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.
- Fantasy Baseball Research & Advice
- Fantasy Baseball Trade Analyzer
- Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Assistant
- 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.
Dennis Santana (RP – PIT)
Dennis Santana was mentioned in this column earlier this season as someone to consider ahead of time as a potential fantasy option for saves.
That was back in early May. Fast forward to now, and Santana has been nothing but effective for the Pittsburgh Pirates so far this season.
He’s pitched to a 1.49 ERA and a 2.29 FIP in 42 appearances spanning 42.1 innings of work, accumulating three pitcher wins, five saves and 10 holds in the process. All told, the right-hander has logged a 21.4% strikeout rate, just a 4.4% walk rate and has allowed a minuscule 0.21 home runs per nine innings.
As a speculative trade candidate for a Pirates team buried in the standings, Santana still looks like a potential fantasy option for saves. If he is traded, it’s possible the 29-year-old could join a bullpen where he steps into a ninth-inning role.
While there are plenty of contending teams with established, elite closers, there are also several teams with bullpens without a set closer. Not to mention teams featuring bullpens with closers who have struggled at times this season and have logged lower fWAR numbers. Teams like Toronto, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Bottom line? If Santana is traded to a contender where he has a chance to close regularly, he’d be a borderline top-10 fantasy closer the rest of the way in 2025.
Louis Varland (SP, RP – MIN)
Speaking of relievers who could step into potential closing roles in the coming weeks due to trade decisions around the league, Louis Varland is another pitcher to keep an eye on.
The Minnesota Twins hurler has enjoyed a breakout season for the American League Central club in his first full year as a reliever.
Varland has pitched to a 2.14 ERA and a 2.79 FIP so far in 46.1 innings (48 appearances) while sporting a 25.1% strikeout rate and just a 6% walk rate. So far, he’s collected 17 holds and three pitcher wins. While the right-hander has yet to log a save for Minnesota, he looks like the top option on paper if both Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax end up being traded to new teams before the end of the month.
Varland is third after Jax and Duran in fWAR among Twins relievers this season and is tied with Jax for the most high-leverage relief appearances. Among all qualified relievers, whether they’re a member of the Twins roster or not, Varland entered play on Wednesday ranked behind just 19 other pitchers (including Jax and Duran) in fWAR with a 1.0 number.
Varland, like Santana, would be a borderline top-10 fantasy closer in the second half if he were to become Minnesota’s full-time closer, especially if the Twins don’t fully rebuild and only trade away veterans on short-term contracts or who aren’t key members of the team’s core. This would keep them reasonably competitive down the stretch and potentially set up save chances for their closer.
Subscribe: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeart | Castbox | Amazon Music | Podcast Addict | SoundCloud | TuneIn
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.
