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.
Brandon Eisert (RP – CWS)
We finally might have some clarity on who, speculatively speaking, is the favorite for saves moving forward for the Chicago White Sox.
The American League Central club has struggled to string together wins consistently this season. All told, just one reliever on the team has more than one save.
That would be Brandon Eisert with two.
While it’s easy to point to that as the key reason why, there’s much more to it than that.
First, there’s the fact that Jordan Leasure and Steven Wilson, Chicago’s two most utilized relievers, both in terms of high-leverage appearances and high-leverage ninth-inning appearances this season, both are sporting FIP numbers closer to 5.00 than 4.00, at 4.65 and 4.64, respectively.
What’s more, both have also struggled with issuing walks. Leasure’s walk rate sits at 11.1%, and Wilson is at 14.8%.
Dan Altavilla, who has a save and has yet to allow an earned run in five innings since making his 2025 debut for the team on May 30th, has allowed four walks in five innings.
So there’s all of that.
But there’s also the fact that Eisert has been, simply put, really good.
The 27-year-old has pitched to a 4.30 ERA and a 2.97 FIP in 29.1 innings spanning 29 appearances for the American League Central club so far. He’s struck out 11.05 batters per nine frames while scattering 1.84 walks and 0.92 homers per nine innings.
Entering play Wednesday, he ranked in the 81st percentile or better in each of the following statistical categories: xERA, xBA, walk rate, strikeout rate, hard-hit rate and whiff rate. His 31% chase rate just missed qualifying, ranking in the 77th percentile league-wide.
Leaning more on his slider (40.7% usage rate, .310 xwOBA against, 30.2% whiff rate) and change-up (28.9% usage rate, .232 xwOBA against, 44.3% whiff rate) this season, Eisert has shown plenty of promise in a late-inning role. It also certainly doesn’t hurt that his four-seamer has held opposing batters to a .133 average and a .266 xwOBA.
The nature of the White Sox’s record and the nature of the save tally and distribution in their bullpen make Eisert more of an under-the-radar option than most other closers in the league even though he looks like (at least on paper and speculatively speaking), the best ninth-inning option in Chicago.
There’s also the fact that, again, speculatively speaking, the White Sox could trade away veterans in July, including the 27-year-old.
For those in Roto leagues in search of saves and trying to make up ground in the standings, Eisert is worth a look, even if it ends up being for just a little under two months.
JP Sears (SP – ATH)
JP Sears is more of a trade target than a waiver wire option, but he’s someone to keep an eye on as the trade deadline gets closer and closer.
For the season, the veteran 29-year-old owns a 5.08 ERA and a 4.90 FIP in 72.2 innings after Wednesday’s start, striking out 58 batters in the process while scattering 15 home runs and 14 walks. Scattering probably isn’t the right word there. Sears has struggled mightily with home runs at times this season.
Sears has given up 1.86 home runs per nine innings after Wednesday’s start. Before Wednesday’s outing, that number was 2.00. Among pitchers with at least 60 innings, that 2.00 number was the second-highest in the league as of the start of play on Wednesday.
Of the 15 home runs Sears has surrendered in his 14 starts this year, seven came in a two-start stretch from May 21st through May 27th. In two unideal outings, the veteran allowed a combined 18 hits, 15 earned runs, seven home runs and a walk in 8.1 total innings against the Los Angeles Angels (at home) and Houston Astros (on the road).
As you can imagine, those outings wreaked havoc on Sears’ run-prevention numbers. His ERA and FIP in 45 innings before the two inter-division starts were 2.80 and 3.58, respectively.
Since those two starts, he’s given up six earned runs in three starts spanning 15.1 innings.
If the Athletics end up trading veterans at the deadline, Sears certainly stands out as a speculative trade option.
Furthermore, several contenders could use the rotation reinforcements. Contenders with decidedly pitcher-friendly stadiums, at least where Sears’ data is concerned.
The Royals have the league’s third-best rotation fWAR, but just saw ace Cole Ragans land on the injured list (IL) again. Elsewhere in the American League Central, the Guardians have outperformed just five other teams from a rotation fWAR standpoint.
For his career, Sears has given up 85 home runs, including the 15 this season.
Put all of his batted ball data at Progressive Field, and those numbers drop to 77 and 11.
Put all of Sears’ batted ball data at Kauffman Stadium, and the respective numbers drop to 70 and seven.
Of course, Kansas City and Cleveland are speculative fits on paper. The prospect of Sears getting traded this summer is entirely speculative in and of itself.
Still, he’s someone whose fantasy prospects could change considerably with a trade to the right contender.
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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.
