Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Is Yankees' trade for Andrew McCutchen an excuse to drop Aaron Judge?

What does the Yankees' acquisition of Andrew McCutchen say about Aaron Judge's chances of returning this year? Are quality alternatives still to be found on the waiver wire? Scott White examines.

If nothing else, we can agree it doesn't bode well — "it" being the Yankees' decision to acquire Andrew McCutchen on the second-to-last day he'd still qualify for their postseason roster.

What doesn't it bode well for? Why, Aaron Judge's chances of returning this season.

Judge has been sidelined since July 26 with a chip fracture in his wrist. At the time, he was given what even then seemed like an overly optimistic three-week timetable. Five weeks later, he's making no progress, still feeling too sore to swing a bat.

We're at four weeks to go in 2018.

So at this point, you're probably asking yourself what's the point? He still has weeks of work ahead of him with no signs of him nearing the start of it. Obviously, if he can make it back with even a week or two to spare, he's worth holding on to, but in acquiring McCutchen, the Yankees signaled that they themselves are losing faith.

For what it's worth, the move bodes quite well for McCutchen. He goes from one of the least favorable parks for hitters to one of the most favorable, and considering he has hit two-thirds of his home runs away from AT&T Park, it's reasonable to assume the venue was holding him back. His batted-ball profile suggests he was underachieving all along — his exemplary line-drive and hard-hit rates making a case for him to have a higher BABIP and ISO. Now, he has an easier path to them, and with better support around him to boot.

But Judge ... what about him? If he's safely secured in a DL spot, there's no harm in waiting it out, but if not ... well, it just depends what else is out there, doesn't it?

Let's check out today's catch.

I understand he's 81 percent owned, which exceeds the cutoff for players we like to discuss in this column, but just barely. Not everyone who reads this plays on CBS Sports, and German Marquez's ownership is even lower on some of the other major sites. I just want to make sure everyone who clicks on this piece after the start he just had (striking out 13 Padres over eight two-hit innings) leaves it understanding just how high of a priority he is. He tweaked his mechanics 11 starts ago and has taken off with ace-caliber numbers since then. No really, it's Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Aaron Nola and then Marquez during that stretch. Home or away — it hasn't mattered. He's must-add, must-start, must-everything, and I don't want to have to say it again.

Reports of Andrew Heaney's demise have been greatly exaggerated. By that, I not only mean he bounced back with a strong performance against the defending World Series champions Thursday but also that ... they actually were exaggerated. He had pitched at least five innings in each of his first five August starts, shaky though they may have been, with his typical control and swinging strike rate. It wasn't a total implosion, in other words. The ERA is a little high and the innings total a little scary, but with the volume he continues to provide, his ownership shouldn't have dipped below 80 percent. 

Tyler White did it again, homering for the third time in four games and the eighth time in 18. He's doing it with a high walk rate and a BABIP that isn't so inflated thanks to a modest strikeout rate. The home run pace is certainly too good to be true, but then again, he had a 1.013 OPS at Triple-A. Everyone's healthy for the Astros now, and they still can't take him out of the lineup.

Lucas Giolito's no-hit bid against the best offense in baseball Thursday was the culmination of a seven-start trend in which he has become a much better bat-misser. The change is most reflected in the changeup, which he has also thrown considerably more during that stretch. And while the numbers have been slow to correct, he's now at a 3.86 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 9.6 strikeouts per nine innings for the month of August. He's facing the Tigers next week and should be in line for two starts the week after that.

Though it feels like Franmil Reyes has run hot and cold since his return from the minors, the overall numbers are impressive and reveal a much more composed hitter than we saw in his first go around the league. He really wasn't a huge strikeout guy in the minors and has plenty of pop in his bat, having homered 16 times in 210 at-bats for Triple-A El Paso this year, so if nothing else, he's worth owning in five-outfielder leagues.

I wouldn't call Phillip Ervin a huge priority off the waiver wire, not with outfielders like Reyes and, even more so, Hunter Renfroe and Randal Grichuk so widely available, but his quality of contact is backing up his production so far. His line-drive rate would rank third among qualifiers, behind only Joey Votto and Freddie Freeman, and he hits the ball the other way about as often as he pulls it. That's how you hit for average in today's game, and it suggests Ervin should be owned in more than 15 percent of leagues.