As the early season dust has settled and more of the obvious breakout players and impact rookies are unavailable, we need to look a bit deeper to find gems on the waiver wire.
Fear not, becausethere are still a handful of players that are widely available and have the chance to be difference-makers in both the short and long term.
The Yankees and Mariners are the big risers this week while the Royals and Orioles are scuffling.
D.J. Short
D.J. Short
Here are three players that are under 40% rostered on Yahoo leagues that you should strongly consider adding.
If you want a larger list, Eric Samulski wrote his extended waiver wire piece on Sunday.
Landen Roupp, SP Giants
(28% Rostered on Yahoo)
Roupp’s rostership is criminally low for how impressive he’s looked so far this season. After a strong spring training, he beat out Hayden Birdsong for the Giants’ fifth starter spot and has one of the highest strikeout rates among all starters in the league at 31.2%.
That being said, he is a bit of a weird case and I suspect that’s why many are still weary to buy-in on him.
He has a funky, side-arm delivery that looks quite unorthodox on the mound. Check him out, it’s objectively weird.
Weird can be quite good though, as Roupp has shown so far.
He broke camp with the Giants last season as a reliever and walked eight batters in 13 2/3 innings before being demoted. The plan was to stretch him back out as a starter in the minors, but he immediately went on the injured list with an elbow injury.
Then, he returned mid-season for a handful of extended relief outings and made a few starts in September, but still struggled with walks.
His walk problem was two-fold. First, he had no semblance of a plan for left-handed batters. Coming from a low, side-arm slot, Roupp is an extreme east-west pitcher. That means his pitches almost entirely move on a horizontal plane. Righties were totally lost, but lefties had an easy time.
Even his curveball, a pitch that traditionally moves more downward, has significantly more horizontal movement than downward compared to other curveballs.
So, he’d fall into patterns where he’d use that pitch to try and pick off called strikes, like sweeper-focused righties do to lefty batters. His command wasn’t good enough though. He’d wind up nibbling, fall behind, and allow walks. In total last season, he walked more left-handed batters than he struck out.
He has not had the same problems this season. He’s tightened up the vertical movement on that curveball a bit and has committed to burying it below the zone as a whiff pitch. So far, it’s forcing a 44.4% whiff rate against lefties. Last year, its whiff rate against them was just 19.5%.
Past that, his changeup is generating more arm-side run, more drop, and he’s been more confident throwing it as a put-away pitch.
Also, he developed a new cutter in lieu of a poor four-seam fastball and tight slider that he’s scrapped.
That cutter has been a valuable tool for him because it has a very different movement profile than the rest of his pitches and that surprises hitters. He’s throwing it 14% of the time against lefties – mostly when he’s behind in the count – and it’s bailed him out with a ton of weak contact.
He’s still lights out against righties too and few pitchers in the league are missing more bats or forcing more swings at pitches outside the strike zone than him. This is likely your final chance to add him before his ascension continues.
Kumar Rocker, SP Rangers
(22% Rostered on Yahoo)
At this point in the season, ERA can be our greatest aid in finding worthwhile pitchers on the waiver wire. Mainly, when a pitcher has an ugly ERA, but has made some material changes start to start that could change their fortunes.
That is the case for Rocker who allowed 10 earned runs over his first three starts that spanned just 11 1/3 total innings while only striking out six batters and walking four.
These rough starts were not against marquee offenses either, as the Reds and Mariners crushed him.
For some reason, Rocker threw progressively fewer sliders over those three poor starts. That slider is hands down his best pitch and the one keeps his potential sky-high. Yet, its usage bottomed out with just four total thrown in that rough start against the Mariners.
He was clearly struggling to command it and favored his curveball and more sinkers over it to no avail.
Well, something clicked with that slider in between his last two starts because he threw 45 of them last week against the Angels. That was nearly three times more than he threw any other pitch and it was highly effective forcing 12 whiffs, nine more called strikes, lots of soft contact, and plenty of ugly swings out of the zone.
He will be a highly effective starting pitcher if he can consistently rely on that pitch and his high ERA makes it a great time to sneakily buy back in on him.
Agustín Ramírez, C Marlins
(8% Rostered on Yahoo)
Ramírez was promoted somewhat surprisingly earlier this week and looks ready to hit the ground running.
First off, it’s expected that he plays nearly every day. The Marlins’ other options at catcher are Nick Fortes, Rob Brantly, and Liam Hicks. While they’ve held their own this season, none have anywhere near the pedigree nor physical tools than Ramírez does.
A consensus top-100 prospect and peaking at #55 on Baseball Prospectus’ pre-season top-101 list, Ramírez was the centerpiece of the Marlins’ return for Jazz Chisholm Jr. last summer.
He accumulated 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in his 176 total games across double-A and triple-A over the last three seasons. That power, speed combo is unheard of for a catcher and Ramírez looks like he could sustain it to a degree in the big leagues.
During his debut on Monday, he legged out an infield single, smoked a double 110.4 mph, and then stole third base. That is a well-rounded ball game if I’ve ever seen one.
Also, Ramírez showed off his gaudy raw power this spring training when he laced a single 115.1 mph.
He already has some of the best raw power and speed for any catcher in the league. There are some concerns with his defensive ability, but the Marlins likely didn’t call him up to sit on the bench.
He has a great chance to be a top-10 type of catcher right away.
