Fantasy Baseball Pickups - Take a chance on some Tigers!
MLB.com writer Sarah Langs joins Yahoo Fantasy analyst Scott Pianowski to offer a few waiver wire adds for fantasy baseball managers.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Middle of May. Need some fantasy baseball roster love. We're gonna get some help today from Sarah Langs of MLB.com. And, look, the Detroit Tigers may not be a contending baseball club, but they have some fantasy factors, people you might want to consider picking up. Sarah, there is a pitcher on Detroit who's caught your eye.
SARAH LANGS: Absolutely. So, I mean, first of all, we should give love to the Tigers. Spencer Turnbull with a great outing, obviously, throwing a no-hitter on Tuesday night. But he's not the one who I have my eye on here. Just looking at guys who are rostered in 50% or fewer of Yahoo leagues. A name that jumped out to me immediately was Casey Mize, who's really gotten it together over his last few starts.
And this is a top draft pick, a guy who we knew this was coming whenever it might be. He made his debut last year, and he was fine. He struggled with control and whatever else, everything that we might expect out of a young pitcher. But it really seems like he's hit his stride lately for AJ Hinch's Tigers, and I think he's a great pick.
I mean, any time you see a guy taken that high in the draft just out there for the taking, I think that he's certainly worth holding on to. And a young guy like that, especially if you do keepers or anything like that, it's worth having him for a while. And especially now that he's pitching like the guy that he's supposed to be.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: I thought he was terrific in that Seattle start. And he gets a very reasonable Royals lineup on the weekend. Now Michael Fulmer was the jewel of this pitching staff a few years ago. Rookie of the Year, made the all-star team the next season, but unfortunately his elbow went kablooey. He had Tommy John surgery.
He really couldn't do much of anything last year. Kind of more about trying to get healthy and get back in form. They've switched him to the bullpen. Fastball is up a couple of ticks. In the ninth inning on Monday in the game that Mize won, it was Fulmer, not Gregory Soto, who actually closed up shop.
I think Fulmer is going to eventually become the clear closer on this team. And even though Detroit might be maybe a 70-win team or something like that, I think Fulmer has a chance at 20 to 25 saves. Good ratios. I like the walk-strikeout rate.
We've seen this so many times in history, right? A great reliever a lot of times is a guy who had to give up being a starter. Mariano Rivera was a failed starter. Dennis Eckersley had a second act as a reliever. I'm not saying Fulmer is gonna be at that level, of course, but I think they found something he can do. I love that the velocity has ticked up. I think the handshakes in Detroit go through Michael Fulmer now.
There's another infielder who's caught your eye who had a, I think, top five, top six pedigree in his draft class. Talk to me about Nick Madrigal.
SARAH LANGS: Nick Madrigal is such a fun player. I mean, we've known about him since his time in the minors. He doesn't hit home runs. He has pretty much no power, although he did hit his first career home run the other day, which is probably why he was on my mind. But he never strikes out.
I mean, he has the lowest in-zone whiff rate of any player in the majors right now. It's like 4%. And I think that most of them were foul tips, which count as swings and misses, but he did technically make contact. And I just think that in today's game, if you can pick up a guy who's going to get hits and get on base-- even if they're singles-- and is not going to be striking out a lot, I think that's a really valuable thing for fantasy.
And you could certainly use him to maybe balance a team. You pick up a guy like Miguel Sanó, you also have Nick Madrigal, you can kind of balance out the strikeouts there and not be overwhelming your team on that side. So I think he's a fun guy to hold on to, and I think that he's such a unique type of player in this day and age that that's worth having.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yeah, it's a great hook. In a time where home runs and strikeouts smother the game so much, people who put the ball in play, that's such an important skill to have. And I think it makes Madrigal certainly fantasy-relevant in mixed leagues.
If you lost Mike Trout, OK, your outfield is stinging right now, you're hurting, you're in a bad emotional place, look in San Francisco. Oracle Park is playing different. They've switched the configurations. The archways are still closed. Brandon Belt, I think, takes a step up in class. He's approaching 50% roster share, and Alex Dickerson's only around 10%. He had a sore shoulder earlier in the year, but I think he's gonna be a factor here.
Brandon Crawford's having a power spike. He's improved his launch angle. So it used to be San Francisco, hey, left-handed hitter, we don't want any part of these guys. Be open-minded. Oracle Park is a different park the last couple of years, and I think there are options for fantasy if you look at San Francisco.
