Waiver Wire MUST ADDS! Joshua Baez's Historic Debut! (08/17 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Joshua Baez, no, he didn't. We'll discuss his awesome debut up next on Fantasy Baseball today. Express. Welcome into FBT Express on Monday, August 17th. I am for example, John Fodd, Scott White and the Cardinals finally promoted Joshua Baez on Saturday and he responded not one, not two, three, Homer game. First time it's been done in Major League history. He is all the way up to 80% rostered on CBS, but he's 59% rostered on Yahoo, probably even lower on ESPN. So not sure many people playing on CBS can still add him, Scott, but other places they can. Do you consider Joshua Baez to say must add, must roster after this amazing debut? Yeah, I don't know how you could consider him anything less. He just had the best debut for a hitter in history, Homer. And each of his first three at bats and that first shot especially was almost 450 feet. Guy with 34 home runs in the minors this year, like serious power and he made good on it right away. It's obviously not a guarantee of anything going forward. He did run a very high strike outrated AAA at a low zone contact rate as well. So certain pitches might have an easier time against them than Matthew Boyd who didn't really have a slider in this particular start. And it seems like based on some of the analysis I was reading from folks on the Cardinals beat this weekend, Baez's biggest problem was getting beat up in the zone by hard fastballs. Again, a pitch that Matthew Boyd doesn't really have. He doesn't have that hard fastball. A plenty of pitchers in the majors do and it may be something that causes issues for him over time. But again, three home runs at his debut. We'll worry about the downside once it begins to reveal itself when it comes to just picking a player up off the waiver wire. Baez has given you plenty of reason to do that. So much so that following that game, he got at it and so many CBS links that it's not even really something you can consider doing there. Well, another outfield prospect who's available is Zach Veein who also got called up this week. He homer again on Friday. He homer on Thursday. So back to back games there with a home run. 37% rostered. The Rockies do have six games at home this week in course field. Unfortunately, four of those against lefties. So while I do like Zach Veein rest of season, this might not be the best week to use Veein with all the lefties on the schedule. Unfortunately, let's move over to some waiver wire pitchers. And at the top of the list, we have Jacob Lopez, another solid outing this one against the Rangers. Six innings, two runs, six strikeouts. He had 14 whiffs on 93 pitches and six starts since re entering the rotation 248 ERA a 110 whip. And he gets the asterisans this week's got to agree that Jacob Lopez is at the top of the waiver wire pitcher list right now. Yeah. I think he was at this time last week too when you missed out on a great two start week if you didn't add him then. So hopefully you can still get some good out of him. I think he's going to be volatile because he is lacking that dominant blow you away kind of stuff and relies more on deception and just unusual shape on the fastball. And so when that's off a little bit, as we were seeing earlier this year, he could get throttled. But when it's on, he's dominant. I mean, he gets plenty of strikeouts. So he saw that over the course of his mind and really career. We saw it down the stretch last year and certainly lately Jacob Lopez has been on. So hopefully he can keep it going long enough. Hopefully he can go rest of the season. It's not outside the room of possibility. Three other pitchers rostered between 60 and 75% on CBS. Brandon fought another great outing this one at the brace. He actually got strikeouts in this one. He had seven over seven shutout innings. He had 13 swinging trikes on 87 pitches. Joey Cantillo, great outing against the Padres six innings one hit one run seven strikeouts to three walks and Clay Holmes much better in his second cup start this one against the Cardinals six and two third shutout one hit one walk three strikeouts for him. Scott, how would you rank those three Cantillo, Clay Holmes and Brandon Fought? Well, I think you have to put Fought at the top of the list because there are concerns about him. I think I'll get into those in a minute, but there are concerns for all three of these pitchers. So Fought is obviously the one doing the most good right now and to just put that into context. He's been since returning from the miners having a new change up getting a lot more weak ground balls nine starts a one fifteen year a eight point eight eight whip and also four point nine K per nine in those nine starts. So that's the concern. I guess it's not even six point nine, which would be bad enough, but okay, you're getting a lot of weak ground balls. You're throwing a lot of strikes six point nine. You might be able to make that word four point nine is a K per nine rate you never see in the modern game. You mentioned he had a strikeout per inning in the start against the brave seven strikeouts and seven innings. So that four point nine number you could say it's trending out based on that one performance, but obviously he's just one performance where we've seen that from Fought and over all the lack of strikeouts is concerning even with all the weak ground balls he's getting. There will come a point where he's not quite as precise with his pitches and I think it could be it could be a bit bumpy once that happens. Even so I think Fought is the most rostrible of these three pitchers right now. Second choice of them would be clay homes mostly because of the success we saw earlier the season and now a second start back from the ILE looked. Pretty good was missing strikeouts, but it was a good first step. