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.
- Fantasy Baseball Trade Analyzer
- Best Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Tools
- Fantasy Baseball Lineup Assistant
- MLB Prop Bet Cheat Sheet
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.
Javier Sanoja (2B, 3B, SS, OF – MIA)
Javier Sanoja was mentioned in this column earlier in the season as someone to add ahead of a potential uptick in fantasy production, considering his upcoming schedule at the time.
That’s very much the case once again as late August slowly gives way to September.
Sanoja is batting .279 on the season with a .317 on-base percentage (OBP) with six home runs and six stolen bases. He’s not making much in the way of loud contact, what with just a 2.3% barrel rate, a .276 xwOBA, a .329 xSLG, a 30.7% hard-hit rate and a .276 xwOBAcon.
What Sanoja is doing is making a bunch of contact. Like a lot. The infielder, as of the start of play on Monday, ranked in the 100th percentile with just an 8.4% strikeout rate, and he sits in the 98th percentile in whiff rate (11.6%).
Fortunately for Sanoja and for fantasy managers, the infielder will see a fairly fantasy-friendly slate of upcoming games.
Following the Marlins’ current series against the Boston Red Sox at home, Miami will take on the Washington Nationals (four games) and Kansas City Royals (three games) on a seven-game road trip.
Entering play on Monday, the Nationals’ pitching staff had the league’s fifth-lowest strikeout rate (19.8%). The Royals, meanwhile, have the league’s third-lowest strikeout rate (19.2%).
Sanoja is batting .338 with a .368 OBP, three home runs and a .231 ISO in his last 68 plate appearances since the start of August. Given the Marlins’ upcoming schedule and how often the 23-year-old makes contact, more base hits should be on the way.
If the ISO remains anywhere near what it’s been in the last month, Sanoja could be an instrumental player in plenty of late-season fantasy or fantasy playoff matchups.
Tim Tawa (1B, 2B, 3B, OF, DH – ARI)
Tim Tawa is hitting just .250 on the season with a .302 OBP, a 94 wRC+, eight home runs and seven stolen bases on the season.
Currently seeing plenty of time at first base, don’t let Tawa’s season-long numbers fool you. He’s been much more productive as of late, especially in terms of fantasy counting stats.
The infielder is batting .298 with a .327 OBP, seven home runs and six stolen bases in his last 152 plate appearances since July 10th, with a .345 xwOBA and a wRC+ that is 22 points above league average.
During that span, well, since July 10th specifically, Arizona has scored the third-most runs in the league, ranking behind only the Red Sox and Cubs. The Diamondbacks are also third in collective wRC+ during that stretch.
Moving forward, the Diamondbacks will close out the season with 19 of their last 30 games from Tuesday onward against teams that rank in the bottom half of the league in collective FIP, including three in the season’s final week against the Rockies in Colorado.
Subscribe: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeart | Castbox | Amazon Music | Podcast Addict | SoundCloud | TuneIn
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.