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Every fantasy manager knows the struggle of balancing patience toward underperforming players with aggression on the waiver wire. While this push and pull will persist throughout more or less the whole season, it's at its most fraught in April. We parse tiny samples and reams of content, looking for the signals amid the noise, and make decisions that will reverberate through the remainder of the year.
I've written before about how knowing yourself as a manager is a crucial part of finding success. Understanding your weaknesses, shortcomings, blind spots - whatever you want to call them, being familiar with those traits can be every bit as valuable as any player research. My natural tendency is to take a patient approach, to trust the process, if you will. Sometimes, of course, that backfires. One of the most obvious drawbacks is being too slow on the draw and failing to secure a breakout performer who turns out to be legitimate.
But no matter how active you are on the waiver wire in the early portion of the proceedings, simple math dictates that you can't grab everyone you'd like to have on your roster. You're also occasionally going to add the wrong players at the expense of the right ones, though you might do so less often if you consult this list. Regardless of the path you take, however, there are going to be guys you'll spend the rest of the season kicking yourself for not pouncing on when the opportunity arose. Whether the players below wind up fitting that bill remains to be seen, but right now, they're the popular early adds that I'm most bummed to not have on a single, solitary roster.
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Hitters
Omar Narvaez, C, Milwaukee Brewers
While I made a minimal investment in the catcher position on draft day and still came away with Christian Vazquez on multiple rosters, it's hard not to feel like I could have gone even cheaper at the position with Narvaez and been satisfied. He's shaken off a terrible 2020 campaign and picked up right where his sneaky good 2019 left off.
Eduardo Escobar, 2B/3B, Arizona Diamondbacks
After beating the "you should mostly throw 2020 out" drum all winter, it doesn't feel great to lack any shares of Escobar, who was useful in 2018 and a low-key stud in 2019. A slow start gave way to a four-game homer streak. Unfortunately, the run of injuries that befell a couple of my rosters where he would've been a perfect replacement came after he had already been plucked from waivers.
Akil Baddoo, OF, Detroit Tigers
Is Baddoo legit? Maybe, maybe not. The contact issues he had as a prospect have still been present even during this hot start. But he's got pop, he can run, and he should have plenty of runway as a Rule 5 selection on a bad team. In short, he's exactly the kind of player worth a speculative early add, and I'm disappointed to have been beaten to the punch everywhere.
Honorable mentions: Jared Walsh, Luis Arraez, Cedric Mullins
Pitchers
Huascar Ynoa, SP, Atlanta Braves
Anybody who averages 96-97 mph on his fastball and induces ground balls at an over 50% clip will have some measure of my attention. Ynoa's 10-strikeout game on Monday unfortunately made everyone else sit up and take notice, too. Whether he can continue to succeed by throwing almost all fastballs and sliders is an open question, but with Max Fried (hamstring) now joining Mike Soroka (shoulder) on the injured list, Ynoa will have some time to figure that out. Just not while accruing stats for any of my squads.
Alex Reyes, RP, St. Louis Cardinals
Saved the best for last, as here's the guy who essentially inspired the idea for this exercise. I went hard on building cheap pitching staffs by focusing less on starting pitching and more on elite relievers, especially those who could provide multiple innings per appearance. How, then, did I not wind up with Reyes even once? He's locked down all three save chances for St. Louis so far and could easily wind up tossing 100 innings even if he remains the closer.
Honorable mentions: Michael Kopech, Sean Newcomb, Michael Pineda, Steven Matz
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