Waiver Wire Claims for Your Fantasy Baseball League
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Your fantasy baseball draft is done. Now it's time to scour the waiver wire for the best names available in your league. We've got a full roster for you.
With the start of the baseball regular season comes the start of the fantasy baseball season. Unlike fantasy football, fantasy baseball is a game decided by skill (not luck) that rewards studious offseason players (instead of random dudes who show up not knowing anything about the sport). I'm definitely not bitter about another lost fantasy football year or anything.
Back to fantasy baseball, it truly is the best fantasy sport due to the nature of baseball. The 162-game sample size, the history of the sport being so intertwined with statistics, games on every day, and quite often in the afternoon – it all makes fantasy baseball just so wonderful.
With Opening Day in the books, everyone should have already drafted their team, so hopefully they found a few good articles on sleepers/breakouts/some-other-buzzword before they drafted. This article will deal with players who are available on the waiver wire for when you need to make the inevitable first moves to your roster for 2017.
Over the next several slides, we'll be looking at the best players likely to be available to add to your roster in 2017. All of the following players are available in at least 60 percent of ESPN leagues. This doesn't guarantee all these players will be up for grabs in your league, but hopefully a few of these players are, because they should all have nice value in the upcoming season. There's one player highlighted per position (and three outfielders), so you should be all set no matter where you need a pick up. Good luck to all this fantasy season!
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SP Jharel Cotton – 36.7%
I'm going to be straightforward with you here. I was originally going to set the cut-off for this list as available in at least two-thirds of leagues, but once I saw Cotton was available in just under two-thirds of leagues I had to adjust my percent available to include the young righty. Cotton made his MLB debut in 2016, throwing 29.1 innings for the A's as a 24-year-old. Cotton had a lot of success in that limited time, with a 2.15 ERA and a 2-0 record.
Now small sample size warnings apply, but Cotton has enough potential to scare off any of the possible warning signs that come along with Cotton in 2017 (he also had a 4.32 FIP in those 29.1 innings last year). Cotton's fastball-changeup velocity difference is the stuff of legends, and being able to pitch his home games in the pitcher-friendly confines of O.Co should do wonders to help the confidence of the youngster.
RP Brandon Kintzler – 24.5%
We all know the importance of the save in fantasy baseball. It's a somewhat out-of-date statistic that has seemingly risen to prominence in part thanks to fantasy baseball. If you're in a league without saves, feel free to skip Kintzler, but if your league does reward saves, Kintzler should be on your radar. The 32-year-old righty doesn't always inspire the most confidence from fantasy owners, but he's actually one of the safer bets among the bottom tier of closers.
For one, he has the job, instead of one of the closer-by-committee types you often find among the bottom tier of closers. Glen Perkins is there in name to threaten Kintzler, but with his recent health issues, it would be shocking if Perkins ended the season with more than 10 saves. Trevor May was probably the biggest competition, but he is out for the season with Tommy John. Kintzler is also one of the heavier ground ball pitchers in baseball, as he sported a 60+ percent ground ball rate in each of the last two seasons, a great sign for his reliability. Closers are always in close games, so avoiding the long ball is of the utmost importance. Kintzler is a sinker-heavy pitcher who should do better than you think in 2017.
C Welington Castillo – 34.7%
"Beef" Castillo has plenty of meat in his bat, having hit 46 home runs over the past three seasons. He has hit at least 13 home runs in each of those seasons – a solid total from the catcher position. Castillo should have plenty of opportunity to show off that power once again in 2017, as he is the starting catcher in what is a big-time power lineup in Baltimore. Castillo is set to hit sixth in the lineup, jump behind Mark Trumbo and in front of Jonathan Schoop.
Camden Yards is a big-time benefit to right-handed sluggers, third-best (behind Miller Park and Yankee Stadium) in all of baseball, per RotoGrinders. Fifteen home runs seem like the floor for Castillo in 2017, with 20-25 seeming very possible. Add in a .250 average and decent runs and RBI, and Castillo should end the year as a top-ten catcher.
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1B Justin Bour – 19.9%
You can thank a sprained ankle in 2016 for throwing Bour off people's scent in 2017. Bour was a hot commodity just a year before, as he hit 23 home runs in 129 games in 2015 for the Marlins. He was just as productive in 2016 (15 home runs in 90 games), but the injury seems to have allowed Bour to fly under the radar, surprising for a player who was considered by many a breakout candidate before last season.
How quickly we forgot, but Bour is healthy coming into 2017, and is a strong candidate for 30 home runs if he stays healthy in 2017. Power is certainly in more abundance around than league than almost ever before, but even still, 30 home runs is nothing to sneeze at. Bour also has excellent plate discipline (11.4 percent walk rate; 17.8 percent strikeout rate in 2016), and as such, his .264 batting average from last season is right in line with what to expect in 2017. The potential injury risk (which is a bit overstated) is the reason he didn't get drafted, but there's no reason to leave him off your roster while he's healthy.
