This is ‘The Watchlist.’ This column is designed to help you monitor and pick up fantasy baseball players in the coming weeks and months. 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.
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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 they’ll help you find success in your fantasy league while staying ahead of the curve against your league mates.
Eddie Rosario (OF – ATL)
With a lineup that has missed Ronald Acuna Jr. and, at times, Sean Murphy, due to stints on the injured list (IL), Atlanta has struggled to score runs this season.
Entering play Wednesday, only 13 teams had scored fewer runs. Atlanta has gotten quality contributions from Eli White (174 wRC+ in 42 plate appearances) and Alex Verdugo (138 wRC+ in 48 plate appearances), but they could still do with some lineup reinforcements in the short term while Acuna remains out.
Enter Eddie Rosario, who rejoined the National League East franchise recently. It’s the veteran’s third stint with the club, having joined them midseason in 2021, spending all the 2022 and 2023 seasons, and part of the 2024 campaign with the club. Rosario recently appeared in two games with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but could see much more playing time with Atlanta, even with White and Verdugo playing well, considering both Jarred Kelenic and Bryan De La Cruz are with Atlanta’s Triple-A affiliate.
The veteran outfielder hit .339 with a .406 on-base percentage, a 137 wRC+, two home runs and three stolen bases in 69 plate appearances for Los Angeles’ Triple-A affiliate. He’s also logged a wRC+ of 100 or higher in six of his last Major League seasons.
While he might not hit for a high average, despite the solid wRC+ numbers, Rosario hasn’t hit above .260 since 2019 in 590 plate appearances with the Minnesota Twins. There’s some intriguing power potential here for fantasy managers in deeper leagues.
In his career at Truist Park, Rosario has nearly a full season’s worth of plate appearances (513) and is hitting .237 with a .279 on-base percentage, a .449 slugging percentage and, perhaps most notably, 26 home runs and 46 total extra-base hits.
If you’re looking for power production ahead of time in deeper leagues, Rosario is worth a look.
Daulton Varsho (OF – TOR)
Daulton Varsho started the season on the IL and only just made his season debut. His highlight real catch in center field might make his return a bit less under the radar, but it’s worth adding him to your fantasy team now if you’re looking for outfield reinforcements.
Of course, he’s probably more of an option in leagues with more than 12 teams, but Varsho brings more than enough to the table to provide solid fantasy production.
Varsho, like Rosario, probably isn’t going to hit for a high average. His career-best in a Major League season is .246 in a 315 plate appearance sample size in 2021 with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Since that 2021 season, as it happens, Varsho has reached double digits in home runs and stolen bases in each of the last three years.
In 2022 (592 plate appearances), he hit .235 with a .302 on-base percentage, 27 home runs and 16 stolen bases in 592 plate appearances. In 2023 (581 plate appearances), he hit .220 with a .285 on-base percentage, with 20 home runs and 16 stolen bases. Last season (513 plate appearances), the outfielder collected 18 home runs and 10 stolen bases while hitting .214 with a .293 on-base percentage.
Entering play on Wednesday, Toronto had managed just 97 runs scored. Only the Royals and Rockies had scored fewer runs. While not ideal for Varsho’s fantasy ceiling, given the relative lack of lineup depth, it could also be beneficial.
Beneficial in that the outfielder, should he produce at the plate, could hit behind some combination of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Anthony Santander and George Springer regularly.
Varsho already did that in his first game back on Tuesday, hitting behind those four, as well as catcher Alejandro Kirk. As long as Varsho is hitting in the top five of Toronto’s lineup, he’ll be worth starting in most leagues with more than 12 teams. Depending on how he produces, his fantasy upside is that of a starter in 12-team leagues. Add him from the waiver wire now before he starts to make good on that upside.
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Ben Rosener is a fantasy baseball writer whose work has appeared on the digital pages of FantasyPros, Pitcher List and Bleacher Report. He also writes about fantasy baseball for his own Substack page, Ben Rosener’s Fantasy Baseball Help Substack. He only refers to himself in the third person for bios.
