty leagues while he’s still playing for the White Sox. Even with a change of scenery move, Vaughn isn’t suddenly going to become Pete Alonso, but he’s a low-risk fantasy option with the type of quality fantasy ceiling that could improve your fantasy team in the right scenario.
Trading for him isn’t the splashy, blockbuster deal that nets you a fantasy cornerstone for the next decade, but it’s the type of move that can help improve a team considerably on the margins. Stack up enough of those moves and the impact is comparable to one of those blockbuster deals.
Clayton Kershaw (SP – FA)
OK, so trading for Clayton Kershaw in dynasty formats seems shortsighted.
Shortsighted in the sense that at 36, the future Hall of Famer isn’t going to pitch for the same number of years (and thus throw fewer innings) as say, a 28-year-old starter might moving forward.
Still, for a contending dynasty team, or one aiming to contend in 2025, Kershaw is an ideal addition. And one that, given where he’s at in his career, other fantasy managers might be willing to give up for a return that isn’t as significant as it might be for a potential impact fantasy starter.
Because Kershaw, if healthy and if he returns to the Dodgers as a free agent, is very much an impact fantasy starter still.
(Per an article by Jon Heyman in the New York Post on December 26: “The Dodgers are still expecting Clayton Kershaw back.”)
Kershaw was limited to 30 innings and seven starts last year, logging a 3.53 FIP and a pair of pitcher wins in the process.
However, from 2021 through 2023, he accumulated double-digit pitcher wins each year despite never topping 135 innings in a single season. It also helped that the veteran’s ERA was under 4.00 in all three years and that his FIP was 3.00 or lower in two of them. Even with diminished run-prevention results, he could be an impact fantasy starter when on the mound for the Dodgers.
All told, just 10 starting pitchers had more pitcher wins than Kershaw (35) during that span. All 10 of them threw at least 50 more innings. In most cases, they threw over 100 more innings.
The left-hander’s effectiveness on the mound certainly played a key role in that, but so too did the Dodgers’ elite lineup.
And while Los Angeles’ isn’t hurting for rotation options with Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Bobby Miller and Landon Knack all on hand, that crowded rotation actually should help you in acquiring Kershaw. Much in the same way it might for someone like Gonsolin in that fantasy managers might be scared off by the number of options and the potential scarcity of innings for some of those starters.
With May, Glasnow, Yamamoto, Ohtani and Kershaw himself coming off seasons in which they either didn’t pitch in the Majors due to injury or had injury-shortened seasons, it seems more than feasible (speculatively speaking) that Los Angeles might want to be cautious with some of their starters from an innings standpoint.
Still, even if Kershaw makes, say 15 starts for the Dodgers next year, he could very easily net you 10 pitcher wins and solid ERA production.
The veteran won six of his 10 starts in 2020 and won 10 and 12 starts, respectively, in 2021 and 2022, when he made 22 starts per season.
That type of fantasy upside, even for just one year in dynasty formats, is hard to find. It’s the kind of production that could be a difference-maker in making or winning the fantasy playoffs.
Yet, due to Kershaw’s age, there’s a very real chance you might be able to acquire the starter in dynasty in a much smaller deal.
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