Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Jose Soriano delivers another gem; Jurickson Profar prepares for return
Other weekend standouts include Will Warren, Jeffrey Springs and Mickey Moniak
By
Scott White
•
1 min read
No headline from this weekend could possibly top that of Chase Burns, the game's top pitching prospect, being promoted to start Tuesday's game against the Yankees. He needed less than a year to traverse the Reds' entire minor-league system, following a similar trajectory to Paul Skenes. I've gone into greater detail elsewhere, but you shouldn't need a waiver wire article to tell you to add him wherever he's available.
That's the good news. The bad news is that we've lost a Cy Young contender, Braves left-hander Chris Sale, for some length of time with a fractured rib. The 36-year-old suffered the injury on a diving play in the ninth inning of his near complete game against the Mets last Wednesday. What's weird is that he didn't wince on the play and even stayed in to strike out another batter, Pete Alonso. Normally, such an injury would cost a pitcher a couple months, but the Braves' unwillingness to set a timetable until symptoms subside has me hoping against hope that it'll be a shorter-term absence. At the very least, you should expect him to be out through the All-Star break.
In other news, Jacob Misiorowski followed his no-hit debut by allowing just one hit in six innings Friday. Between his two starts (11 innings in all), he's thrown 66 percent of his pitches for strikes, supporting the idea that his control gains in the minors this year will carry over to the majors. Meanwhile, Clarke Schmidt threw seven no-hit innings Saturday and has now allowed just six hits in 20 2/3 shutout innings over his past three starts.
On the hitter side, Cal Raleigh homered four times over the weekend, giving him 31 overall. The single-season record for home runs by someone who primarily plays catcher is 48. Raleigh is on pace for 66. Eugenio Suarez homered three times over the weekend, giving him nine in his past 14 games and 25 overall. He's now on pace for more than the career-bet 49 he hit in 2019.
But enough about the players who are already rostered everywhere. What about those who you might actually be able to pick up?
Potential waiver wire pickups
Will Warren's career-high 11 strikeouts two turns ago were a long time coming given the standout characteristics of his top two pitches, namely the fastball with its 28.3 percent whiff rate and the sweeper with its 3,039 rpm. But this latest outing over the weekend was perhaps even more critical to his Fantasy utility because it marked his second straight of at least six innings, a threshold he had reached only once in 14 starts before then. An 11.7 K/9 rate is great, but if a pitcher never goes the minimum required for a quality start, it severely impedes his ability to notch wins, which is the most valuable pitcher contribution in most Fantasy formats. Innings themselves, meanwhile, are critical to a pitcher's scoring in Head-to-Head points leagues. Fortunately, Warren may be rendering that concern moot.
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Saturday's gem makes it three in a row for Jose Soriano, and while he was a pitcher of note last year, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that these past three starts are also the best three of his career, featuring the only two double digit-strikeout efforts of his career. Along with his 10 strikeouts Saturday, he also had 19 swinging strikes, including 10 on the curveball, which is known to be his best swing-and-miss pitch, but also five on the slider, which he threw just 10 percent of the time. It's his true and actual best swing-and-miss pitch, for as sparsely as he uses it, and we're beginning to see him mix it in a little more. If expanding his arsenal ups his strikeout game to go along with the league's best ground-ball rate, then his success will mostly be tied to how many strikes he throws, which has also been trending up recently.
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I hesitate to highlight Alec Burleson when Addison Barger, who I consider to be more talented, is less rostered at 62 percent. But Burleson is the one coming off the big weekend, which began with him going 4 for 8 with a home run in a doubleheader Thursday and continued with another homer in a 2-for-5 performance Thursday. Of the two, he's the better bet for batting average, and I don't say that just because he's batting .370 (27 for 73) now in June. Burleson brings together the ideal combination of contact quality, placing in the 78th percentile for average exit velocity, and contact frequency, placing in the 90th percentile for strikeout rate. This has been true going back to his minor-league days and makes his full-season batting average (.308) not at all far-fetched. He's even hit lefties at a .297 clip and seems to have freed himself from a platoon role as a result, starting against the last five lefties the Cardinals have faced.
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Of course, if batting average is the main thing you're after, it's fair to say that few hitters can provide it to the degree Xavier Edwards can. You may remember that he hit .328 as a rookie last year after hitting .330 at Triple-A Jacksonville earlier in the year and .351 at Jacksonville the year before. The outlier was his first two months of 2025, when he hit only .262, but you can see that he's righted the ship here in June, most recently going 3 for 4 with a double and a stolen base Sunday. His power is virtually zero, but he's capable of being a prolific base-stealer and figures to do more of that now that he's getting on base more. While it's unlikely he'll repeat his 3.46 Head-to-Head points per game from a year ago, the usable threshold is lower now that he's eligible at second base in addition to shortstop.
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A rough stretch in April seems to have convinced a sizable contingent of Fantasy Baseballers that Jeffrey Springs is a lost cause, because his roster rate has hardly budged even though he's been mostly money since then. In 10 starts dating back to May 1, he has a 3.38 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and ... 6.9 K/9. It's that last number that may give you pause, but his 12 percent swinging-strike rate during that same stretch paints a much rosier picture with regard to his bat-missing ability. He registered 11 whiffs on his changeup alone Friday in what was his longest start of the season. That pitch boasts an impressive 42 percent whiff rate for the year. He's also back to throwing strikes at a more familiar rate after struggling with it early on, issuing just three walks over his past four starts.
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Jurickson Profar is eligible to return from his 80-game PED suspension July 2, and while the nature of that suspension may incline you to think that he won't be any good anymore, that's rarely been the case for players who've been busted for PEDs. There's even more suspicion for Profar given the out-of-nowhere nature of his breakthrough last year, but he's doing his best to dispel those concerns on his rehab assignment at Triple-A Gwinnett, going 4 for 5 with two home runs Friday and 10 for 25 with more walks (four) than strikeouts (three) in six games overall. Obviously, the majors are different from the minors, but manager Brian Snitker has already declared him the team's No. 2 hitter, behind Ronald Acuna, when he returns. The chances of Profar emerging as a must-start in the second half aren't any less than those of a prospect call-up, so it's time to stash him in any league where you aren't already settled in the outfield.
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Few organizations know how to get as much out of their pitchers as the Guardians, so it shouldn't be surprising to see them transform an also-ran in the Diamondbacks organization into a viable rotation option. This latest outing clinches it for Slade Cecconi, who showed he could work deep into game after being limited to five innings or less in five of his first six starts. Meanwhile, he still boasts a 13.5 swinging-strike rate on the year, which would rank 11th, in between Spencer Schwellenbach and Carlos Rodon, if he had the innings to qualify. His second-most-used pitch, the slider, has a whiff rate over 40 percent, and his third-most-used pitch, the curveball, has a whiff rate over 50 percent. If a pitcher has one pitch with such a whiff rate, it's a thought to be a serious weapon. Having two is rare enough to make Cecconi a worthwhile Fantasy pickup even if he's a little rough around the edges.
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You may notice that Mickey Moniak's June totals can compete with another hot hitter on this list, Alec Burleson, even though he has only a fraction of the at-bats. Yes, the Rockies have been less than committed to playing him, but he's forcing their hand with his recent performance, going 8 for 23 (.348) with four home runs while starting five of the team's past six games. The hot stretch has raised his season batting average and slugging percentage to .245 and .500, respectively, putting them more or less in line with his expected stats. And those expected stats don't even account for the magical effects of Coors Field, where Moniak is slashing .263/.330/.547. I wouldn't put my undying trust in the 27-year-old, but there's enough to like here for deeper five-outfielder leagues.
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