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.
Bryan Abreu (RP – HOU)
Bryan Abreu struggled mightily earlier this season, a trend that continues to play a fairly significant role in his 6.56 ERA and 6.70 FIP through 23.1 innings for the Houston Astros.
Additionally, Josh Hader has returned, considerably limiting Abreu’s chances for regular save opportunities.
And while both of those things are true, Abreu might be the top ancillary save option in the Astros’ bullpen once again.
Abreu has logged saves in two of his last three appearances and hasn’t allowed an earned run since June 4th in a five-appearance span that has included just one walk in four innings of work.
Furthermore, if you turn the calendar back to the start of May, Abreu has actually posted a 2.57 ERA in 14 innings since then, accumulating four saves, three holds and two pitcher wins. His BB/9 (5.79) and FIP (4.46) numbers were admittedly more elevated during that stretch, but it’s a far cry from the veteran’s early-season struggles.
And even with said struggles, the 29-year-old is still missing bats at an elite rate, providing additional fantasy upside in the strikeout department. Entering play on Monday, he’s logged a 32.9% whiff rate and a 27.4% strikeout rate, two metrics that ranked in the 93rd and 83rd percentiles, respectively, league-wide.
Elsewhere, and of note, Bryan King, who paces Houston’s bullpen with six saves, hasn’t logged a save since May 23RD.
Victor Caratini (C, 1B, DH – MIN)
Former Astros and current Minnesota Twins catcher Victor Caratini was mentioned in this column a few months ago as someone who could see an uptick in surface-level production. At the time, Caratini had a .419 xwOBA on 20 batted ball events.
Fast forward a few months to now. While Caratini’s xwOBA isn’t quite near the number it was earlier in the season, he still should see a notable uptick in production if his current batted ball numbers more or less continue as is.
Entering play on Monday, the 32-year-old catcher was batting .215 with a .311 on-base percentage (OBP), four home runs and a wRC+ that was 22 points below league average. His wOBA was just .287.
A closer look at the underlying metrics suggests better production is on the horizon. Production that could and should lead to Caratini being a solid starting fantasy catcher in deeper leagues and in two-catcher leagues.
There’s the difference between Cartatini’s .287 wOBA and .339 xwOBA, but he’s posted solid contact numbers at the dish, with a 26% chase rate (71st percentile), a 21.2% whiff rate (67th percentile) and a 19.4% strikeout rate (62nd percentile).
Elsewhere, the veteran was sporting a .242 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Among players with at least 190 plate appearances, only 17 had a lower BABIP.
Among the 28 hitters with a minimum of 190 plate appearances, just 14 had a lower strikeout rate than Caratini.
The Twins catcher has mostly hit sixth or seventh for Minnesota this year, but if his batting average improves with these types of contact numbers, he should see his fantasy scoring stats improve notably, regardless of where he hits in the lineup.
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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.