2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 20

We didn't have to venture too far into the month of August for the impact of the new trade deadline rules to become clear. Gaps on each team that weren't addressed by July 31st don't just go away, and players like Joe Panik, Zack Godley, Kevin Gausman, Jonathan Lucroy, and Asdrubal Cabrera have all found new […]

Drew Smyly (SP, PHI) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 20% of leagues ANALYSIS: It's been quite the long, frustrating road for Drew Smyly as he fell from that status of a promising prospect to a guy just hoping to carve out an MLB career. After an absolutely disastrous 51.1 inning stint with the Texas Rangers to kick […]

Anthony Bass (RP, SEA) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 13% of leagues ANALYSIS: What happened to the line of arms that were complicating Anthony Bass's road to high-leverage innings for the Seattle Mariners? Well, they traded Roenis Elias and Hunter Strickland, guys like Austin Adams are bound to the IL, and other competition like Cory Gearrin and […]

Michael Lorenzen (SP/RP, CIN) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 13% of leagues ANALYSIS: There is a lot to say about Cincinnati Reds reliever Michael Lorenzen, as he is a man of many talents. As an asset on offense, "Mikey Biceps" has accumulated three stolen bases and a .273/.333 BA/OBP combo, and on the mound he's been one […]

Aaron Civale (SP, CLE) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 28% of leagues ANALYSIS: Former Northeastern Husky Aaron Civale climbed the ranks of the Cleveland Indians farm system with the poise that an organization hopes for when drafting a former college ace, and he has absolutely torn his way through the state of Ohio in 2019. In 72.2 […]

Tucker Barnhart (C/1B, CIN) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in Two-Catcher Leagues OWNED IN: 11% of leagues ANALYSIS: Tucker Barnhart may have once been able to steal more bases than the average backstop, and he may have hit for a career-high home run total just last year (ten), but the former Gold Glove award winner's forte will always be elite defense behind the […]

Trent Grisham (OF, MIL) - Week 20 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 23% of leagues ANALYSIS: Trent Grisham was once ranked among baseball's top prospects, but after back-to-back-to-back seasons of mediocrity in the Brewers farm system, his stock appropriately plummeted. Put that all in the past, because it's certainly in Grisham's rear-view mirror: in 370 AB through 2019 for Double-A […]

2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 19

Well, the trade deadline came and went, and as many of us sat glaze-eyed for hours endlessly refreshing the internet search results to view incoming deals, we found ourselves sourly disappointed until nearly the final hour. Even with blockbuster deals that saw the swapping of Zack Greinke, Yasiel Puig/Trevor Bauer, Shane Greene, Nicholas Castellanos, and […]

Jason Vargas (SP, PHI) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 24% of leagues ANALYSIS: In a very much anticipated move, the New York Mets traded Jason Vargas to the division-rival Philadelphia Phillies at the 2019 trade deadline, and thus far the one-time All-Star has carried his momentum with him to his new city and made the most of […]

Isan Diaz (SS, MIA) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 6% of leagues ANALYSIS: We have been graced with some fantastic prospect call-ups in baseball this year, particularly in the middle infield, but one that we possibly didn't expect was the extremely fresh promotion of formerly top-100 prospect Isan Diaz (along with teammate Lewis Brinson). It was Diaz's […]

Anthony DeSclafani (SP, CIN) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 28% of leagues ANALYSIS: 29-year-old former Florida Gator Anthony DeSclafani has been a reliable member of the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff for years, and while he is well on his way to yet another solid year of work from the mound in 2019, he has been particularly on […]

Pablo Lopez (SP, MIA) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 13% of leagues ANALYSIS: Pablo Lopez is just 23 years old, and has already given the Miami Marlins plenty of reason to believe in his future (just a few days after dealing 26-year-old rotation mate Trevor Richards to the Rays at the deadline). Though the Cabimas, Venezuela native […]

J.D. Davis (3B/1B/OF, NYM) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 4% of leagues ANALYSIS: Through all of the chatter that routinely surrounds the New York Mets, it could be easy to overlook the superlative work that Cal State Fullerton alum J.D. Davis has put in at the plate for 2019. With ten home runs and an OPS of […]

Danny Jansen (C, TOR) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 32% of leagues ANALYSIS: Danny Jansen has long been a prized possession within the Toronto Blue Jays farm system, and though he would appear to be disappointing on the surface for 2019 with a .634 OPS in 270 AB, his nine home runs on the year paired with […]

Under-the-Radar Starting Pitchers on the Move

Up until the final hours of the 2019 MLB trade deadline, it was almost looking like every major league GM had made some sort of weird, simultaneous mistake where they forgot to mark the days off on the calendar and thought that it was only July 30th. When the deals started rolling in, they came […]

