We are officially in the fantasy baseball championship push.
Whether you’re trying to hold onto a top spot, pushing the leader, desperately trying to play catch up, or positioning yourself for playoff matchups, reinforcements and upside are vital this time of year.
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. And luckily, we recently got a handful of minor league promotions that could genuinely swing leagues.
The Brewers now have five more victories than anyone else in baseball.
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.
Nolan McLean, SP Mets
(27% Rostered on Yahoo)
The Mets called McLean up over the weekend to replace the struggling Frankie Montas in their rotation and he was ready for the task.
Coincidentally, this weekend was also the first time teams could call up minor leaguers and not exhaust their rookie eligibility ahead for next year. So, if that player were to win Rookie of the Year or place in the top-three in MVP or Cy Young voting before arbitration, their team gets a draft pick. Funny timing on these promotions.
Nevertheless, McLean instantly proved he belonged with 5 2/3 innings of shutout ball and eight strikeouts against a solid Mariners lineup. He made their hitters look foolish over and over again mostly with his sweeper and curveball.
McLean’s sweeper has always been his bread and butter. In terms of spin rate, total movement, and velocity, Dustin May has the only one that can compare to it. Just look at this frisbee.
However, the key to his success in this debut was his curveball. He featured it against left-handed batters and it was downright disgusting.
With an average of 3,279 RPM, McLean’s curveball has the highest spin rate of any in the league.
Also very cool (and to nerd out on pitching for a moment), it has a nearly identical spin direction as his sweeper and practically the same amount of horizontal movement. So, it’s very difficult for batters to decide which is coming. Knowing this, they were his two most thrown pitches against left-handed batters combining for a 64% usage rate.
Alone, these pitches are incredible. Together, they’re already one of the best breaking ball parings in the league.
Oddly enough, the curve has somewhat come out of nowhere. He threw 19 in his debut start, the exact same amount as his last three starts in Triple-A combined. Before his promotion, he’d only thrown it 9% of the time. Without throwing it, he struggled a good bit against lefties relative to righties.
Whatever happened to make him more comfortable with that pitch, he better keep it up because that with his sweeper and a good blend of fastballs and sinkers that sat around 95 mph can make him a stud instantly.
Be mindful of a possible innings limit though.
He’s already at a career-high 119 and it’s only his first season as a full-time pitcher after being a two-way player. So, expect the Mets to limit him on a per start basis and he may not get the opportunity for many quality starts. His WHIP could run high too with such a breaking ball heavy profile.
Ryan Bergert, SP Royals
(25% Rostered on Yahoo)
Bergert is on a bit of a heater since being traded from the Padres to the Royals at the deadline. Through three starts, he’s allowed five earned runs in 16 2/3 innings (2.79 ERA) with 17 strikeouts and five walks. That’s a nice little run of success and one that should put him on our radars.
Stuff wise, he doesn’t seem that special at first glance. His fastball sits 93 mph and has solid carry, but he throws from a very high slot. So, the batter ‘expects’ some of that rise on it.
Otherwise, he has a distinct sweeper and slider plus a sinker for righties and changeup for lefties. The Stuff+ model doesn’t rate any of these pitches above a 92 where 100 is considered average.
Yet, there’s something interesting going on. First off, he’s been locating his fastball higher in the zone since the trade. That’s a sensible adjustment for him given the good vertical action that pitch gets.
He’s been more willing to throw his sweeper in the zone to steal strikes against lefties too. His repertoire is reasonably wide and he has great command, so it’s nice to see him mixing everything up more.
Also, his arsenal is unique in nature. Michael Rosen wrote a great piece for FanGraphs recently describing how uncommon it was for a pitcher like Bergert to have great vertical action and spin efficiency on a fastball and also a sweeper without losing much velocity on it. Read the article, it’s amazing and Michael is a fantastic pitching mind.
While possibly special pitch traits may not make Bergert an impact pitcher alone, his upcoming schedule might. He’s set to face the Tigers, White Sox, Angels, and Guardians in his next four starts. If anything switches by a day, he could even get the Twins in the middle of there.
Schedules are very important this time of year and with Bergert’s being so favorable plus him having some fun pitch traits make him an enticing waiver wire option.
Samuel Basallo, C/1B Orioles
(24% Rostered on Yahoo)
Sometimes in fantasy baseball, opportunities come along that are so great, we have to act without thinking and let the pieces fall into place afterwards. Basallo’s promotion to the Orioles is one of those opportunities.
He is already 3-for-10 with a double, two runs scored, and four RBI two games into his big league career. Half of the balls he put in play were hit harder than 95 mph and his 78.1 mph bat speed is in the 99th percentile of all big league hitters. He is a stud.
In terms of an offensive profile, there wasn’t a more impressive hitter in the minor leagues. He just turned 21 years old last week and had 23 homers in 76 games at Triple-A.
His batted ball data may have been more impressive than the homers though. He had a 115.9 mph max exit velocity, 21% barrel rate, 57.4% hard-hit rate, and graded out exceptionally well among other key metrics. Shoutout Prospect Savant for the great work they’ve done with these minor league, Statcast adjacent player pages.
The one flaw he seems to possibly have is with pitch selection and chasing balls outside the strike zone. Yet, his pitch recognition seems solid because of his high walk rate.
In actuality, Basallo is a spectacular bad-ball hitter. He knows there are pitches that other hitters should not be swinging at that he can do damage on. Like this two-run single from his second career game.
That was a 97 mph fastball at shoulder-height from Jordan Hicks and Basallo turned it around with ease for a rope at 108 mph exit velocity.
Aram’s claim about Basallo being a prolific bad ball hitter holds true too. He saw 496 pitches in the shadow of the zone at Triple-A this season and put 83 of them in play. Of those 83, he had a 59% hard-hit rate, .561 SLG, .409 xwOBA, 19.8% barrel rate, and hit 10 home runs. Those are jaw-dropping results against what we consider pitchers’ pitches.
This is all just to say pick-up up Basallo right now and figure out the rest later. We’re dealing with a special hitter that can do what Nick Kurtz or Roman Anthony have done to this point.
David Shovein
