Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Week 12
With almost four months still left in the fantasy baseball season, let’s figure out who to target at various positions to help our fantasy rosters.
MLB Fantasy
Waiver Wire Week 12 Waiver Options For 12-Team Leagues
Leody Taveras, OF, Texas Rangers (21% rostered) – The 2023 Texas Rangers’ offense has exploded like an ant on a Texas sidewalk in summer. Up and down the lineup they are getting massive production from everyone, and Leody Taveras is the latest player to move into elite fantasy territory. He is a top-25 fantasy asset over the last month, batting .318 with five home runs, three steals, and 16 runs scored. Despite short stops in three other MLB seasons, it finally clicked for Taveras in this age 24 year thanks to a decrease in his strikeout rate (18.8% this year, 26.5% for his career) and career-highs in barrel rate and hard-hit rate. Taveras is still batting ninth every day, but he is in the lineup nine out of every 10 games and has pushed both Robbie Grossman and Bubba Thompson into irrelevancy.
Willi Castro, 2B/3B/SS/OF, Minnesota Twins (26% rostered) – Willi Castro was an afterthought in fantasy drafts this past spring (ADP of 747) but finds himself in just about the best right-place, right-time situation for him to stake a claim to fantasy relevancy while many of his teammates are out with injury. Over the last 30 days, Castro has 11 steals, four homers, and a .272 average in 81 plate appearances thanks to injuries to Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Joey Gallo, and Nick Gordon. With only Gallo of that group back playing again, Castro should continue to play the super-utility role for Minnesota where he can use his 89th percentile sprint speed to continue to fly around the bases. With a career-high in exit velocity also coming along for the ride this season, Castro is showing he can provide the pop as well. In the right situation, this could be a 10-homer, 30-steal season.
Jake Burger, 3B, Chicago White Sox (27% rostered) – Perhaps you’ve seen the #FreeJakeBurger or the #LetJakePlay movements on Twitter recently. Those basically center around the idea that Jake Burger is really freaking good and the White Sox need to just stop playing games and commit to getting him on the field every day. Lately, it’s finally been happening as he has started eight of the last nine games including moving up to fifth in the lineup on June 13th and 14th. Over the last month (despite only 89 plate appearances), Burger is the 67th-best hitter in Yahoo leagues with a .258 average plus seven bombs and 19 RBI. At 27, he is the right age for a breakout season, and he is doing it primarily with some fantastic improvements in his ground ball and fly ball rates. In both 2021 and 2022, he hit grounders more than fly balls, but now that has swapped in 2023. His 43% flyball rate is the best of his professional career, and his 35.5% groundball rate is the lowest by more than eight percentage points.
Braxton Garrett, SP, Miami Marlins (38% rostered) – Braxton Garrett went through the Coors Field gauntlet a couple of weeks ago and came away relatively unscathed. That performance combined with more recent success really has me giving him a lot of my FAAB attention right now. He gave up just two runs in five innings in Denver, which might as well be like a shutout anywhere else. But that was just the beginning. Over the last month, Garrett has an ERA of 2.25 plus 41 strikeouts in 32 innings pitched. He has allowed an opponent’s OPS of just .540 which means every hitter has essentially been Elvis Andrus when they face Garrett. By dropping his fastball usage to just 35% and adding a new cutter (that he uses 16% of the time), his new pitch mix has allowed him to put up a career-best 13.6% swinging strike rate.
A.J. Minter, RP, Atlanta Braves (43% rostered) – The Raisel Iglesias experiment has been, how shall we say it, interesting lately. He allowed eight hits and four runs over his last two outings, raising his ERA from 2.45 to 4.32 and also raising the blood pressure of every Atlanta Braves’ fan as well. After a rocky start to the season, eighth-inning man A.J. Minter has been incredibly solid. In the last 30 days, Minter’s ERA is 2.13 with a stellar 0.71 WHIP. He has 14 strikeouts in 12.2 innings and has picked up three saves when Iglesias couldn’t take the ninth. I don’t know that a closer change is imminent, but for a team who has their eyes set on home field and a World Series trip, any more security they can provide for their leads must be considered. Minter is a speculative closer play, but he is one of the best options around.
