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.
Eric Lauer (SP, RP – LAD)
Eric Lauer is more of a deeper league addition or someone to keep an eye on. Still, there’s a lot to like about the fantasy upside if he can rediscover some of his past effectiveness and start with any regularity. The 30-year-old struggled this year with the Toronto Blue Jays, but provided excellent fantasy production in 2025 with the American League East club.
Last season, the veteran left-hander pitched to a 3.18 ERA and a 3.85 FIP in 104.2 innings of work. He made 28 total appearances, including 15 starts.
All told, the left-hander logged a 23.9% strikeout rate to go with a 6.1% walk rate. The strikeout rate was more middle-of-the-pack, or close to it, ranking in the 59th percentile league-wide. The walk rate, however, finished in the 84th percentile.
Overall, Lauer also registered nine pitcher wins, four quality starts and a hold.
However, he struggled this season, posting a 6.69 ERA and a 6.92 FIP across eight appearances and six starts for the Blue Jays in 36.1 innings. Lauer’s walk rate jumped to 9.9% while his strikeout rate fell to 16%.
Recently designated for assignment by Toronto and acquired by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lauer is certainly someone to keep an eye on if he starts pitching out of Los Angeles’ rotation at any point.
The win potential is a significant part of that. Entering play this week, the Dodgers ranked third in the league in runs scored with a 248 number that’s well ahead of the Blue Jays’ 188 runs scored. A number, for what it’s worth, that was better than just five teams league-wide as of Monday. Los Angeles has also accumulated 20 rotation pitcher wins so far, the most in the league. Only three other teams have more than 16.
If Lauer can rediscover some of the effectiveness he showed in Toronto last season, his fantasy ceiling would improve even more.
Randal Grichuk (OF, DH – CWS)
Better production at the plate is likely on the way for the 34-year-old veteran.
Randal Grichuk is batting just .235 with a .259 on-base percentage (OBP) in his first 54 plate appearances split between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox this season. He’s also connected on three home runs during that span to go along with a .490 slugging rate and a .255 ISO.
And while Grichuk’s 24.1% strikeout rate could certainly be a bit lower, it’s right in line with the veteran’s lifetime 24.7% strikeout rate in the Majors. Elsewhere, Grichuk’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) sits at .250, well below both the league average (.288) and his lifetime .293 number.
But perhaps most crucially for fantasy managers, Grichuk is making a bunch of loud contact. He’s sporting a .405 xwOBA, a .628 xSLG and a 20.5% barrel rate as of the start of play this week, with a .309 xBA, a 48.7% hard-hit rate and a .524 xwOBAcon.
The 34-year-old has struggled against right-handed pitching this season — .105 average with a .168 wOBA and a 0 wRC+ in 20 plate appearances. That has somewhat limited his fantasy ceiling.
But as a deeper league option, particularly in fantasy leagues with five starting outfield spots, Grichuk is very much someone to add now before his surface-level numbers like his batting average and OBP improve.
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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.
