This is “The Watchlist.”

“The Watchlist” is a weekly column designed to help you monitor and pick up players in the coming weeks. Whether they’re waiver wire or trade targets, these are the players you’ll want to add now before becoming the hot waiver commodity or trade target in a week or two.

Using underlying and advanced metrics, “The Watchlist” will help you get ahead of the competition in your league and reap the rewards later from your pickups.

The players could be anyone from a prospect in an ideal situation close to the Majors, a reliever in a saves+holds league, or even a starter doing well with misleading surface-level stats like ERA.

They might even be hitters with quality underlying stats. Or they could be none of those types of players and a different kind of player entirely. The point is that they’ll help you find success in your fantasy league while staying ahead of the curve of your league mates.

The payoff might not be immediate, but they should eventually provide significant value, more often than not.

These are some of those players for this week.

Matt Manning (SP – DET)
Manning missed significant time earlier this season on the injured list due to a shoulder injury after making two starts in mid-April. Only one of those starts was a full outing, with the right-hander allowing just a home run in six innings while striking out a pair of batters in a win against the Boston Red Sox.

Still, Manning generated just six swinging strikes on the day and finished with a 26 percent CSW rate. And while it’s probably unfair to read too much into anything regarding one start, it’s hard not to see how much better the former top prospect has been since returning from the injured list.

After logging a CSW rate of 21 percent in his first start back on August 2, Manning has rattled off four straight starts with a CSW rate north of 30 percent, including his most recent outing when he posted a 40 percent CSW rate in six innings of work against the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday.

In the start against the Giants, Manning generated 12 swinging strikes on 33 sliders thrown. It marked the second straight outing that the right-hander had generated at least seven whiffs with his slider, which is quickly becoming one of the right-hander’s best offerings.

Sporting a 23.1 percent usage rate as the 24-year-old’s most utilized offering after his four-seamer, Manning’s slider has a 47 percent whiff rate so far this season. And not only are batters struggling to make contact with it, when they are, they’re hitting just .167 with a .178 xBA, a .220 xwOBA, and a 35.3 percent hard-hit rate against the pitch.

For reference, among full-time starters who’ve thrown at least 100 sliders this season, only six have a slider with a better whiff rate than Manning’s.

Armed with a true out pitch and a pitcher-friendly park – Comerica Park has the sixth-lowest park factor where home runs are concerned this season per Statcast – Matt Manning should at the very least be a useful fantasy option for the rest of the season, especially for home starts. However, if he can pitch like he did against the Giants on a more consistent basis, he’ll be a viable option in most all leagues.

Brian Serven (C – COL)
Serven was mentioned in this column back in late June as a catcher to watch, given his fantasy-friendly home stadium in Colorado, some encouraging production at the plate, a history of low strikeouts, and the fact that Elias Diaz was struggling.

Fast forward to late August, and Serven is commanding a significant number of starts behind the plate. And while his overall numbers have dipped a bit, he’s thriving at Coors Field.

The catcher is hitting .229 with a .293 on-base percentage, a 7.6 percent walk rate, a 19.6 percent strikeout rate, and six home runs in 158 total plate appearances. However, in 95 plate appearances at home, he owns a .902 OPS and is hitting .265 with all six of his home runs. That puts him in some elite company at the plate in terms of catcher production.

Highest Home OPS Among Catchers, Minimum 90 Plate Appearances At Home:

Eric Haase: .960 OPS, 92 PA

J.T Realmuto: .906 OPS, 215 PA

Brian Serven: .902 OPS, 93 PA

Willson Contreras: .873 OPS, 141 PA

Adley Rutschman: .873 OPS, 113 PA

Serven is also second only to Haase in home ISO with a .272 metric, as nine of his 22 hits in Colorado have gone for extra bases. Elsewhere, he’s maintained his low strikeout numbers at home, with just a 16.5 percent strikeout rate at Coors Field.

And while the Rockies just kicked off a 10-game road trip that won’t see them return to Colorado until September for a matchup with the Brewers, they’ll then play 13 of their next 18 games at home after that, making the 27-year-old an under-the-radar option for managers in for the stretch run or for the fantasy playoffs, depending on the dates for the latter.

Trevor Stephan (RP – CLE)
Stephan, like Serven, has been mentioned in The Watchlist before, this time back in late May. Since then, the reliever has continued to cement himself in the late-inning, high-leverage mix for Cleveland, thanks in part to his split-finger offering, which entered play Thursday with a 50.5 percent whiff rate and just a .161 xwOBA against it.

The splitter has helped the 26-year-old rack up 62 strikeouts in 48 innings of work this season to go along with a strong 2.44 ERA and an even more stellar 1.96 FIP.

And while all of those things are certainly helpful in a reliever in fantasy leagues, it’s Stephan’s recent usage that makes him the type of reliever to pick up in saves+holds leagues.

The 26-year-old has a hold in each of his last six appearances and has registered a hold in eight of his last 11 outings for Cleveland. In fact, since the beginning of August, only Brooks Raley has more holds league-wide.

It also doesn’t hurt that Stephan has struck out 15 of the 36 batters he’s faced since the beginning of the month or that he’s tied with James Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase for the team lead in high-leverage outings this month.

However you slice it, the right-hander is an integral reliever for Cleveland and a borderline must-add for fantasy managers in saves+holds leagues who have had to shift Ryan Pressly to the injured list or have seen Raisel Iglesias’ fantasy value suffer significantly due to a midseason trade.

Clarke Schmidt (SP – NYY)
With Nestor Cortes now on the injured list, it looks like it’s finally Schmidt’s time to step into the rotation.

Clarke Schmidt will start Sunday vs A’s #yankees

— Meredith Marakovits (@M_Marakovits) August 26, 2022

Schmidt was a starter in college and made 42 of his career 45 minor league appearances as a member of the rotation, yet given the oftentimes crowded nature of New York’s rotation, the right-hander has largely worked in a relief role at the Major League level. Just three of his 22 lifetime appearances with the Yankees have come as a starter. In fact, he has more games finished – seven – as a Major League player than he does starts.

Overall, the hurler has pitched to a 2.18 ERA and a 3.99 FIP in 33 innings at the Major League level, making one start and recording a pair of saves. He’s also registered 29 strikeouts compared to 18 walks. That checks out to 7.91 punchouts per nine frames.

While the strikeout numbers don’t look particularly gaudy at face value, there’s plenty to suggest more strikeouts might be on the horizon. Schmidt has logged a quality 11.8 percent swinging strike percentage so far, and his most utilized offer, his slider, is sporting a 43.9 percent whiff rate. Elsewhere, in the five relief appearances in the Majors this season in which he’s thrown at least three innings, Schmidt has at least five strikeouts in three of those five outings.

What’s more, Schmidt struck out 46 batters in 33 innings as a starter, or 12.5 per nine innings, in the minors this season.

As he moves into the rotation in New York, his strikeout numbers might not be quite that high, but they have a chance to be considerably better than his strikeouts per nine innings rate in the Majors this season.

Schmidt is also moving into a Yankees rotation that, despite recent struggles by the team, entered play Thursday tied for the seventh-most pitcher wins in the league. That same rotation also features three different starters who’ve registered at least nine wins each. In other words, there’s plenty of pitcher win upside here for both Schmidt and fantasy managers.

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