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 next hot waiver commodity or trade target.
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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 waiver wire 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 despite 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.
Connor Norby (3B – MIA)
With Christopher Morel landing on the injured list (IL), the Miami Marlins have utilized Connor Norby at first base in three of the team’s first four games. Prospect Deyvison De Los Santos is the only other Marlins player to start at first base besides the former Orioles infielder. However, De Los Santos was recently optioned to Triple-A to make room for trade acquisition Leo Jimenez.
Jimenez, unlike De Los Santos, doesn’t have any Major League or minor league experience at first base, which should open even more first base starts for Norby moving forward. There could be some platoon concerns, at least where Norby’s fantasy ceiling is concerned. He hit just .184 with a 69 wRC+ in 101 plate appearances against left-handers last season. Norby has already logged a start against a left-hander so far in 2026.
Overall, Norby is hitting .250 with a .500 on-base percentage (OBP) in 12 plate appearances as of the start of play on Monday. It’s a decidedly tiny sample size, to be sure, but Norby has already collected a barrel and has shown quality power-hitting potential in the past.
Norby turned in a 9.4% barrel rate in 337 plate appearances for the Marlins last season and logged a 14.7% barrel rate in 194 plate appearances split between the Miami Marlins and Baltimore Orioles in 2024.
During that span, the infielder collected eight home runs and eight stolen bases in 2025 and nine home runs and three stolen bases in 2024, so there’s some additional fantasy upside here outside of just the home runs. And while strikeouts might also be part of Norby’s stat line, as he struck out 33% of the time two seasons ago and 26.7% of the time last season, the power potential should help paper over those concerns.
Miami has found success in the past with giving extended looks to hitters like Kyle Stowers, Jakob Marsee, and Heriberto Hernandez. Norby might not have the ceiling of someone like Stowers, but he does have the potential to be a starter in fantasy leagues with 12 or more teams. He will have fantasy eligibility at both infield corner positions once he’s played the requisite number of games at first.
Matt Strahm (RP – KC)
Matt Strahm’s fantasy ceiling looked to take a significant hit when he was traded by the Philadelphia Phillies to the Kansas City Royals this past offseason.
The left-hander pitched to a 2.74 ERA and a 2.99 FIP in 66 appearances spanning 62.1 innings of work for the National League East club, collecting two pitcher wins, six saves, and a career-high 22 holds in the process.
With a 27.3% strikeout rate (a number that finished in the 81st percentile league-wide), Strahm was one of the better ancillary save options at times for fantasy managers. Elsewhere, he was elite at limiting barrels and inducing chase swings. Opposing batters managed just a 4.3% barrel rate against the veteran in his last season in Philadelphia, a season that also saw Strahm post a 33.3% chase rate.
However, in Kansas City, he was joining a bullpen that already had closer Carlos Estevez and set-up reliever Lucas Erceg in established roles.
Fast forward to this season, and Strahm hasn’t allowed an earned run in two appearances spanning 1.2 innings. He’s logged a hold in both of those outings as well.
If Erceg continues to take over for Estevez, Strahm would potentially be the next reliever in line for saves after the former Athletics hurler, making him once again a quality ancillary saves option for fantasy managers in search of extra saves.
For now, the left-hander is more of a deeper league addition, or someone to consider in standard leagues with deeper benches. Strahm would have top-12 fantasy upside at his position if he stepped into the closer’s role full-time in Kansas City at any point.
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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 weekly fantasy baseball columns and provides weekly dynasty (top 700) and redraft (top 500) rankings updates for his own Substack page, Ben Rosener’s Fantasy Baseball Help Substack. He only refers to himself in the third person for bios.
