Zach Granite & Anthony Swarzak: Deep League Wire

Is your team not on fire? Are you trying to roll along with Brandon Guyer? Well then, it’s your lucky day, because it’s time for the weekly deep league waiver wire!

Zach Granite | OF MIN | CBS 3% Owned

Granite was called up a couple of weeks ago and it wasn’t for immediate injury replacement purposes. But sure enough, starting center fielder Byron Buxton was placed on the disabled list over the weekend, which could give Granite an opportunity to play every day until the former’s return. Granite was ranked as the Twins 12th best prospect heading into the season, though the ultimate conclusion wasn’t so flattering…

Granite’s ability to play center field well, run and put the bat on the ball points toward a near-certain big-league role of some kind, but it will likely be as a fourth or fifth outfielder because of the lack of power.

Wellll, us fantasy owners really couldn’t care less what Granite’s future looks like, we just care about his current playing time situation and what kind of 5×5 stats he may be able to contribute while he’s getting his plate appearances. There’s some good news here — he’s essentially Ben Revere. He has posted excellent strikeout rates throughout his minor league career and hits lots of grounders, which is exactly what he needs to do to best utilize his 70 grade speed.

So about the speed — while he has yet to qualify for the Statcast Sprint Speed leaderboard, he stole 56 bases at Double-A last year and was at 18 between High-A and Triple-A before his promotion to the Twins this season. So he offers immense stolen base potential, which makes him the perfect short-term add. He has nearly zero chance of holding down a starting job, but even when Buxton returns, Granite could stick around and chip in with the occasional swipe. Even 200 at-bats with 10-15 steals over a full season has value in AL-Only leagues.

Anthony Swarzak | RP CHW | 5% Owned

This is a pre-emptive move. As I type this, the word on the street is thus…

Source: #Yankees close to getting Frazier, Robertson and Kahnle from #WhiteSox for prospects.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 19, 2017

WOW! That’s quite the haul for the Yankees. All along, the assumption was that David Robertson would be traded and Tommy Kahnle would slide into the closer role. As such, Kahnle made for an excellent speculative saves stash given his dominance. But if Kahnle is traded himself as well, then obviously the White Sox will have to fill the closer role with another face. And that man is likely to be Anthony Swarzak, who himself as enjoyed a breakout season.

Once upon a time, Swarzak was a pretty solid Twins starting pitching prospect. But he failed to strike out anyone, en route to bloated ERA marks. So eventually he got himself moved to the bullpen, and he has made just nine starts since 2012. As one would expect, Swarzak’s fastball velocity increased upon his move to relief, jumping from just 90.3 mph when he started full-time in his 2009 debut, to just above 92.0 mph from 2012 through 2015. Then something happened last season — suddenly his fastball velocity spiked by just over a mile per hour, and it has surged even higher this season.

In addition to the increase in fastball velocity, he has changed his pitch mix. Beginning last year with the Yankees, he nearly cut his fastball usage in half and almost doubled the usage of his slider. He has used an identical mix since, which has caused his strikeout rate to syrocket. First, he’s now getting a double digit SwStk% on his fastball, something he’s only done once before (2013). More importantly, his slider has generated a 17.7% SwStk%, which isn’t elite on its own, but when thrown as often as he does, results in dominant results.

The only knock is that being fastball-slider, his underlying skills against lefties is far inferior than against right-handers. He has offset those weak skills by holding lefties to a .184 BABIP, thanks to a fly ball heavy batted ball distribution, with lots of pop-ups and few liners. He also hasn’t allowed a homer yet to them, which won’t last.

He has been so elite against righties though that his weakness against lefties isn’t a major concern. While he’s going to see his HR/FB rate rise, he’s still got the overall skills to successfully close out games. Pick him up now before everyone else is rushing out to add him when Kahnle is traded.