2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 18

It figures: we spend all year discussing a plethora of trade deadline possibilities and make allusions to chaotic deadlines of years passed, and we are experiencing one of the slowest deadlines in recent memory. Maybe this year a crazy result of the deadline will be that every team, more or less, ended up with the […]

Danny Duffy (SP, KC) - Week 18 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 9% of leagues ANALYSIS: Danny Duffy's numbers in total for the 2019 season may read a little humdrum at a 4.32 ERA and 1.36 WHIP in 89.2 IP across 16 starts for the bottom-dwelling Kansas City Royals, but they have mostly been marred by a poor start to […]

Vince Velasquez (SP/RP, PHI) - Week 18 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 8% of leagues ANALYSIS: There is still the chance that the Philadelphia Phillies make a move for a starting pitcher (probably a back-end rotation member), but if they decide to roll the dice with their current cast of characters in an attempt for the postseason, Vince Velasquez stands […]

Cal Quantrill (SP/RP, SD) - Week 18 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 6% of leagues ANALYSIS: He has jumped back a bit between rotation and bullpen action, but 24-year-old highly regarded arm Cal Quantrill has been absolutely shut-down for the San Diego Padres in recent outings. The former Stanford Cardinal has turned in a respectable body of work through his […]

2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 17

The urgency is definitely picking up around baseball, and it tends to every year once the fun and fanfare of the All-Star break are in the rear-view mirror. You could smell the pungent aroma in the air over the past week. A few trades were completed, a few key players went down with injuries of […]

Aaron Bummer (RP, CHW) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 6% of leagues ANALYSIS: There's a very realistic chance that the Chicago White Sox will find a way to trade their closer Alex Colome by the upcoming deadline, and if that happens, the ninth inning reigns will likely be handed down to thriving 25-year-old southpaw Aaron Bummer. Melancholic […]

Daniel Mengden (SP/RP, OAK) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 9% of leagues ANALYSIS: Daniel Mengden is still surprisingly young at 26, and we can all get behind a fantastic mustache, but the Texas A&M alumni has sported more than well-groomed facial hair on the mound in recent work. Through 47.0 IP for another season as an Oakland […]

Chase Anderson (SP, MIL) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 15% of leagues ANALYSIS: Chase Anderson has always flown under the radar, but despite one sub-par month of June for 2019 in which he had a 5.92 ERA and 1.32 WHIP in five starts, he is quietly en route to one of the finest campaigns of his career. […]

Daniel Hudson (RP, TOR) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 8% of leagues ANALYSIS: Daniel Hudson has long been a reliable fixture in major league bullpens around the league, but he has never amassed more than five saves in a single season (a feat he accomplished in 2016 with the Arizona Diamondbacks). Now, with a fantastic body of […]

Nate Lowe (1B, TB) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 32% of leagues ANALYSIS: In dealing with some recent injury issues, the Tampa Bay Rays have called on hulking, highly rated first base prospect Nate Lowe, with fantastic results. The 24-year-old former Mississippi State Bulldog has a time-tested track record of power-hitting at the professional level, and had […]

Chance Sisco (C, BAL) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in Two-Catcher Leagues OWNED IN: 12% of leagues ANALYSIS: We're not referencing the "Thong Song", we're talking about Sisco of the Chance variety, and he is a former highly-touted prospect having an excellent season in the majors for the bottom-dwelling Baltimore Orioles. The 24-year-old backstop has torn up the opposition this season at Triple-A […]

Brett Gardner (OF, NYY) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 29% of leagues ANALYSIS: Of all of the amazingly talented and highly sought-after pieces that grace the New York Yankees batting order, very few people probably expected 35-year-old Brett Gardner to be as valuable as he has been at the plate in 2019. In 310 AB, the veteran […]

Manuel Margot (OF, SD) - Week 17 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 12% of leagues ANALYSIS: San Diego has plenty of young, burgeoning stars, and it's easy to forget the impressive play of Manuel Margot since he's been going to work at the plate and on the base-paths for the Padres for years. The 24-year-old former highly-touted prospect has hit […]

Phillip Ervin (OF, CIN) - Week 16 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 1% of leagues ANALYSIS: Today is Phillip Ervin's 27th birthday, and he gave himself an early cause for celebration on Saturday by tying a Cincinnati Reds franchise record with six hits (in six AB) in a 17-9 win over the Colorado Rockies in Coors Field. In 56 AB […]

2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 16

After what seemed like an eternity without regular season play, we have finally returned to business as usual from a memorable All-Star break that saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Peter Alonso capture the attention of millions around the world and the American League come out on top for the seventh year in a row (and […]