Fantasy Baseball Pickups - Grab these prospects now!
Yahoo Fantasy analyst Andy Behrens offers a pair of prospect and a aproven youngster to grab on the waiver wire.
Video Transcript
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ANDY BEHRENS: Andy Behrens here with three priority pickups for your fantasy baseball leagues. And I feel like we got to talk about Alek Manoah. By the time you view this, he may already be past the 50% roster threshold. There's a lot of excitement for him. This is first and last call on Manoah.
He has been darn near perfect at Triple-A so far. He's a 2019 first round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays. They just threw him into Triple-A. He's been brilliant-- 18 innings so far, 27 strikeouts, only three walks, 1 run allowed, seven hits. He's been absolutely brilliant.
He's going to make his Major League debut this week, and it's a tough one. It's against the Yankees, but that's life in the AL East. It's always going to be pretty tough. He's got great velocity, up to 96, 97. He's got wicked breaking stuff. We're going to enjoy watching this guy for a long time.
Again, I think he's a must add at this point. You don't have to start him in the initial go round against the Yankees. But you're going to want to have him all season.
I want to talk about another prospect, and that's Vidal Bruján. You know, the Rays system isn't just Wander Franco and a bunch of guys. They got a lot of talent there. And Bruján has started his season in Triple-A Durham with seven homers and seven steals in his first 17 games.
He's hitting about .320. He's got an on-base percentage around .400, OPS over 1.000. He almost profiles better than Franco for fantasy purposes. The power is new. He didn't necessarily have this in earlier seasons. But the speed has always been there. He's been a 50-steal guy in the minors. That's going to continue.
Whenever he comes up, he's going to arrive as a five-category fantasy asset. And the Rays are playing him everywhere. He's playing at second. He's playing at short. He's playing at third, in the outfield. They're going to continue to do that at the big league level. Love Bruján moving forward.
And then one name you can just add who's already playing in the Majors, and we don't have to speculate, Kiké Hernández. He's hitting leadoff for the Boston Red Sox. It's like, I don't know where these leagues are that you guys are playing in where all the leadoff hitters don't have to be rostered somewhere.
But man, he's leading off for Boston. We know he's got 20 home run power because he's done it before. He's getting himself on base at a decent clip. He's going to score 90-plus runs this year. Do you care about runs in your fantasy league? If you need power, you need run scoring.
Kiké Hernández can definitely help. And he's another one of these guys who's eligible all over the place-- second base, shortstop, outfield. Go get him. He's widely available.