I’ve long believed that ottoneu owners should essentially ignore the league standings through the first month of the baseball season, but that doesn’t mean teams should be resting on their laurels. The first couple months of the season are the best times to pounce on unexpected breakouts, and even if 75% of your pickups end up being duds the one or two studs you might find make the hunt fruitful. Let’s take a look at the players ottoneu teams are picking up and dropping most frequently over the past week:

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It’s an all Mets edition of the deep league waiver wire! I could hear the excitement through my computer screen.

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In the last few days, much of the waiver wire frenzy has been focused on pitchers in general and on Michael Soroka, Nick Kingham and Fernando Romero specifically. If you were able to pick up one or more of these prospects who have just made their major league debuts, that’s a good feeling. If you acquired them without busting your FAAB budget, even better.

Yet while these young pitchers have been stealing the spotlight, a number of more established hitters have been toiling away beyond the gaze of most fantasy owners. Each of the five hitters featured below are owned in fewer than a third of the leagues on CBSSports.com and Fantrax, where deeper leagues are not in short supply. Some of them could provide an upgrade for your deep-league roster right now, while others may be more valuable in the coming weeks and, therefore, are worth a stash.
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Each week through the season, I’ll be looking at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 15% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) and pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

It’s been another week of Fantasy Baseball, and the waiver wire has shifted. Let’s highlight my ten favorites, roughly ordered from top to bottom:

Caleb Smith (Miami Marlins) – This list has plenty of the same names from last week, though I expect there to be more variance as we get deeper in the season as more unpopular entities make changes that few are aware of. Smith could be part of that label after striking out 19 batters in his last two starts, featuring plenty better command of his fastball that we’ve seen before. The question is if there is sustainability here – a 5 ER/6 walk start is still in recent memory – though striking out least seven batters in four of six starts is plenty enough for us to sign up for the price of free.

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You need help in your deep league. I’m here for you.

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It’s always interesting to look back at lopsided trades like the one that sent Teoscar Hernandez to Toronto, especially because the team that gave him up was the Houston Astros, a franchise that the vast majority of knowledgeable fans would agree tends to make many more smart decisions than dumb ones. With that in mind, I think what was amazing about the Teoscar deal is just how down the Astros were on the talented young outfielder.

On July 31, 2017, the Astros traded Teoscar and Nori Aoki to the Blue Jays. The return? Francisco Liriano, who brought with him a truly shameful 5.88 ERA, which was largely fueled by his 4.68 BB/9. Even at the time, it seemed pretty clear that the Astros knew Liriano was washed up, as the club converted him to a glorified LOOGY. Liriano pitched a grand total of 16.2 IP with the Astros — 14.1 IP in the regular season, 2.1 IP in the playoffs — over the course of 25 appearances.

Of course, this post is not about Liriano, but it’s important to contextualize how little the Astros valued Teoscar that they were willing to part with him (and Aoki) for 16.2 IP of replacement-level relief pitching. With George Springer, Josh Reddick, Marwin Gonzalez, Derek Fisher, and Jake Marisnick hanging around the major-league club — and stud prospect Kyle Tucker climbing through the minors — it’s certainly true that the Astros were dealing from depth. Still, the Jays did one hell of a job landing Teoscar in exchange for a 34-year-old pitcher fighting to keep his ERA under 6.00.

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Each week through the season, I’ll be looking at the collection of starting pitchers owned in under 15% of leagues (consensus Yahoo/ESPN ownership from Fantasy pros) and pointing out the options to consider if you need an extra arm or two at the end of your staff.

It’s been another week of Fantasy Baseball, and the waiver wire has shifted. Let’s highlight my ten favorites, roughly ordered from top to bottom.

Mike Minor (Texas Rangers) – There is a little more under the hood discrediting Minor’s start to 2018 than I would like, though I still believe Minor will improve as we march further into the season – remember, he hadn’t started a game since 2014 prior to this year. Armed with four solid pitches in his arsenal, Minor sports an impressive 11.9% overall whiff rate and a digestible 7.0% walk rate to his name. His a slider that gets strikes on both sides of the plate, a fastball that hints a 10% whiff rate and hits the zone nearly 60% of the time, and he leans on an effective changeup/curveball combination that takes different roles each outing. The tools are there, it’s just a matter of time before he wields them properly.

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Happy Ronald Acuna day everyone! The baseball season creeps along through its first month, and I’m back again with a look at the most added and dropped players across all ottoneu leagues over the last week. Without further ado, let’s get started:

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Who wants to join me under the sea, exploring the deep depths of the free agent waters?

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