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.
Kody Clemens (1B, 2B, 3B, OF – MIN)
Going with the hot hand approach when looking at waiver wire options is sometimes the right call. Sometimes it can result in a season-long contributor on your fantasy team, other times it ends up being just a short-term streaming addition that helps you win your next matchup in head-to-head leagues.
The former is preferable, and with the way he’s hitting, Kody Clemens certainly has the potential to do just that and stick on fantasy rosters for the rest of the season.
Simply put, the infielder has been hitting the cover off the ball since joining the Minnesota Twins.
Clemens entered play Wednesday batting .297 with a .381 on-base percentage (OBP), three home runs and a .324 ISO in 42 plate appearances for the American League Central club.
It’s an admittedly tiny sample size, one in which Clemens has been 85% better than league average from a wRC+ standpoint. While it remains to be seen if this type of elite production will continue, Clemens could very well continue to provide above-average production if his quality of contact numbers are even close to this good moving forward.
This season, the 29-year-old has collected six barrels, an 18.8% hard-hit rate and a .475 xwOBA in 49 plate appearances split between the Twins and Philadelphia Phillies.
Furthermore, with the Twins dealing with several injuries to key members of their lineup — Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Luke Keaschall and Matt Wallner are all on the injured list (IL) currently — it’s allowed the former Tigers and Phillies infielder to start hitting more towards the middle of the lineup.
Clemens, like Chandler Simpson (more on him shortly), is someone to add now who might be potentially undervalued fantasy-wise due to his small sample size.
But again, like Simpson, he has the potential to not only help you now, but also potentially provide impact fantasy production later if he continues to make this kind of loud contact this often. In that regard, he’s very much someone to add now ahead of time before his production potentially continues throughout a larger sample size.
As long as he’s doing that and making loud contact, he’s very much worth a look in leagues with 14+ teams, with the potential to be a fantasy starter in more standard-size leagues if he can maintain above-average production.
Furthermore, his counting stats upside (namely RBI and runs scored) could improve considerably once some of the Twins players on IL — notably Correa and Buxton — return.
Chandler Simpson (OF – TB)
Entering play on Wednesday, the Tampa Bay Rays were tied atop the league leaderboard for stolen bases with the Milwaukee Brewers. Both clubs entered play mid-week with 63 stolen bases, and Chandler Simpson has played a key role in helping the Rays to the top of said leaderboard.
The 24-year-old made his Major League debut on April 19th and is already in the top 10 in the league with 11 stolen bases.
What’s more, he’s also hitting .301 with a .327 on-base percentage in exactly 100 plate appearances so far, which certainly doesn’t hurt. Neither does a lowly 12% strikeout rate.
But it’s the stolen base upside where Simpson can bring elite production to your fantasy team, now and later.
Due to players with identical stolen base totals, 12 batters have more stolen bases than Simpson as of the start of play on Wednesday. However, adjust the parameters to only look at hitters from April 19th onward, and the Rays outfielder is just one stolen base off the league lead.
He’s usually hit either leadoff or towards the bottom of the Rays lineup in his time in the Majors. It would be significant for his fantasy ceiling if he saw more plate appearances as the team’s regular leadoff hitter. But wherever he plays in the lineup, Simpson should continue to steal bases at an elite rate.
Considering his lack of power production so far, Simpson is sporting just a .302 xwOBA and a .328 xwOBAcon and has yet to register a barrel. There’s a chance he’s available via waivers in your league. He’s only rostered in 22% of leagues as of Wednesday.
While better power production would certainly be more ideal, if he continues to hit around .300 — something that looks decidedly possible given the outfielder’s low strikeout rate so far — with elite stolen base totals, he’s going to be a quality starting fantasy option, regardless of league size or format.
You’ll want him on your fantasy roster before his rostered rate rises considerably.
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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.
