Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Akil Baddoo highlights the virtues of patience, faith in young hitters
Plus we rate two starting-pitcher options and two others to consider.
By
Chris Towers
•
2 min read
It's funny how the perception of a player can change so quickly in Fantasy Baseball. Akil Baddoo started the season as a relative unknown, making the leap from Class A to the majors, and became one of the best storylines of the early season, hitting .370 with four homers in his first nine major-league games. He was one of the most added waiver-wire claims in the first couple of weeks of the season and looked like he might be one of the best finds any team has made in the Rule 5 draft.
And then he fell into a slump that lasted about three weeks that took the shine off his fast start. In his next 17 games, Baddoo had just five hits in 50 at-bats, sporting a hideous 52% strikeout rate. Baddoo had been exposed. But then a funny thing happened: He started hitting again. Baddoo went 2 for 2 with three walks on May 11 and is hitting .367 in his last 31 games after going 3 for 5 Thursday against the Astros with two doubles.
And it's not just that Baddoo is hitting well. He's also walked 20 times to just 19 strikeouts in 100 plate appearances in that span, while stealing six bases. Far from being overwhelmed, Baddoo has adjusted incredibly well. He showed early on he had the tools to belong in the majors, and now he's showing that it's not just tools; he's a legitimate ballplayer.
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Will Baddoo keep this up? No, I don't think he's going to challenge for a batting title or post an on-base percentage over .450 for the rest of the season, obviously. But he's actually shown pretty solid plate discipline overall for the season, with a 24.4% chase rate that is actually a bit lower than the league average. Given his speed, that's a useful skill to have, especially if he can keep the swing and miss in check as he has for the last month-plus.
Baddoo isn't a must-roster player; he's sitting against most lefties, which could explain why his results have been so much better of late. However, he's shown that the early-season success wasn't just a fluke, and he deserves to be rostered in more than 29% of leagues. At the very least, in all 12-team or deeper category leagues.
Possible waiver wire pickups
Pivetta got off to such a good start, it almost looked like dreams of 2019 were coming true. It might be hard to remember, but Pivetta was a very popular breakout pick back then. However, he looked like he was turning back into a pumpkin recently, having failed to go at least six innings in his past three starts, with just one quality start in his past six. Thursday was a nice bounce-back. He held the Rays hitless for 6.2 innings, striking out eight and walking two in what ended up being a no-decision. He had his curveball and slider working, racking up nine swinging strikes between them while continuing the trend of throwing the curve more than the slider. The slider has been a problem for him in June, but if he can get back to having a feel for both pitches as he did early on, Pivetta could rediscover his early-season effectiveness. This was a good start.
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There was a point when Joe Ross was one of the most interesting young pitchers in baseball, but that was five years and a ton of injuries ago. Still, he's shown flashes of that former promise here this season, most recently in limiting the Marlins to just four singles and two walks in seven innings of work while racking up eight strikeouts Thursday. And if doing that against the Marlins doesn't do it for you -- hey, I get it -- how about his nine-strikeout performance over eight shutout innings against the Giants two starts ago. He sandwiched a five-runs-in-five-innings outing against the Mets in between those two starts, but since the start of June, he has gone six innings in three of four starts with 26 strikeouts to just four walks in 26 innings of work. In a deeper league, Ross is worth a flier.
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What's that saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Well, here we go again. Hiura is back and he actually managed to avoid striking out in his first game Wednesday. He went 0 for 2 with a walk, but hey, baby steps. Hiura is still super talented, and he continued to crush the ball in Triple-A -- albeit with consistent contact issues, just like in the majors. I'm going to throw Hiura in the waiver-wire column every time he gets called back up, even if he keeps failing, because for as ugly as things have been, he still has so much potential as a power-speed guy. And hey, who knows, maybe the crackdown on the sticky stuff pitchers have been using will make it a little easier for Hiura to handle the high heat, his biggest issue this season. He's hit the ball hard when he has made contact with it, so maybe this time he'll make a little bit more contact. Baby steps.
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Look, it's been tough enough figuring out who the Reds closer is without them throwing someone like Brach into the mix. However, with Lucas Sims placed on the IL with an elbow sprain that is likely to cost him close to a month, it was Brach who got the call for the save Thursday, his first since 2018. Brach worked an uneventful ninth inning, allowing one walk but striking out two -- and that came after Tejay Antone gave up a run in the eighth. Will Brach get the next save? Who knows! But he's got a 2.51 ERA with 18 strikeouts in 14.1 innings, and he got the most recent save, at least. If you're chasing saves in a 15-team league, maybe he can provide a little boost.
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