We are officially in the fantasy baseball championship push.
While the rest of your leaguemates are focused on their fantasy football waiver wires, paying a little extra attention to some recent activity around the majors can help you find the necessary edge to putting the finishing touches on a winning season.
The new rookie eligibility and incentive rules have led to many more late season, high-impact prospect promotions than in years past too. Two of them just debuted and are on this list.
Most waiver wires have been picked over though and it’s difficult to find impact players readily available in most leagues at this point in the season.
Fear not, because there are still a handful of available players that have the chance to be difference makers that help push us towards glory.
There’s still plenty of drama to go around in the MLB playoff race.
D.J. Short
Here are three players that are under 40% rostered on Yahoo leagues that you should strongly consider adding.
Trey Yesavage, SP Blue Jays
(15% Rostered on Yahoo)
Drafted less than 14 months ago, Yesavage hadn’t thrown a professional pitch when this season began. After starting out in Low-A Dunedin he flew through the Blue Jays’ system to reach the majors after fewer than 100 minor league innings.
In his debut on Monday, he struck out nine batters in five-plus innings and only allowed three hits, two walks, and one run with 19 swings-and-misses! That translated to a 53% whiff rate, the highest by any pitcher making their debut in the pitch-tracking era.
After one start, he now has the highest average vertical release height in the league at 7.11 feet and with that, an extreme over-the-top release point. His delivery has already been compared to Justin Verlander’s, who has the second-highest release point in the league.
With that extreme release point, Yesavage is able to get tons of vertical action or induced vertical break on his fastball. That’s the allusion of a rising action that forces hitters to swing under a fastball.
Getting that vertical action on a fastball released that high up isn’t easy though. The higher the release point, the more vertical action hitters expect. That makes it that much more impressive Yesavage can spin his so efficiently to add more “rise” than there seems to be.
Still, that fastball is more of a set-up pitch for him rather than a calling card because his splitter is the star of the show. Of the 19 he threw in his debut, the Rays swung at 14, whiffed on 11, fouled off two, and hit one very weak ground ball. The pitch is downright diabolical.
His slider is an important piece too. It has a similar amount of drop as the splitter and he leans on it more so against right-handed batters because it has less arm-side movement than the split.
There is no glove-side movement at all in his repertoire though, so I’m a bit concerned hitters could zero in on his fastball and take everything else once they become more accustomed to his stuff.
Jonah Tong just hit a similar wall with a relatively similar repertoire in his third career start. Yesavage tunnels his secondary stuff far better than Tong does though, so it’s harder to read it out of his hand. Yesavage’s slider is also much more consistent than Tong’s, who more so relies on a big, looping curveball that hitters have had no problem laying off.
Nevertheless, Yesavage showed enough in this start to likely get another turn in Toronto’s rotation as they try to get their ducks in a row for the Postseason. He could line up to face the Royals next and then Rays again to close the season, which would be two tremendous matchups that are worth rostering him for.
Bryce Eldridge, 1B Giants
(7% Rostered on Yahoo)
Another huge call-up, Eldridge has been thrust into a pennant race by the Giants after first basemanDom Smith landed on the injured list with a hamstring strain.
He joined Samuel Basallo as the only 20-year-old position players to take an at-bat this season and is the 12th over the last five years to debut that young.
Nothing too notable happened in his debut – he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout – but he had two hard-hit balls including this 106 mph shot that would’ve been a home run in most parks.
His power potential is the reason he’s already in the majors.
In 66 games at Triple-A this season, the 6’7” behemoth hit 18 homers and had a .250 ISO with great underlying power metrics – including a nearly 115 mph max exit velocity – to match that production. As always, thank you to Prospect Savant for the great visual.
Yet, like many young thumpers, Eldridge has some scary swing-and-miss in his game.
He makes less contact in the zone and whiffs more often than Basallo, who had better Triple-A results, more raw power, and has still struggled mightily over his first month as a big leaguer.
Nick Kurtz similarly struggled with his contact rate, but doesn’t chase nearly as many pitches outside the strike zone as Basallo or Eldridge do.
It’s also important to note that most of Eldridge’s swing-and-miss comes against non-fastballs. He can do damage against any pitch type, but struggles to adjust to either off-speed or breaking stuff.
Pitch Type
| Whiff Rate
| xwOBA
|
Fastball
| 19.7%
| .421
|
Off-Speed
| 47.7%
| .300
|
Breaking
| 51.7%
| .327
|
All Pitches
| 33.7%
| .378
|
Eldridge saw 14 total pitches in his debut and six were fastballs. Both of the balls he put in play came against fastballs. So, it seems like the book on him is out and he’ll have to hunt those fastballs to find early success.
Still, he will have a consistent spot in the Giants’ starting lineup over these next two weeks and a contact rate that could be just high enough for him to catch fire.
Josh Smith, 1B/3B/SS/OF Rangers
(21% Rostered on Yahoo)
Finding any extra help in a category with thin margins can make all the difference in securing a championship this time of year. Stats like saves, holds, or stolen bases hold even more weight because they’re more difficult to come by. So, one big week could swing them entirely.
That’s where Smith comes in as a base stealer. He hasn’t exactly been prolific in that area this season with 12 in 15 tries. That’s solid, just not worth turning many heads.
Yet, he’s a priority-add this week for anyone who needs more speed because his Rangers are playing the Astros and Marlins, two teams notorious for being poor in the run game.
They have allowed the most and second-most stolen bases of any teams in the league by a wide margin and should be streamed against if you need steals. Just like how you would target a poor lineup when streaming pitcher.
As a team, the Rangers run a good bit too. They’ve attempted the ninth-most stolen bases as a team this season and 10th most over the last two weeks.
Of the 10 bases they’ve stolen successfully since September 1st, Smith has three of them. He hits lead-off everyday and will have volume of plate appearances on his side as well.
He has as good a chance as any player in the league to steal three or four bases this week. That alone could shift the standings in your league.
