Stay ahead of your league with these fantasy baseball pickups
Yahoo Fantasy analyst Scott Pianowski offers a trio of adds for pitching and hitting near the fantasy season's halfway mark.
Video Transcript
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SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Scott Pianowski here at Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. I'm going to be your Winston Wolf today. We're going to fix your roster and get you some peppy players who are going to move you up in the standings.
So check out Minnesota. They're fighting for their lives in the AL Central, and I think they're going to have a closer change really soon. Emilio Pagán has lost his way of late, and Minnesota has this young fireballer named Jhoan Duran. This guy has a fastball over 100 miles an hour. He can get into the 90s on his breaking stuff. He's going to be valuable no matter what his role is. It's going to be high leverage.
But I think eventually, probably pretty soon, Minnesota's going to realize Duran is their best closing option. Widely available in Yahoo. Again, I don't care what his role is. He's going to be valuable. But better than a strikeout per inning. He's around the plate. His secondary stats and peripheral stats suggest the success that he has had so far is legitimate, so I think you want to get him now before he reels off a handful of saves and it becomes obvious to your league mates. He's somebody I'm trying to roster anywhere I can.
We love-- when it comes to hitter production, we love it when somebody gets a promotion in the lineup. It's really helped Jon Berti in Miami, Dansby Swanson in Atlanta, Tommy Edman in St. Louis. Maybe Amed Rosario is another one of those stories. About a month ago, Terry Francona said, you know what, Amed, you're my number two hitter. Let's roll with that.
Since then, Rosario, over .300. He's scoring runs, 21 runs over the last month. He's stolen five bases. Rosario was once expected to be a star shortstop. He's probably not going to be that, but he still be a capable player. As long as he's batting second for the Guardians, that means he's in front of José Ramírez, probably the best hitter in baseball right now and one of the American League MVP candidates. So I think we're having some fun in Cleveland, and Rosario in the two slot makes a lot of sense.
One theme of the 2022 fantasy baseball season is the catcher position is just ugly, ugly, ugly. So when I see any sign of life, I have to make a move. Jorge Alfaro in San Diego, he's been in a timeshare most of the year. But lately it's been 2/3 Alfaro, 1/3 Austin Nola. They even used Alfaro this week in a DH spot, and he hit a home run. That shows how important he is to this lineup. He's playing about 2/3 of the time.
Over the last month, he's actually a top-seven catcher in 5 by 5 value, and yet he's only rostered in fewer than 15% of Yahoo leagues. I think the market is slow to react to a catcher who's producing and getting more playing time. Again, Alfaro, his roster tag should probably be 30%, 40%, 50%, something like that. Lagging way behind. You need catcher help, look to San Diego.