Obviously, we cater our Fantasy Baseball coverage to the largest audience possible. Sure, it’s tempting to scream from the mountain tops that Blake Treinen is still just 78 percent owned, but that means he’s only available in 22 percent of leagues.
In other words, it doesn’t help very many of you.
At the same time we want to make sure we’re servicing our hard core Fantasy owners, and for that reason I wanted to give today’s waiver wire a bit of a deep league feel.
To be clear, “deep league” doesn’t have to mean 14-plus teams or league-specific. It could be a 12-team league with deep benches or even a standard league with 12 extremely knowledgeable owners.
Essentially, this is for you if you often read the waiver wire column and come away thinking “I wish those kinds of guys were available in my league”.
| 21% | 
Ryan Schimpf
San Diego 2B
|
| Schimpf homered on opening day and that really shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. After all, his .315 ISO was the best in baseball amongst hitters who had at least 300 plate appearances in 2016. That’s by design, as Schimpf has taken the new-age “hit it in the air” approach to a whole new extreme, launching fly balls at an insane 65 percent clip since he reached the big leagues. At the very least, he’s an excellent source of power that will soon be dual-eligible at 2B and 3B. | |
| 15% | 
Steve Pearce
Toronto LF
|
| We were all a little taken aback when Pearce earned the opening day start against a right-handed pitcher. If he’s going to play even close to every day, he’s likely way underowned. Pearce has traditionally done most of his damage against lefties and there is a chance that more plate appearances against righties will hurt his career .255/.334/.441 slash line. But in a deeper league the chance to play every day in that park with all those RBI opportunities is too much to pass up. | |
| 17% | 
Santiago Casilla
Oakland RP
|
| Scott White wrote about Casilla and the Athletics bullpen situation on Tuesday. Then Tuesday evening the A’s used Ryan Madson in the eighth inning and gave Ryan Dull the save opportunity. That didn’t end well. The fact is that Casilla has by far the most closing experience and should at the very least get a share of the save opportunities. He should be closer to 40 percent owned until we get a better feel for how each of the Oakland relievers will be used. | |
| 13% | 
Tyler Saladino
Chi. White Sox 2B
|
| Chris Towers made a case for Saladino in the preseason and I don’t think even he envisioned Saladino leading off in the White Sox opener. Leading off is a huge advantage in a points league and it’s not like this team is stacked with better options. If you just take the numbers he put up in a half season and double them Saladino is a borderline 20/20 guy who doesn’t hurt you in any category. That’ll play at middle infield in just about any league. | |
| 8% | 
Mark Reynolds
Colorado 1B
|
| Mark Reynolds doesn’t get to play all of his games at Miller Park, but he does get half of them at Coors Field. Reynolds is off to a smoking start to the season in Milwaukee with four hits, four RBI and just one strikeout in his first two games. He is not a longterm fix but you should add him anyway. The numbers Reynolds should put up until Ian Desmond returns will be better than your utility (and maybe your corner infielder). | |
