If you're looking for a Fantasy Baseball analyst who makes significant changes to their rankings in the first few weeks of the season, I'm not your guy. Which makes things like the Trade Values Chart that I do every week kind of tough, because there just isn't going to be much movement there in April.
But that doesn't mean I'm not making any moves. As I wrote earlier this week, I've moved Jared Jones, Mackenzie Gore, and Bryce Miller way up in my rankings, and I did the same with Reid Detmers yesterday. And, as I wrote in the Trade Values Chart column, I'm starting to run out of faith in Carlos Rodon, who has some incredibly troubling signs showing up in his profile when you look under the hood.
But the thing is, it's still so early in the season, and I'm just not going to react to just a few weeks worth of games for the most part. I'm thrilled to see Christian Yelich and Mike Trout off to such good starts to the season, for example, but I'm not necessarily sure we've learned anything new about either of them: They're really good players when they are healthy, and both are healthy right now, so they're playing really well. Duh.
Similarly, I'm just not at all going to react to Nolan Jones' slow start. He has been terrible, to be clear, hitting just .157/.246/.235 through his first 13 games with a 40.4% strikeout rate. But the thing is, that's not even the worst stretch of 13 games Jones has had over the past calendar year; he hit .154/.250/.154 with a 34% strikeout rate over 13 games last June/July. He went on to hit .301/.395/.573 over the final 69 games immediately after that stretch.
I know that for some Fantasy players, that's not what you want to hear. You want me to tell you to drop Nolan Jones, because you're frustrated watching him drag your team down, and you want to punish him for his transgressions against your otherwise perfect team. But, again, if you're looking for someone to overreact to the first two weeks of the season, it isn't going to be. If you want to drop Jones – or Alex Bregman or Nico Hoerner or whichever player is stuck in your particular craw – you aren't going to get my blessing to do so.
If you want to get a sense of which players' value has changed in the early going, may I suggest you check out Scott White's column from Wednesday, where he goes through the biggest risers and fallers in his latest weekly rankings updates. You're not going to see too many drastic changers there either, but it'll give you a good sense of where the Fantasy landscape stands after a couple of weeks.
Wednesday's top waiver targets
Yusei Kikuchi, SP, Blue Jays (71%) – I'm really not sure why Kikuchi doesn't get more respect. While Nick Pivetta's partial-season breakout in 2023 earned him a top-180 ADP, Kikuchi slid to 244.8 and went undrafted in many leagues. Maybe it's because he struggled in the spring, but either way, Kikuchi looks like one of the better values at the SP position after lowering his ERA to 2.30 with six excellent innings against the Mariners Wednesday. He has 20 strikeouts in 15.2 innings so far this season, and has a 3.57 ERA with 193 strikeouts in 33 starts over the past calendar year. He should be universally rostered.
Cody Bradford, SP, Rangers (69%) – I can't quite figure out how Bradford is pulling this off. Well, okay, I can at least partially explain Wednesday's success, since it came against the lowly A's. But still, he has a 1.39 ERA through three starts, which is awfully low for a guy with a career 4.35 ERA in the minors. He's had elite control, which has carried over from the minors, but he's also done a terrific job limiting hard contact so far – he's basically doing a Kyle Hendricks impersonation right now. The problem with buying in for the long haul is two-fold: For one thing, we just don't know how long he'll be in the rotation with Michael Lorenzen expected to join the team soon; and two, it just takes a whole lot longer than three good starts to know if suppressing hard contact the way Bradford is, is a real skill. There's a lot of noise in quality-of-contact metrics for pitchers, which just makes it hard to buy in here. Still, given the way he's pitching, I think you have to add him if he's available in your league, just in case.
Ivan Herrera, C, Cardinals (9%) – Plans have a way of changing, and Herrera seems to be changing the Cardinals plans in the early going. He crushed his third homer of the season Wednesday, and I do mean "crushed" – it was a 432-foot, 112.4 mph blast that represents the hardest-hit ball of Herrera's career. He has a 91.1 mph average exit velocity this season and has been so good that the Cardinals have played WIllson Contreras at DH the past two games while Herrera has started at catcher. I don't necessarily think that means Contreras is just going to be the DH moving forward, but Herrera hit well enough in the minors (.280/.391/.432) that it's not inconceivable to think that the Cardinals' best lineup most days might feature both him and Contreras. In two-catcher leagues where I don't have a second catcher I like, I'm looking to add Herrera.
Jose Caballero, SS, Rays (35%) – I think I still prefer Brice Turang if I'm looking for some speed from a MI spot, but Caballero is off to an interesting start in his own right. The Rays deservedly get a lot of credit for maximizing guys like Isaac Paredes, and there was some talk this spring of Caballero trying to follow in his footsteps. Wednesday's was his first homer of the season, so it hasn't necessarily been taken yet, but he has 30-plus steal upside, so if there's even 10 homers in Caballero's bat, the whole profile starts to look more interesting.
Jeff Hoffman, RP, Phillies (11%) – Jose Alvarado hadn't pitched since Monday and was presumably available, so it's interesting that it was Hoffman who got the save opportunity, his first of the season. Hoffman emerged as a very good reliever for the Phillies last season, and while his velocity is down a bit, he's getting a ton of grounders and has high strikeout upside, so he could get the job done if the Phillies opt to use him more as a closer. If you're desperate and speculating on saves, he's worth considering.
