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
Jordan Romano (RP – COL)
Jordan Romano is more of a deep league option, but for those in need of saves, he’s worth a look at the moment.
The veteran began the year with the Los Angeles Angels but struggled mightily, posting a 10.13 ERA, 4.36 FIP and four saves over eight innings across 11 appearances, suggesting he was better than his initial ERA would indicate. Still, it was an unideal start to the season for the veteran, who pitched to an 8.23 ERA and a 5.39 FIP in 49 appearances and 42.2 innings for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2025. He’s now with the Colorado Rockies after being designated for assignment by the Angels.
Romano has appeared in two games for the Rockies, striking out a pair of batters in two separate scoreless innings. The veteran’s FIP is now down to 3.31 in 10 innings. That’s a tiny sample size, but he might be the best option for saves in Colorado’s bullpen at the moment.
Romano, for what it’s worth, logged a save in just his second outing with the National League West franchise. Six different pitchers have logged at least two saves for the Rockies this season.
The team’s saves leader, Victor Vodnik, with four, has a 5.29 FIP in 26.2 Major League innings. Three relievers with three saves, Jimmy Herget, Juan Mejia and Antonio Senzatela, all have ERA numbers of 5.00 or higher and FIP numbers of 4.00 or higher since the start of May.
Romano might only be a relatively short-term fantasy option, as the Rockies could trade him at the deadline in the coming weeks. Of course, that’s all entirely speculative on my part.
But if Romano’s effectiveness is more in line with his FIP moving forward while serving as Colorado’s regular closer, he’ll be worth a look in the short term for fantasy managers, particularly with how difficult it can be to find closers via waivers.
Victor Bericoto (1B, OF – SFG)
Sticking in the National League West, San Francisco outfielder Victor Bericoto and the rest of the Giants will face the Rockies in four of their final seven games before the All-Star break. That series starts on Thursday.
Before that, the Giants will wrap up a three-game set at home against Toronto.
And while San Francisco’s ballpark is hardly the most hitter-friendly stadium, Bericoto and the team’s upcoming schedule make him a player to add in fantasy leagues ahead of time as a short-term streaming option.
While Romano has been effective for Colorado in a small sample size, the rest of the Rockies’ pitching staff has generally struggled for much of the season. Entering play on Monday, only two teams had a higher collective FIP than the Rockies’ 4.81. No team has a higher ERA (5.54) than the National League West club. Only one other team has an ERA north of 5.00 this season. That would be the Athletics at 5.14.
And while the Blue Jays haven’t struggled all season in that fashion, they do have a 4.55 ERA and a 4.79 FIP, with the league’s second-highest walk rate (10.7%) since June 1st.
Bericoto, for what it’s worth, is hitting .298 with a .313 on-base percentage (OBP), a 14.7% barrel rate and a 52.9% hard-hit rate in his first 48 Major League plate appearances this season.
There’s the potential for statistical regression on the horizon, what with the outfielder sporting a .298 xwOBA, a 27.1% strikeout rate and just a 2.1% walk rate. In the short term, he’s an intriguing streaming option for fantasy managers before any statistical regression hits.
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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.
