2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 22

If you haven't already taken part in multiple fantasy football drafts, you are probably getting ready to, and there is always the temptation to try and coast through the end of the baseball season as the chaos and guessing games of the NFL commence (particularly if you are in a nice position for the postseason). […]

Manuel Margot (OF, SD) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 17% of leagues ANALYSIS: Manuel Margot has been slowly but steadily building up his body of work at the plate since a horrendous .478 OPS  month of May, and has put up season-high numbers during the month of August with four home runs, a stolen base, and a […]

Vince Velasquez (SP/RP, PHI) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 21% of leagues ANALYSIS: It hasn't turned into the push for the postseason that the Philadelphia Phillies were probably hoping for, but Vince Velasquez has been back as a full fledged member of the rotation, and he has been rather effective of late despite the up-and-down (though heavily […]

Ivan Nova (SP, CHW) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 22% of leagues ANALYSIS: Following an unsightly 8.42 ERA, 1.75 WHIP showing for the month of April, there wasn't really any place to go for Ivan Nova but up. That is exactly where he headed too, and his performance on the mound for the Chicago White Sox got […]

Joe Jimenez (RP, DET) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in All Leagues OWNED IN: 26% of leagues ANALYSIS: The Detroit Tigers bullpen has seen better days, but at least they have 24-year-old, 2018 All-Star Joe Jimenez to smile on in the present and hold promise for towards the future. The entire Tigers pitching staff has 25 saves for 2019. 22 of those saves […]

Brett Phillips (OF, KC) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 1% of leagues ANALYSIS: Brett Phillips hasn't put in quality work on offense at the major league level since 2017 when he produced four home runs, five stolen bases, and a .799 OPS for the Milwaukee Brewers. Despite that gap in MLB work, the goofy laughing Phillips is […]

Dillon Peters (SP/RP, LAA) - Week 21 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 7% of leagues ANALYSIS: While his humdrum showing at Triple-A in 2019 didn't necessarily warrant a major league promotion, the Los Angeles Angels found themselves in need of a starting pitcher, and Dillon Peters has been a pleasant surprise in response. He has a 3.38 ERA and 1.26 […]

2B and SS Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 21

With so many schools starting back incredibly soon (if they haven't already), and so many of us being impacted by the changing of the seasons (whether you have kids in school, you teach, or you're a student yourself), it's important to take a moment to appreciate the days when we have spare time to spend […]

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 […]