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back FBT Express back over to the waiver wire hitters. I have a trio of athletics here. Zach Gelloff has looked great since returning. He hit a home run this weekend and has three homers in his past six games. 70% rostered second third in Outfield eligible. Lawrence Butler has home heard in four of his last five and has started 17 straight. He's looked much better in the second half and Henry Bolte back to back three hit games. He had a home run on Saturday as well. He's looked much better in August and he's 30% rostered. Scott can interest you in any of these Sacramento a's Gelloff Butler and Henry Bolte. Well Gelloff definitely triple eligible second third out field if you need them in any of those spots. I think he's a must. The power speed. He's looked good all year. Sure bats be less strikeouts seems like a legit breakout. The only problem is they're going on the road for all of this week and well I do have Zach Gelloff on the sleeper hitter list in spite of that. The numbers are very good on the road. Obviously Sacramento very hitter friendly and might explain why Gelloff is at least partially explained why Gelloff is having such a breakout year. Even worse our Lawrence Butler splits on the road and you have to watch out for lefties with him as well. I like that we're seeing signs of life from him again but I think it's pretty small this set of circumstances where you can use Lawrence Butler. Finally Henry Bolte I think there's definitely talent here. He hits the ball plenty hard enough. He's athletic. All of that it's just strikeout issues and on top of that is 60% ground ball rate. There's a very high throughout his minor league career too. Suboptimal the way he angles the ball off the bat and not making enough contact on top of it. I just think Henry Bolte is a little bit more of a project than standard fantasy baseball ers and standard sideless leagues need to need to deal with right now. All right. I do have two guys that you can move all over the diamond Luis Renjito who Homer again for the pod trades this weekend 27 games since joining San Diego 3 23 four homers. 16 runs three seals and 884 OPS second third and outfield eligible and Tim Tawa has been good for a while now he Homer done Friday two more hits on Saturday last 32 games 282 six homers five steals and OPS right around 800 hitting the ball really hard during that stretch sky who do you like more between these multi eligible guys Luis Renjito or Tim Tawa. I think there's probably more to build on for for Tawa. I'm not. Totally convinced of the upside dance. I don't know that he needs to be much more roster than he is, but if you're if you need a versatile player and and Zach Galoff is long gone in your league than I guess Tawa somebody you could look into. All right. Two names in deeper two catcher leagues and wardo Valencia homer on Saturday. He also had two hits on Friday. Can we get this guy more playing time? It's actually looked really good in a small sample and Rafael Flores of the pirates three for four with his fourth home run on Friday. He has started for straight to very deeply names got, but were you. trying to add Eduardo Valencia or Rafael Flores at all this weekend? Yeah. Flores a little over Valencia because I think at least for right now, the playing time's going to be more consistent for as long as he performs. Now, I wasn't performing very well in the minors this year at all, but was good last year between the Yankees and pirates farm systems. The kinds of leagues where I was adding Rafael Flores to be clear, deep two catcher leagues, ones where I had like Miguel Amaya and a spot. Okay. Flores represents an upgrade over that. You know, the leagues where you were maybe relying on Dalton rushing and recently lost him. I think Flores is worth a shot with the way he's performed so far, but it's, it's not with a high degree of confidence. It's more just, okay, he's off to a good start. And he was really good in the minors last year. Couple of saves options off the wire right now. We have Kodai, Seng of the Metz, Hogan Harris of the A's, Stephen Cruz of the Royals. Jordan Romano of the Rockies and then the Angels guy Sammy Neterra Jr. and Ben Joyce. How would you rank this group for Save Scott? Seng of Harris, Cruz, Romano and the Angels guys. I would go Seng of number one. He seems to have it on lockdown and so far so good. Obviously numbers weren't good in the starting role, but maybe in relief one ending at a time. He can handle that better. Probably Hogan Harris second because he has a pretty firm grip on the role. I don't think he's good enough to close in the long run, but he's been doing it for a while now. And who else did you mention here? Stephen Cruz, Jordan Romano and the Angels guys. Yeah, let's say Romano, Cruz and then Joyce, maybe Joyce over Cruz. Joyce has gotten the last two saves for the Angels. So I'm hoping he's put himself ahead of Sammy Neterra there. All right, for more extensive fantasy baseball coverage, listen to our full length podcast fantasy baseball today on Spotify, Apple podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Thanks for listening to fantasy baseball today, express and we'll be back again later this week. Bye. Paramount podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]