Waiver Wire Week 12 Waiver Options for 15-Team Leagues
Zach Neto, SS, Los Angeles Angels (9% rostered) – With all of the high-profile rookie call-ups in 2023, it’s easy to forget that Zach Neto was one of the first, all the way back on April 15th. He would probably like you to forget his first six weeks on the Angels, but the light has flipped on in June. From April 15th through the end of May, Neto was close to below replacement level on offense. He slashed .238/.315/.371 with three homers and three steals. But June in the City of Angels has been much better for Neto. In his 12 games he is hitting .355/444/.710 with three home runs and two steals. Neto was always a guy in the minor leagues who showed a little bit of power, a little bit of speed, and a whole lot of on-base ability. That’s what we are seeing now that he has made some major league adjustments. Primarily, he is starting to hit the ball in the air. In his first few weeks of games, he was hovering around a 20%-25% fly ball rate. Now that is up to over 40% in June and he is getting loft on the ball which means his hard-hit rate has also moved close to 40%.
Jace Peterson, 2B/3B/OF, Oakland Athletics (12% rostered) – We love multi-category fantasy contributors who play multiple positions, especially in ultra-deep leagues. Peterson, a 33-year-old utility journeyman has been that and more lately, checking in as the 17th-best rotisserie hitter over the last two weeks with a .424 batting average, two homers, four steals, and eight runs. A player like Peterson is in the ideal situation in Oakland. They don’t care about winning games, Peterson just wants to play, so it’s a match that works. Peterson has started 11 of the last 12 games and recently moved into fifth in the batting order for the soon-to-be Las Vegas franchise. He is getting on base with a 12% walk rate and has somehow managed to give us the highest flyball rate of his career in 2023. He isn’t getting lucky either, as all of his Statcast expected stats align with his average, slugging percentage, and wOBA. Sometimes you just have to pay attention to the numbers and not the names or the jersey, and that’s certainly the case with Peterson.
Michael Taylor, OF, Minnesota Twins (7% rostered) – You want more 30+-year-old journeymen? Well, you’re in luck! Michael Taylor is so far past a post-hype sleeper that he was off everyone’s radar and new fantasy baseball players might be asking, “Who is this new guy?” Taylor is another Minnesota Twins injury fill-in but has been making his case to be a regular part of the lineup over the past two weeks. He is a top-20 player in that span with a .306 average, four homers, five steals, and seven runs in 36 at-bats. Even with Joey Gallo and Byron Buxton making their way back into the Minnesota lineup soon, the team has no other natural center fielder so they may look to Taylor to fill the role permanently. We have seen Taylor be a valuable fantasy asset before with a 14/16 season and a 19/17 season, but this year he is taking a more selective approach at the plate. His swing percentage and zone swing percentage are all well below his career average which has led to the highest barrel rate of his career this year.
Taijuan Walker, SP, Philadelphia Phillies (31% rostered) – At first glance, it looks like another one of Taijuan Walker’s roller-coaster, up-and-down seasons. His strikeout rate is lower, his walk rate is up, and he is giving up more than 1.3 home runs per nine innings. But what that doesn’t show is the complete dominance he has displayed for the Phillies over the last month. Most of the damage done to Walker’s ratios (4.67 ERA, 1.33 WHIP) was from a stretch of five starts from April 26th to May 17th. In that span of five games, he posted a 9.45 ERA and struck out less than a batter per inning. He gave up 34 hits+walks in just 20 innings pitched. But about a month ago, Walker started to turn it around. And it happened quickly. Why? He has basically ditched his slider over the last month or so. He was using it around 15%-20% of the time in his first six starts, but now that is less than five percent while he is favoring the cutter and the sinker. Those pitches have proved more effective and have helped him generate a 1.93 ERA and a .292 opponents’ slugging percentage since May 18th.
Trevor May, RP, Oakland Athletics (5% rostered) – I think Trevor May be the third different Oakland closer I have recommended in this column in the first 12 weeks of the season. But A) every last save is precious in a 15-team league, and B) the Oakland Athletics have decided to start actually winning games. That makes their closer more valuable, and Trevor May seems to have seized control of the job. May has three saves since June 7th and has allowed zero earned runs in five of his last six outings. One blowup on June 11th shot up his ERA, but May is a pitcher who is coming off six straight seasons with more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings. His BABIP is low (.261) but not crazy, and he is inducing almost 33% groundballs. this year. Will he save 20 more games this season? Likely not, but May and Oakland could line up for 10-12 more throughout the year and if you’re trying to fight and claw your way to the top of that category, May is at least worth a look.
