Waiver Wire: May 14th
It’s finally Friday. Here’s an afternoon delight, three waiver wire candidates, each at differing levels of ownership.
Jason Kubel | OF | Twins (54% owned)
Maybe last year was Kubel’s career year. Maybe his ISO wont be .200+ again. He’s swinging less often yet he’s swinging more often and stuff outside the zone. The good news is that he’s still hitting line drives so that BABIP should embiggen. He could be a better option available on the wire for those that are running Juan Rivera out there every day, for example. Rivera is reaching more and swinging less in the same way, has also seen a power loss, but isn’t hitting as many line drives. It might be a 50/50 proposition, but if you own someone worse than Rivera, Kubel should be interesting to you.
Felipe Lopez | 2B/SS | Cardinals (19% owned)
Felipe Lopez is a better player than Brendan Ryan. At least offensively. Defensively, Lopez is closing the gap. And the way that Ryan is currently struggling, he may not get to wait around for that BABIP to normalize before the newcomer usurps his job. Lopez has always had more power than Ryan, and now that his defense has improved the last two years, and he’s walking as often as the incumbent, it seems that he will take the job once he returns from his current rehab stint.
John Maine | SP | Mets (12% owned)
Sometimes, when a player is only owned in 12% of leagues, it’s for good reason and it’s hard to recommend the player. Maine, for example, is walking a career-high (for the NL at least), his fastball is the slowest it’s been in his career and none of his featured pitches has been worth positive runs in linear weights. So why is he interesting again? Well, swing rates stabilize first, and Maine has got a career-high reach rate (28.4%) and a career-low contact rate (77.4%). If he was effective at 91 MPH, why not at 89 MPH? As your last pitcher in a deep league, you can leave him on the bench and watch the radar guns. With those reach and contact rates, he’s already doing something right. It may not yet be significant, but Citi Field is suppressing home runs by almost 50% this year (last year it augmented home runs by 5.7%). That could be a bonus.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I would really love to trust Lopez because I agree he’s a better offensive MI than Ryan (and I’m dying at 2B). Unfortunately, Lopez only saw 4 PAs twice in his last six games and he’s coming off an injury that pretty much limits him to PH duties for a while. I know LaRussa had recently threatened Ryan’s starting roll but part of me thinks that was just LaRussa “motivating” Ryan.
I sat McCutchen today. Just thought I’d share my frustration.
In a head to head points league. Where an amazing day like today is even more valuable from a hitter. That’s SP quality today.
McCutchen is a must start IMO. He’s in that Carlos Gonzalez/Colby Rasmus group of young outfielders who I think can put up Top 10 OF numbers as soon as this year…
I sure didn’t. 5/5 with a homer, 2 RBI and 2 steals is amazing.
In my defense I started Heyward, Holliday, and Justin Upton over him because he had been 0-9 in his last 3 games.
maybe you should trade an OF? do you really need 4 young studs if you only start 3/day?
I’m trying. There is a utility spot open too. I want to get a top 25 SP in return. I think that is fair.
In regards to Kubel, it seems that most of the reporters that follow the Twins and saying Left-Center to Right-Center of the new ballpark is playing huge right now. This could just be a temporary weather pattern that changes during the summer, and it could also be the cause of Kubel’s decrease in HR/FB%.
I like Lopez alot. I bet even if he doesn’t win the 2B job outright he’ll still get 4-5 games a week at various positions… Question though, out of Felipe Lopez, Erick Aybar & Juan Uribe who would you take as your MI (I need HR’s and average and steals, basically my team needs help in every category)…
If Lopez wins a job outright it’ll be the SS job. If he doesn’t have eligibility there yet he’ll probably get it very very quickly once he returns from the DL, so that’s another boost to his value.
As someone posted above, though, I doubt he gets much playing time after returning as he’ll still need some time to fully recover.
“BABIP should embiggen”
Is embiggen in the stat glossary? 0.o
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
There is something to like about Maine. He may be faltering somewhere mechanically, but he is getting the job done. I was able to trade Kazmir for him. His last 3 starts have all been QS and his K/BB ratio is 2.2. I think most people shied away when he got lit up in an early start but those struggles seem to be in the past.
“embiggen” is vocabastic.
re: Kubel, the pitch data says he’s seeing a lot more changeups. That might explain his swinging outside the zone more. Anyway, the combo of that and the poor results so far led me to drop him for Willingham.