Fantasy Baseball Watchlist: Waiver Wire & Trade Targets (2025)

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 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.

Erick Fedde (SP – MIL)

Signed by the Milwaukee Brewers to a Major League deal on Wednesday, Fedde is more of a potential fantasy addition ahead of time in National League only leagues, or fantasy leagues with 14+ teams, but he could be a potentially solid fantasy option down the line for pitcher wins if he’s able to step into the Milwaukee rotation for an extended stretch.

The 32-year-old has struggled mightily at times this season, pitching to a 5.76 ERA and a 5.19 FIP in 25 appearances (24 of which were starts) while posting the third-lowest strikeout rate (13.6%) and highest walk rate (10.8%) of his career.

Still, the veteran was much more productive earlier in the season.

Then with the St. Louis Cardinals, the veteran pitched to a 3.65 ERA and a 4.19 FIP in his first 14 starts (79 innings), while posting respective strikeout (15.5%) and walk rates (10.3%).

While Fedde had logged just three pitcher wins during that stretch, he also collected six quality starts in those 14 outings.

To that point in the season, it was the same number of quality starts as Freddy Peralta and Kodai Senga and more than the likes of Dylan Cease, Chris Bassitt and Drew Rasmussen.

It remains to be seen if Fedde can regain that type of effectiveness to post those kinds of quality start numbers; however, he, at a minimum, could provide fantasy managers with solid pitcher win production.

That’s assuming he steps into the Brewers’ rotation at some point. If he does, Fedde would be joining a Milwaukee starting rotation that entered play Wednesday as one of just four with 50+ rotation pitcher wins. Only division rival Chicago Cubs (53) have more than the Brewers (52).

John Means (SP – CLE)

Sticking with veteran starters, right-hander John Means is currently making rehab starts as he closes in on a return from Tommy John surgery.

The 32-year-old most recently pitched to a 2.61 ERA and a 3.31 FIP in four starts and 20.2 innings for the Baltimore Orioles last season. In his most recent full campaign (2021), the veteran logged a 3.62 ERA and a 4.62 FIP in 26 starts and 146.2 innings for Baltimore, registering six pitcher wins and 12 quality starts in the process.

Now with Cleveland, there’s a lot to like about Means’ potential fit with the Guardians.

While the right-hander has never logged high strikeout rates, he’s found plenty of success in limiting walks and hard contact throughout his time in the Majors.

There’s also plenty of reason to believe that Means pitching at Cleveland’s home stadium regularly could help him even more so from an overall effectiveness standpoint.

For his career, the starter had allowed 72 home runs. Per Statcast, put all of his batted ball data in the Guardians’ home stadium, and Means’ expected home run number in Cleveland drops to 59, the fourth-lowest of any stadium in the Majors.

Cleveland closes the season with 13 of their last 20 at home (including the last six), with matchups against teams that have struggled to score at times this season — the Royals and White Sox.

That stretch of home games, assuming Means joins the rotation after finishing his rehab starts, could make for a decidedly fantasy-friendly set of outings to close the year for the veteran and for fantasy managers.

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.