Fantasy baseball waiver wire pickups featuring Jake Burger, Will Warren and more

New York Times

22-05-2025

We're deep enough into the fantasy baseball season that most of us are looking at rosters only partially resembling the team we originally drafted. Since roster churn is the name of the game, I'm running it back all season with your favorite speculator piece implementing my patented data-backed, formulaic approach to discover next week's waiver wire headliners … today.
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Going position by position, I mine my favorite player stat combinations regarding control, batted ball quality and swing-and-miss ability. Then I mash them together to identify some cheap gems to grab before the squares figure it out next week. At the bottom, I rank my favorite available players around the diamond, two-start pitchers and speculative adds.
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When it comes to hitting, opportunity may be king, but we still need production, which comes from underlying skills. Scores of studies have proven the impact of exit velocity and its direct relationship with slugging percentage, so raw power is always a great place to start. The list below utilizes contact frequency and quality, paired with advanced statistics to identify underlying hitting skills.
Hitters in this table have +80% contact, +40% hard-hit, a +.340 expected weighted on-base average and at least 35 plate appearances in the past 21 days.
One of fantasy managers' most common errors is complacency, usually on better teams. Many of us have been there — a roster's performing well, full of noteworthy names, but we might not notice someone in the active lineup losing playing time. Now, that doesn't mean it's necessarily time to cut these guys, but losing at-bats is never a good thing. It gave me the idea to start tracking notable players who are losing opportunities.
*** = Prioritize for speed
^^^ = Riser
Players from previous articles who are no longer under 50% rostered (Yahoo) and should be rostered first
As far as pitching goes, the thesis couldn't be simpler — do our best to avoid any bias attached to surface stats (outputs) by instead focusing on underlying metrics (inputs). The most important SP skills are suppressing runs by keeping runners off base and striking out batters. Though simply showing up on this list so early may be noise, there's an argument that this combination of skills signals an immediate call to action.
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Pitchers in this table have a ≤3.50 skills independent ERA, ≤1.20 WHIP, +18.0% K-BB rate, with a minimum of 10 IP in the past 30 days.
^^^ = Riser
Players from previous articles who are no longer under 50% rostered (Yahoo) and should be rostered first
(Top photo of Will Warren: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)