Archive for Waiver Wire

While a month still isn’t the greatest of sample sizes to cast judgment, now is when you have to start making some of the tougher decisions as to whether or not it’s in your team’s best interest to give up on certain players and start picking up guys who can help you in specific categories or if you should just continue to grin and bear it through their hard times. The decision of whether or not to cut someone is a little easier to make (or not make as the case may be) in deeper leagues as the waiver wire is far from flush with talent, but in leagues more shallow, there’s plenty still from which to choose. Here’s a look at two who, based on ownership percentages, could be available in your league… Read the rest of this entry »

Tiptoe along the deep league waiver wire,
Search for a player you want to hire,
With the hope that he catches fire,
Gives you a performance in which you won’t tire,
And is featured in a story by Rob Neyer

::takes a bow:: Thank you, thank you very much. That was my practice round as an aspiring poet. How does my RARP (rhyming above replacement poet) rank?

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Jason Vargas (ESPN: 15 percent owned; Yahoo!: 16 percent owned)

Despite a number of high profile injuries to pitchers on both sides of the city, there is some good pitching going on in Los Angeles and the surrounding environs. However, unlike Clayton Kersahw and Hyun-jin Ryu, Jason Vargas is actually available in most leagues.

Veras opened the season well against the Rangers, then was absolutely shelled by the A’s and the Twins in back-to-back starts that pushed his ERA up to nearly 7.00 and his WHIP above 2.30. Since then, Vargas has had three consecutive quality starts, having pitched at least seven innings each time, culminating in his complete game shutout of the Orioles on May 3. Read the rest of this entry »

The beginning of May is the perfect time for smart fantasy owners to start playing the waiver wire. After a month, other owners are probably sick of their slow starters, and have already dropped a player or two who has struggled due to small sample luck. In recent seasons, both Michael Morse and Paul Goldschmidt failed to hit in April, and went on to have fantasy breakouts by the time September rolled around. Owners get impatient and either give up on players, or are forced to cut bait too early when injuries strike. Matt Joyce and Brandon McCarthy are two players who may begin to turn things around in May.

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While you don’t normally put lofty expectations on your catchers to produce big-time fantasy numbers, the slow starts of players such as the Monteros, both Jesus and Miguel, as well as Salvador Perez, have been extremely frustrating for owners thus far. Knowing what they are capable of producing, no one wants to drop them from their roster, but there’s a definite need to pull them from the starting lineup and plug in a more productive option, even if just for a short time. If you have the bench space available to make such a move, then here are a couple of backstops who should be able to help you out. Don’t expect either to be your long term solution, but for right now, they’re worth a look. Read the rest of this entry »

There are good weeks, there are bad weeks, and then there are weeks like the two Aaron Hicks (owned in 1.2 percent of ESPN leagues and 3 percent of Yahoo! leagues) had to start the season. His .042/.179/.042 line over the first 13 games of the season was marred by 20 strikeouts in 56 PAs, and he reached base more often via error (3) than he did by getting a hit (2). It’s not exactly a line that breeds confidence. He managed to be driven in six times, which is somewhat impressive given his incredibly low batting average, and was largely due to the fact that even though he wasn’t hitting, he did walk in 14 percent of his plate appearance.

His ownership started slipping, for obvious reasons, right about the same time there were rumblings that Hicks may need a stint in Triple-A to improve his eye. The Twins did decide that Hicks should no longer lead off, but elected to keep him in the majors. Three games after he was dropped from the leadoff spot in the Twins’ order, Hicks started hitting. Heading into Monday’s game, Hicks had been hitting .300/.375/.350 with just four strikeouts in just 24 PAs. Monday night, he struggled against Max Scherzer, but that’s hardly a unique issue. If that’s the criteria for success or failure, better players than Hicks would fall into that second category. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking a shot on a post-hype sleeper is a great way to find undervalued gems. As we all know by now, prospects don’t always burst out of the gate once they reach the majors. For every Mike Trout, there’s going to be an Alex Gordon. It took Gordon five years before he churned out a fantasy-worthy stat line. In Gordon’s case, fantasy owners pretty much gave up on him ever becoming useful, making him a post post-hype sleeper. While it’s rare for players to follow similar paths, former prospects always draw some interest when they are experiencing success. You may have given up on Travis Snider and Devin Mesoraco by now, but both are finally starting to show some growth in the majors.

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Let’s face it…nearly every guy who is sitting on your waiver wire is flawed in some way or another and the thought of using someone from the scrap heap on a full-time basis makes your fantasy skin crawl. But when Jason Heyward goes in for an appendectomy and you’ve already lost Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Bourn and Ryan Ludwick, desperate times call for desperate measures. Now obviously you’re not going to find one guy out there who is going to do it all for you, so your best bet is a platoon. And based on ownership percentages, it looks like you can solve some of your issues just by looking north of the border and using the DH spot from the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for our weekly look at the best of the worst. That’s right, it’s the deep league waiver wire where I attempt to find value in mediocre players! Today happens to be Astros day. The good thing about being a weak team is that most of your players are unowned in fantasy leagues. So that gives me multiple options for this very column.

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Consider this a bit of a twist on what usually appears in this space. Rather than a player who is outproducing his expected value, today we have a player who is being rapidly added in leagues where he will probably cease to provide the kind of value for which his new owners are hoping. Especially in light of reports that Chris Johnson wouldn’t lose playing time now that Freddie Freeman has returned off the disabled list at the expense of former platoon-mate Juan Francisco, there seems to be a sense that he’s worth rostering in nearly 100 percent of leagues; in the last seven days, Johnson has been added in over 72 percent of ESPN leagues and the only reason he isn’t atop the Yahoo! trends is because he’s already owned in a majority of leagues at this point. While Johnson may well have more value than it appeared he would on draft day, he’s unlikely to finish as one of the 10-12 best third basemen this season.

The obvious red flag with Johnson is his .468 BABIP, which is so ripe for regression it has almost spoiled on the tree. Since 1995, just two players have finished a qualifying season with a BABIP over .400: Manny Ramirez, who had a .403 mark in 2000, and Jose Hernandez, who managed just a .288 batting average despite a .404 BABIP in 2002. So yes, regression is coming, but expecting Johnson to slide all the way down to .300 is probably a mistake for a couple of reasons. Read the rest of this entry »