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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- MLB Prop Bet Cheat Sheet
- Rest-of-Season Projections
Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire & Trade Targets
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.
Andrew Vaughn (1B, DH – MIL)
If you’re looking for an under-the-radar fantasy first baseman to add with power upside, and plenty of fantasy upside in general, look no further than Andrew Vaughn.
Others in your league might overlook the 27-year-old first baseman due to one or a number of the following factors. One is that Vaugh is hitting just .195 on the season with a .230 on-base percentage and a 52 wRC+. Another is that he’s been in the Minors until recently with his current team, the Milwaukee Brewers. Another still is that he started the year playing for the struggling Chicago White Sox.
What they’re missing is the fact that Vaughn has probably been a bit unlucky at the plate. His .327 xwOBA is a bit below league average. But Vaughn is sporting a reasonably low 22.5% strikeout rate to go with a decidedly low .221 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) in his 200 Major League plate appearances this year.
Factor those two with the aforementioned .195 batting average, and there are definite signs of improved production on the horizon, at least from a surface-level stats standpoint.
Elsewhere, the first baseman has a chance to provide above-average power production at the plate as long as he’s regularly starting.
Entering play on Wednesday, Vaughn was sporting a 13.7% barrel rate and a 48.6% hard-hit rate. Both metrics rank in the 81st percentile or better league-wide.
Vaughn is just one of 29 position players in the sport to rank in the 80th percentile or better in both barrel rate and hard-hit rate.
A 33.8% chase rate lowers the fantasy floor for the first baseman, but as long as he’s starting for Milwaukee, Vaughn has above-average fantasy potential at the plate.
Josh Bell (1B – WSH)
Sticking with first basemen, Josh Bell, like Vaughn, is worth considering for fantasy managers looking to add quality first base production ahead of time.
Bell has hit just .218 with a .304 on-base percentage and 11 home runs in 306 plate appearances in his return to the Nationals this season. However, his .344 xwOBA, 17.3% strikeout rate and 10.5% barrel rate suggest he’s been better than his surface-level production would suggest.
Elsewhere, the first baseman stands out as a speculative trade candidate ahead of the league’s trade deadline with the 37-54 Nationals, per FanGraphs, already sporting 0.0% playoff odds as of Wednesday.
Once again, that’s all entirely speculative on my part, but if the Nationals trade Bell and other veterans, it’s possible the infielder could see even more RBI and run-scoring chances in a new lineup.
What’s more, it’s possible that, regardless of a real-life trade, Bell’s season-long numbers are starting to bounce back.
Since the beginning of June, Bell is batting .275 with a .336 on-base percentage, two home runs and a walk rate (8.8%) that is nearly level with his strikeout rate (9.7%) in 113 plate appearances during that span.
Move the calendar forward to July, and Bell is batting .476 with a .542 on-base percentage in 24 plate appearances this month. And while a batting average north of .400 is obviously on then unsustainable side of things, if Bell continues to log an xwOBA north of .340 with a double-digit barrel rate and a lower strikeout rate, he’s going to log quality fantasy numbers — particularly if he’s traded to a deeper lineup in the next few weeks.
If you’re looking for reinforcements at first base, you’ll want him on your fantasy team before that happens.
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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.
