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 they become 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.
Ryan Weathers (SP – MIA)
Ryan Weathers was mentioned in this column back in May as a starting pitcher to add ahead of time as he made his way back from a stint on the injured list (IL).
The Miami Marlins hurler has made five starts in the Majors this season, pitching to a 3.28 ERA and a 4.46 FIP in 24.2 innings of work.
Weathers has struggled with home runs in a smaller sample size, allowing four in his five starts, good for 1.46 per nine innings, but also flashed notable upside in that same sample size.
Weathers turned in a 116 Stuff+ number, per FanGraphs, while also limiting opposing batters to just a 34.3% hard-hit rate. And while his 22.5% strikeout rate was more solid than great, the 25-year-old also logged a 27.3% whiff rate.
Weathers is currently making rehab starts in the Minors as he works his way back from a 60-day IL stint due to a left lat strain. He’s also just a year removed from a 2024 breakout campaign in which he logged a 3.63 ERA, a 4.11 FIP, five pitcher wins and seven quality starts in 16 starts for the Marlins, registering 80 strikeouts compared to 24 walks and 11 homers allowed in 86.2 innings of work.
Weathers is very much worth a look down the stretch, with the floor of a quality streaming option in the right matchups, with the fantasy ceiling of a pitcher who sticks on your roster throughout the rest of the season.
Now’s the time to add him ahead of time via waivers if you have the space.
Joey Cantillo (SP, RP – CLE)
Speaking of adding starters ahead of time, Joey Cantillo is very much worth a look for fantasy managers ahead of the stretch run.
The 25-year-old has so far pitched to a 3.93 ERA and a 3.92 FIP in 29 appearances, including eight starts, for the Cleveland Guardians. While he’s struggled at times with walks, sporting a 12.5% walk rate, Cantillo has also turned in a 27.7% strikeout rate while also adding three pitcher wins, a save and a hold. Furthermore, his FIP (3.58) as a starter is nearly a run better than what it was as a reliever (4.37) this season.
Cantillo was recalled by Cleveland on Wednesday to start against the Boston Red Sox and should see a decidedly fantasy-friendly slate of starts to finish the year if he’s able to stick in the Guardians’ rotation.
Assuming the Guardians’ rotation continues as is without any interruptions, the right-hander’s next two starts should come at home against the Kansas City Royals and at home versus the Chicago White Sox. Two teams that have both struggled to score runs in general. Chicago has scored the fifth-fewest runs in the league this season; Kansas City has scored the third-fewest.
Admittedly, both American League Central clubs have been a bit better lately in terms of scoring runs. Still, both rank in the bottom half of the league in runs scored since August 1st, with 16 teams outscoring the White Sox (138 runs scored during that span) and the Royals (137 runs scored during that span).
Add in the fact that both starts will take place in Cleveland in a ballpark that has the third-lowest overall park factor in the last three years, per Statcast data, and Cantillo should be set up for plenty of fantasy success.
The Guardians’ schedule gets a bit tougher on paper after that, with six games against the Detroit Tigers and three against the Texas Rangers; they also still have four games in Minnesota against the Twins left. Minnesota, it should be noted, has outscored just seven teams in the season’s second half.
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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.
