Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Alcantara shows promise but leaves room for skepticism, and more

I know most of you want to be done with Sandy Alcantara. And maybe you should be. He’s been miserable this season, and hasn’t really gotten any better as the season has gone on: His first start of the season might have been his most impressive to date. 

But this is a former Cy Young winner! He was the premiere workhorse in baseball before his 2023 season ended with Tommy John surgery, and he put up a combined 3.31 ERA over nearly 900 innings in the five seasons prior to that injury. He was a must-start pitcher in Fantasy for more than half a decade; should two really bad months change that? 

Yes, of course, they should. Especially coming off of a significant injury. He entered his start Tuesday against the Rockies with a 7.89, and while his peripherals were better, they still weren’t good – he had a 5.31 xERA, 5.37 FIP, 4.83 xFIP, and 5.01 SIERA. By whatever metric you want to use, Alcantara has been awful this season.

But he was pretty good Tuesday. It was his first quality start since April 23 and just his second in 12 tries, as he limited the Rockies to two runs on four hits, with four strikeouts and one walk – just the second time he has issued one or fewer walks all season. And in watching the game, he might have even been a bit unlucky – he allowed just three batted balls with an expected average over .500, and a couple of the singles he allowed came off the bat less than 80 mph. 

Of course … it was the Rockies, a historically bad offense who are hitting an unfathomably bad .194/.254/./312 away from Coors Field this season. The average starter against the Rockies this season has a 2.95 ERA, 9.7 K/9, and has averaged 5.8 innings per start. He wasn’t even better than that! 

So, on the one hand, we’ve got a pitcher I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to any time he shows even a hint of his previous upside. On the other hand, his best performance of the season was actually slightly less impressive than the average performance against the Rockies to date. It was a good start, but was it a start that should have changed your opinion about Alcantara’s outlook?

Probably not. If you can’t do this against the Rockies, you might not belong in the majors at this point – which is why I’m much more open to dropping Max Meyer than Alcantara at this point. Alcantara belongs in the majors, but I don’t know if we can say too much more than that. I do believe he’ll be a must-start pitcher again at some point, but I don’t have a lot of confidence that it’s going to happen this season. I have hope, and Tuesday’s start certainly didn’t dim that hope. If you haven’t dropped Alcantara yet, I wouldn’t do it now. 

But I don’t necessarily think he’s about to go on a run that makes those who did drop him regret it. He needs to do more to give me that hope. He gets another pretty good matchup against the Rays later this week, so let’s hope he gives us something to actually get excited about there. 

Here’s what else you need to know about from Tuesday’s action around MLB: 

Wednesday’s top waiver-wire targets

Ronny Mauricio, 2B, Mets (22%) – It’s been a while since we’ve seen Mauricio. He got a cup of coffee in 2023, but we haven’t seen him at the MLB level since after his 2024 season was wrecked by a torn ACL. He’s been working his way back slowly since, but his promotion comes after he hit .323/.384/.508 in 19 games in the minors, including three homers and four steals in nine games at Triple-A. It took an injury to Mark Vientos to get Mauricio another chance, but he’s got it now. Can he take advantage? Well, he’s always had loud tools, and those seem to be intact – the four steals speak to his athleticism looking fine, while his 91.8 mph average exit velocity speaks to where his bat speed is at. There have always been questions about Mauricio’s ability to put it all together in games, thanks to iffy plate discipline and some troubles actually maximizing the raw power – a trait he shared with early-career Vientos and Brett Baty, two other recent Mets prospects who have shown growth in both regards over the past couple of seasons. Mauricio will have to hit early and often to stick, but he’s an intriguing young talent who is worth betting on if you have the roster space to play with. 

Addison Barger, 3B, Blue Jays (34%) – I just don’t know where all this is coming from. Barger has always had some pop, but what he’s doing right now is just absolutely bonkers – he homered yet again Tuesday, his fourth straight game with a long ball. And it’s not just these three most recent games, as Barger has been putting up quality-of-contact metrics on par with the best sluggers in the game. Among players with at least 50 batted balls, only Oneil Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, and Aaron Judge have a higher average exit velocity; only 12 hitters have a higher hard-hit rate, too. And he’s doing this while cutting his strikeout rate from 26.7% to 20.5%. He’s basically played every day for the past four weeks, though the Blue Jays have notably avoided left-handed starting pitchers lately, and that’s the biggest question Barger still faces – he has a .666 OPS against lefties so far with zero homers in 24 plate appearances. But the Jays have shown a little more willingness to play him against southpaws when he’s this hot, and at some point, I think we just have to add him everywhere and see if it’s real. I have my doubts, but it doesn’t make much sense expressing them when he’s hitting like this.

Max Muncy, 3B, Dodgers (68%) – Muncy is just hilariously locked in right now. He started wearing glasses on April 30 after being diagnosed with astigmatism, and he has more than cut his strikeout rate in half and had seen his wRC+ jump from 59 prior to the change to 164 before he hit two more homers Tuesday. He has nine homers in his last 29 games while driving in 31 runs in that span, and while he’ll sit against some lefties, at this point, I’m just not sure that matters. Call it playing the hot hand, and there aren’t many hands hotter than Muncy’s right now. 

Lance McCullers, SP, Astros (75%) – I don’t have a lot of faith in McCullers keeping this up, but that’s now two quality starts in a row and 22 strikeouts over his past three starts. The fastball remains about 2 mph down from where he was the last time we saw him pitch before 2025, and he was getting hit really hard today even against a terrible Pirates lineup, as he gave up a 92.8 mph average exit velocity on 13 batted balls. Still, given the little run he’s on, I don’t mind rolling the dice just to see if my hunch is wrong. 

Sawyer Gipson-Long, SP, Tigers (14%) – With Jackson Jobe going on the IL with a flexor strain, Gipson-Long is going to get an opportunity to pitch in the Tigers rotation, and that’s kind of exciting. Before he underwent Tommy John surgery as well as hip surgery in 2024, Gipson-Long was a pretty interesting young pitcher. He put up pretty ugly ERAs in the minors, but usually with extremely high strikeout rates and good command, with homers being the primary thing holding him back – something that should be less of an issue in the spacious confines of Comerica Park. His velocity has been back to pre-injury levels during his rehab assignment, and he had a 2.20 ERA across five starts in the minors. He’s not a must-add pitcher until we actually see some success in the majors post-surgery, but we did get a taste of it at the end of 2023 when he had 26 strikeouts to eight walks in 20 innings in his only four MLB starts to date. I’m cautiously excited to see what Gipson-Long can do.