Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Will Smith catches on; Joey Gallo, Blake Snell injuries make for winners and losers
Who can you find to replace Joey Gallo's power production? Do the Dodgers have a new catcher? What happened to Masahiro Tanaka and Lucas Giolito? Scott White takes a look.
By
Scott White
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1 min read
We've reached the point in the season — nine weeks to go! — when every injury has the potential to be a season-ender.
That's true in a practical sense even if not a technical one.
Thursday provided us with two high-profile examples: Joey Gallo has a broken hamate bone, while Blake Snell is having surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow. The timetables technically give each a chance to come back. Gallo figures to miss about six weeks, as Matt Olson did with the same injury at the start of the season. Snell could miss only four.
But that's assuming no setbacks. It's assuming the Rangers and Rays are actually motivated to bring them back on the most accelerated of timelines. It's assuming you're still in your league's race when that time comes. None of these are safe assumptions.
In Gallo's case, sure, a broken bone takes the amount of time it takes to heal, so a setback isn't as likely. But Olson was more the exception in that he was back to homering at his usual pace from the day he returned. Most hitters don't come back from this injury at full strength, needing several weeks to rediscover their power, so there's a good chance that even if Gallo is back, he won't be back.
For Snell, any kind of soreness in that elbow along the way is going to push back the timetable, and if the Rays fall out of the race in the interim, what incentive do they have to bring him back at all? It's not the most likely scenario, but there's a chance we've seen him throw his last pitch in 2019.
Both of these players are so high-end that you're not going to find anyone who can approximate their production on your bench or the waiver wire, so a trade — maybe targeting a slumping Josh Bell or Noah Syndergaard — would be the preferred solution. But you can only do the best you can do in the meantime, right? Let's see what past couple days' action has given us.
WAIVER WIRE
Friday's Top Adds
Six players to add
Zac Gallen's value going forward will depend largely on how the Marlins use him. He had yet to go even six innings before Wednesday's gem, which was partly because he hadn't controlled the strike zone as well as he did in the minors and partly because the Marlins were being careful with their young asset. His nine strikeouts over seven two-hit innings showed that the talent is still worth pursuing, though.
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How about a potential Joey Gallo replacement? It seems like a ridiculous comparison, of course, but with his fourth home run in six games Sunday, Renato Nunez is now on a 38-homer, 91-RBI pace. That's the way 2019 is going, folks. He's a bit of an all-or-nothing type, but you're lucky to have that kind of power production still available to you.
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The hard-luck loser in Gallen's first career victory Wednesday, Reynaldo Lopez has so far lived up to his vow to be a different pitcher in the second half, delivering three straight quality starts with more than a strikeout per (his 10 strikeouts over eight innings last time making an especially emphatic case). He has thrown his fastball harder in all three starts, getting a crazy-high whiff rate on it, which he credits to improved focus. There's a chance he's something special still.
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Remember him? Alex Wood has been out all season with an achy back, but after four rehab starts, including six strong innings last time out, the left-hander is poised to return Sunday. Look, he's kind of boring, but he throws strikes, generally keeps the ball in the park, is efficient enough to go six innings at a time and will surprise with the strikeouts every now and then. You'll take that in this pitching environment.
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If we're looking for Gallo replacements, why not the guy taking over for him in Texas? Willie Calhoun is back in the majors after a couple of encouraging stints earlier this year. He was profiling as a 30-homer guy long before the juiced balls entered the equation and is a surprisingly good contact hitter for someone with that kind of power. Hopefully, he gets his chance.
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Probably the biggest winner of the past couple days, Will Smith appears set to take over as the Dodgers' primary catcher with Austin Barnes getting sent down to the minors, and there's reason for enthusiasm in Fantasy. His previous stints in the majors have already netted him three home runs in nine games, and you can add 20 more from his time in the minors. A greatly reduced strikeout rate this year has made him a more attractive prospect than he probably gets credit for.
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Friday's
Winners and Losers
Winners
Buy into it, baby: Jose Ramirez is back. With two more doubles and a homer Thursday, he's now batting .318 (42 for 132) with seven homers and six steals over his past 33 games, complete with a BABIP that suggests it's totally legit. He's stopped selling out for power so much, reducing his fly-ball rate to a more reasonable number, and is making much harder contact.
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Is Paul Goldschmidt back? Well, he's homered in four straight games, which certainly counts for something, but it's going to take more than home runs to right this ship. Batting average is where he could use the most help, but he's striking out more these days. He's still hitting the ball hard enough to suggest better times are ahead, but enough to make him a true standout at first base again? Probably not.
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Losers
After a shaky but not necessarily alarming five-start stretch that nonetheless had Fantasy players asking if he was still a must-start option, Jake Odorizzi gave a pretty clear indication that he's not Wednesday, allowing nine earned runs in four innings. He's still throwing his fastball harder than in past years, so you shouldn't expect him to regress fully. But all the good home run luck he was having earlier in the year, despite being an extreme fly-ball pitcher, is coming home to roost now.
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Masahiro Tanaka had been pitching over his head most of the year, too, but Thursday's 12-run disaster was a correction and then some, elevating his ERA from 3.21 just five starts ago to 4.79 now. His trademark splitter got pummeled to the tune of a 101.8 exit velocity, so he may not have had a great feel for it this time.
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Lucas Giolito has had some ups and downs recently but was coming off back-to-back quality starts when he served up seven runs to the Twins Thursday. Walks had been the issue in the past, but they weren't this time. It seemed more like one of those starts where the ball just wouldn't stay in the park, which every pitcher is susceptible to in 2019. Giolito had allowed a combined 10 home runs in 19 starts before yielding four (including three to Nelson Cruz) in this one.
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