RADIO
It has been a fun 10 weeks. The pitching pool continues to show its depth, as there have been strong arms aplenty to be had on the waiver wire.
If you're in a league of average depth or less, chances are you could have made a pretty competitive pitching staff just by picking a handful of guys up on the waiver wire after your draft completed. We have seen breakout performance after breakout performance, and it's really been advantageous to those teams that went offense-heavy on draft day.
What that has driven so far this year is deep waiver wires for SP all year long. 10 weeks after the season began, we're still seeing a lot of really strong SP options available for free on waiver wires. Here are some names I'm targeting this week (focused on this week beginning on May 31).
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Pickups for Shallow Leagues
Yusei Kikuchi, Seattle Mariners (40% Rostered)
I just don't know what more this guy has to do to get his rostered percentage up. Since he went through a brutal stretch in his schedule where he faced the Twins, Astros, and Red Sox, Kikuchi has been one of the better pitchers in the league. Over his last five starts, Kikuchi has a 33.1% CSW%, a 29.3% K%, and a 58.4% GB%. He has a 36:10 K:BB ratio over that stretch, and has achieved five straight quality starts. He's been awesome, and yet he remains unrostered in more than half the leagues out there on the major fantasy websites. It's nonsense. Almost certainly you have an SP on your team worse than Kikuchi, so go check your waiver wire right now and make the swap.
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis Cardinals (38% Rostered)
This doesn't work very well in leagues where you really want strikeouts out of your pitchers (K/9 leagues or leagues that strictly limit how many SPs you can have), but in league types where it doesn't matter that much - Wainwright is really strong. He just continues to prevent runs and go deep into games. He has thrown seven or more innings four times already this year, and not many pitchers can say that. If you are in a league where wins and quality starts are of great value, Wainwright is a boring, yet solid guy to add on to your staff.
Framber Valdez, Houston Astros (36% Rostered)
If you are in a truly competitive league, Valdez is probably already gone. However, the rostered percentages remain low overall, so there's a chance he has slipped through the cracks. He returned to the mound Friday night after a long time off after the injury in Spring Training. I'm not reading much into the results from Friday, and it will probably be a couple of starts before Valdez gets the green light to throw 100+ pitches, but we saw Valdez's upside last year. In 2020, he threw 70.2 innings to the tune of a 3.57 ERA and a 1.12 WHIP with a strong 26.4% K% and 5.6 BB%. The most appealing thing about Valdez is his elite ground-ball rate, which sits at 63% for his career. That ground-ball ability gives him a great floor, and he also plays on a team that lets him get really deep into games - which is super valuable in fantasy these days. Give your waiver wire a look and see if you can scoop up Valdez right now before someone else does.
Pickups for Deeper Leagues
Luis Garcia, Houston Astros (20% Rostered)
Garcia is one of the few pitchers with an above-average CSW% on four different pitches. Garcia's cutter, slider, curveball, and changeup have all been fantastic this year. He has been absolutely brutal on right-handed batters this year, holding them to a .140 batting average and .244 wOBA while posting a 32.4% strikeout rate against them. Lefties have been a bit of an issue, so until he works out some of those issues I would be leaning towards only starting Garcia against lineups that don't feature multiple strong lefty bats. However, he seems to be improving right before our eyes, so there could be big things ahead for him.
He recently threw six innings against the Dodgers, giving up just two hits and one unearned run while striking out seven. That was an immensely impressive start, even against a Dodgers lineup that wasn't at 100% health. The Astros also seem to believe in him, electing to send Cristian Javier to the bullpen instead of him as Valdez and Jake Odorizzi are returning. Garcia should be added almost everywhere right now.
James Kaprielian, Oakland Athletics (29% Rostered)
This was a pretty unknown name heading into 2021, but Kaprielian has forced our hand recently. He's made three starts, throwing 17.2 innings and giving up just three earned runs while striking out 19 this season. That includes starts against the Angels and Red Sox too, so he has burst onto the scene.
The underlying metrics aren't as impressive as you'd expect, with a 9.7% SwStr%, a 27.1% CSW%, and an insanely low 22% GB%. Those numbers are enough to scare me off of him in shallow leagues, but if you're really hurting for an arm in a deep league, the results so far are hard to deny. In his short sample, he has been mostly a fastball pitcher, throwing his four-seamer 56% of the time. That pitch isn't great for him as it tops out at 94 miles per hour and has just a 5% swinging-strike rate. However, his peripheral stuff has been awesome. He's achieved a 14.5% SwStr% on his slider, a 15.4% mark on his sinker, a 15.4% on his curveball, and 17.9% on his changeup. Those pitches look promising, and it's likely that he will start using them more often going forward - which can only help. He's worth a speculative add in deep leagues.
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