Fantasy baseball waiver wire pickups featuring Colt Keith, Logan Henderson and more

New York Times

15-05-2025

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.
Access The Athletic's guide for abbreviations used in fantasy baseball.
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.
At only 22 years old, Detroit infielder Colt Keith showed plenty of promise last year in his rookie season. However, a brutal start to 2025 — 85 PA, .171 BA, 8 R, 3 RBI, 0 HR, 0 SB, 63 wRC+ — started to cost him playing time, spawning drops across the fantasy universe. Like they say, sometimes you have to break the seal to find the flow. Since connecting for his first home run on April 30, Keith's mashed the baseball — 43 PA, .316 BA, 13 R, 9 RBI, 4 HR, 0 SB, 17% Barrel, .489 xwOBA, 196 wRC+ — earning an every-day spot in the top-third of a very good Tigers lineup. Currently just 19% rostered on Yahoo, Keith's on a short list of players who could work their way into a universal role before the break.
Analyzing MLB is all about risk tolerance across different sample sizes. Every year, one of my favorite adds is the universally drafted player who face-plants so badly that the fantasy world becomes convinced he's forgotten how to hit. Enter Joc Pederson, the Rangers' new veteran DH. Brought in as a power supply, Pederson couldn't have gotten off to a worse start, going 3-for-63 to start 2025 (.052 BA, .210 OPS). Woof! One glance at our table above shows the rumblings of an upcoming breakout and potential return to peak power. Over the past three weeks, Pederson has massively cut down the whiffs (80.5% Contact) and made frequent quality contact (52.6% Hard Hit) to produce an elite expected weighted on-base average (.413). Finally hitting his first home run earlier this week, Joc should have the worst behind him as a cheap add for power-starved fantasy squads.
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The preseason hype train for Cubs rookie 3B Matt Shaw exploded out of the station as soon as Chicago announced the 23-year-old would break camp with the club. Well, MLB is extremely difficult and Cubs brass quickly decided Shaw needed more seasoning after a pretty horrid 19-game sample to start the season — 68 PA, .172 BA, 11 R, 3 RBI, 1 HR, 0 SB, 63 wRC+. Over the next month, Shaw has done nothing but produce for Triple-A Iowa — 89 PA, .270 BA, 16 R, 9 RBI, 2 HR, 5 SB, 125 wRC+. With journeyman Jon Berti getting starts at third base for a struggling lineup, it shouldn't be long until Shaw's number gets called again. Act now if your roster can afford a brief stash.
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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Major League debuts as impressive as Milwaukee's rookie righty Logan Henderson are few and far between, and the fact he's rostered in just one-third of all fantasy leagues is borderline criminal. Henderson followed up a dominant MiLB career — 203.2 IP, 3.00 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 26.9% K-BB — by exploding on the scene in two phenomenal starts thus far. The 23-year-old is quickly establishing himself as a strike-throwing machine (33.5% Ball), using a classic fastball-changeup combination to strike out an extraordinary 40% of batters faced thus far. While questions surrounding role presented cause for concern a few days ago, Jose Quintana's recent visit to the IL should clear the runway for a rest-of-season takeoff. Henderson's a priority add across all formats of any size.
Despite already headlining a previous piece, Gunnar Hoglund occupying half of our underlying skills list is worthy of reiteration. Oakland's top pitching prospect has performed very well from a skills perspective, combining a good four-seamer with lots of whiff-inducing spin and two devastating secondaries (minimum 37% Whiff). Sure, he just surrendered four earned runs, but it was against the vaunted Dodgers — a start sharp managers would, could and should have avoided anyway. With starting pitching in short supply, expect Hoglund's roster percentage to climb weekly until it's universal.
^^^ = Riser
Players from previous articles who are no longer under 50% rostered (Yahoo) and should be rostered first
(Top photo of Colt Keith: Luiza Moraes / Getty Images)