Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Vince Velasquez and Michael Conforto under-owned

Heath Cummings says you can't leave the upside of Vince Velasquez and Michael Conforto on the waiver wire.

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Most of the pitchers in Major League Baseball are inconsistent. Even the worst starters have rare nights where they shut down good offenses. Those guys are still easy to ignore. What is far more frustrating is the borderline good starters who also get shelled with semi-regularity. Yes, we're going to talk about Vince Velasquez again. 

Someone needs to send me the name of a famous rollercoaster in Pennsylvania, so we can give Vince Velasquez a nickname built around that.

He gave up seven runs (four earned) in his first start of the year against the Braves. Over his next 18.2 innings he struck out 20 and surrendered five runs. In his next two starts Velasquez was pounded for 10 runs in 8.2 innings. He followed that up with his best stretch of the season, striking out 45 in 33.2 innings over six starts (and allowing just eight runs) before giving up a 10-spot to the Brewers.  On Thursday, he settled back down and held the Rockies two runs over 6.2 innings.

I'm not here to tell you that Velasquez is done blowing up, but I do believe he should be near-universally owned. All of the peripherals are in agreement (3.46 SIERA, 3.53 FIP, 3.55 xFIP) that Velasquez is a good pitcher. I'll bet on the 28-percent strikeout rate paying off and hope the blowups happen less frequently.

Michael Conforto homered on Thursday night, but that's not the reason you should add him. The reason you should add him is he never should have been dropped in the first place. Conforto had a .939 OPS last year. He's 25 years old, and even after this year's struggles he has a career .819 OPS. This is exactly the type of player I want to have on bench as I wait for him to regain his power. Hopefully this is the beginning of just that. 

Thursday was a pretty uneventful day of baseball, so let's talk about one of Wednesday's pitchers. OK, Andrew Suarez wasn't exactly dominant in Miami, but this blurb doesn't have anything to do with his past. In his immediate future, Suarez has a two-start week with matchups against the Marlins and Padres. I'd start James Shields with these matchups, and I'll certainly start Suarez, who looks pretty close to a league-average pitcher. Suarez is an outstanding option if you're looking for a starter for next week, but there is a better bench stash out there.

If you want a full breakdown of Jonathan Loaisiga, Scott White wrote one earlier this week. I'll just add from a philosophical standpoint because he's the perfect type of speculative add if you rotate your last two or three bench spots between upside pitchers. He's posted amazing strikeout numbers in the minor leagues this year, if that translates in his first start on Friday, everyone will be scrambling to add him.