The daily challenge in this waiver-wire space comes from balancing two competing desires: Do we react to the latest news and performances, or do we try to identify the next big Fantasy performance before it happens? On the one hand, we need to make sure we catch everything that Fantasy owners need to know about every day; on the other hand, we run the risk of letting you know about a player's breakout too late to add him.
Today, I thought I'd split the difference, and highlight three players who haven't made an impact yet, but could soon, and three more who have been in the news and deserve some love.
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If you're looking for someone who is on the verge of breaking out, you probably want to target those skills that the best players have: A good eye at the plate, and an ability to make consistent hard contact are two traits you probably want to buy. Jorge Soler has been mostly disappointing in his MLB career, but he's showing those skills right now, despite his middling .259/.397/.379 line. He's walking a ton, while sporting a passable 26.0 percent strikeout rate, but has just five extra-base hits in 73 plate appearances to date. However, he has hit 45 percent of his batted balls at least 95 mph, good for 71st in baseball, ahead of the likes of Ryan Braun, Joey Gallo, Bryce Harper, and Corey Seager, among 306 batters tracked. He's on the verge of a breakout, and you'll want to be there when it happens.
Dan Straily and Nathan Eovaldi are on different paths, but both are getting close enough to returning from their injuries that it's time to take note.
Straily will be available sooner, having already thrown 88 pitches in a Double-A rehab assignment, but he also probably doesn't have as much upside as Eovaldi. We know what Straily is, and he's a useful player, having put up a 4.01 ERA and 8.0 K/9 over the last two seasons. That's not a star, but it's someone who probably should be owned and started against weaker opponents. He could be back in the Marlins rotation within a week.
Eovaldi is the more exciting option, but he's also further away, having just thrown a 25-pitch bullpen session Tuesday at Tropicana Field. He underwent arthroscopic surgery on his elbow in March but is progressing quicker than expected. Eovaldi's potential is tied to his big fastball, and the hope that he can start to turn those impressive radar gun readings into even more impressive results. If you can afford to stash him, he's going to be pitching in a good park and has more upside than your typical waiver wire arm, even as he comes back from multiple elbow surgeries.
In 186 games at Triple-A, Candelario hit .292/.373/.507, so what he's doing shouldn't come as a total shock. He hit .289 with a good eye at the plate a year ago, and finds himself batting at the top of a Tigers' lineup that is coming alive of late. Candelario won't be a huge source of power, but the four homers so far are a nice result. However, with his on-base abilities, he's going to get plenty of opportunities to score in this lineup, and he might be able to bop 20 homers, too. That's a useful player, and not just in H2H formats.
I had concerns about Domingo Santana's playing time coming into the season, but he's actually third on the Brewers in plate appearances thanks to various injuries across the outfield. The Brewers were just hit with another one, with Eric Thames going down with a serious thumb injury, which should lock Santana into an everyday role somewhere in the lineup moving forward. That's the good news… Now, he just needs to hit. I don't think we'll get a repeat of last year, but Santana is too talented to be this widely available with no playing time concerns left.
We'll go with one deep-league option here, and it's probably someone even NL-only league players don't know about. Trevor Richards isn't a big-name prospect, but he's shown some impressive skills in the majors, racking up double-digit swinging strikes in each of his last two starts. He did give up five runs in one of those outings, so he's a strictly persona non-grata in mixed leagues. However, he struck out 10 Dodgers Tuesday in just 4 2/3 innings, so he needs to be on your radar in deeper leagues.