3B Joey Gallo – 4.7%
Here's your lottery ticket. A little bit of the shine has worn off Gallo since his peak as the number six prospect in all of baseball after the 2014 season, but he still has mammoth power and will be starting the season with the big-league club in 2017. With a prospect like Gallo, he's not going to just be sitting the pine at the major league level, so he should see plenty of at bats and get a legitimate shot to prove his worth.
Gallo has looked quite exploitable in his limited time at the major league level so far, sporting a .173 batting average and a 49.7 percent strikeout rate. That being said, Gallo has posted a .195 ISO in his 53 major league games, so the power certainly is there. If he can finally close up the holes in his swing, he could immediately be the hottest pick up in your league. If you're in a deep enough league (or in a keeper league) he's worth a stash on your bench while we see whether he's got what it takes or not.
Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
2B Cesar Hernandez – 15.4%
Hernandez is basically the antithesis of our last man on this list (Gallo). He's all floor, no ceiling. He's the perfect safe pick up for you if you don't believe in chasing hype on the waiver wire. Hernandez, like Bour, has an excellent plate discipline profile (10.6 percent walk rate; 18.6 percent strikeout rate in 2016), and he is even more valuable in on-base percentage leagues. Hernandez posted a .294 batting average and .371 on-base percentage in 2016, an OBP that was only topped by six second basemen last year.
Along with that solid OBP comes a nice run total, and plenty of chances for steals. Hernandez has stolen a combined 36 bases in the past two seasons, and while he saw a slip in his stolen base percentage in 2016, he is still just 26 and should have plenty of opportunities to steal in 2017. Hernandez may not be an absolute game changer for your team, but he's one of the safest bets on the waiver wire.
SS Asdrubal Cabrera – 34.1%
At an increasingly deep position, Cabrera still managed to rank 15th among shortstops in 2016, a rank demanding a roster spot given nearly every league has a middle infield spot in addition to a short stop spot. Cabrera was a positive contributor in all five classic roto categories last year, per the ESPN Player Rater.
Cabrera has been one of the most consistent contributors in fantasy throughout his career and especially over the past five seasons. Since 2012, Cabrera has played between 136 and 146 games, hit at least 14 home runs, and scored between 65 and 74 runs every season. He may have peaked in 2011, but he still has plenty of value to give your team. Pairing him with Hernandez makes one of the safest duos in the middle of the infield in 2017.
Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
OF Mitch Haniger – 18.2%
We just played it so safe with the middle infield that we have to go back to Lotto Land to see if we can't find a few game changers at the bottom of your league's waiver wire. With all the buzz surrounding Haniger this spring, it's a bit surprising to see him owned in less than a fifth of ESPN leagues. Maybe folks have swung so far away from using spring training stats, that now they are even ignoring positive signs from young players during the first month of (fake) baseball.
Haniger came to Seattle via the Jean Segura–Taijuan Walker swap this offseason, and he will be the team's right fielder to start 2017. Haniger slashed .341/.428/.670 in 74 Triple-A games last season, posting a .174 ISO in his 34-game MLB debut in 2016. That ISO suggests a potential powerful hitter, and while we all know the dangers of reading too much into spring stats, it can't hurt that he slugged .628 this spring.
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OF Jarrod Dyson – 29.8%
Speaking of Mariner outfielders coming off a good springs, Dyson is a great place to look for any owner in need of speed. Dyson will be getting the first full-time gig of his career after platooning and late-game pinch-running for several years in Kansas City. Dyson has managed to average 31 stolen bases over the past five seasons despite averaging just 284 plate appearances per season.
Dyson should get somewhere in the range of 600 plate appearances for Seattle in 2017, and if you're quick with mental math, you're dancing in the street right now as you just put together that that comes out to about 60 steals if he continues his pace from previous seasons. Now Dyson was put in to pinch-run often, and he's starting to get a bit older, so 60 steals is probably asking too much. But 40 steals for a .260 career hitter with the wheels Dyson has is totally in range and a great grab on the waiver wire.
OF Domingo Santana – 26.5%
We'll end with one of the bigger boom-or-busts guys in the game. Santana is a boom-or-bust guy in every sense of the word. For one, he's an injury risk, as well as one of those guys who can tend to play through injury, which can often be even worse for fantasy players than a player who simply ends up on the DL often because at least DL guys can be stashed and replaced. Santana is also a boom-or-bust player in the most literal sense of the word in that he strikes out a lot, but when he hits the ball he hits it as hard as anyone in baseball.
If you're still reading at this point in the article, it's fair to assume you're a big-time fantasy player, so let's dive a little deeper into the numbers. Baseball Savant (by way of Statcast) tracks "barrels" for hitters, a metric which shows which hitters are the best at connecting with the exit velocity and launch angle necessary to portend a hit. Rick Lucks of Rotoballer did a good job recently of breaking down what this means for fantasy purposes, so without going too far astray, let's say how this relates to Santana.
Among hitters with at least 100 batted balls in play, Santana had the 11th-best average exit velocity and had the highest percent of contacted balls over 95 mph of any of those hitters. In other words, when he makes contact, he makes hard contact. As such, it's fair to expect solid home run numbers, especially with Santana playing half his games in Miller Park. If you're in need of power, Santana is a great source available in many leagues.
