Fantasy baseball waiver wire: Time to cut Baz, Stanton surges for Yankees but faces playing time concerns

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There were two big things to take away from the Yankees-Rays game Tuesday night. We’ll start with the most straightforward: It’s time to give up on Shane Baz. 

The Yankees teed off on Baz for six runs over three innings of work on five homers, giving him 19 earned runs allowed in 19 innings in the month of August. And that’s after he carried a 5.40 ERA in July. Despite that, he’s still 81% rostered in CBS Fantasy leagues. That’s simply way too high for a guy with a 5.22 ERA and only nine quality starts in 25 tries this season. 

Baz is too talented to ever truly give up on, and in the long run, I do think there’s a decent chance he’ll figure things out. The flashes this season have been awfully enticing, but they’ve also clearly been fake-outs – twice, once in April and again in late June and early July, it looked like Baz was starting to figure things out. But he just hasn’t settled on the right pitch mix and approach to maximize his obvious gifts, and I haven’t seen any reason to believe he’s going to in the near future. It’s okay. You can let go now. 

The thornier situation is on the other side, as the Yankees’ demolition of Baz and the rest of the Rays‘ pitchers only served to highlight the roster crunch they’re currently dealing with. And might continue to deal with it the rest of the season.

The Yankees hit nine homers in the 13-3 win, and it should surprise nobody that Giancarlo Stanton hit two of them. That’s no surprise because Stanton has looked dominant since returning from the elbow injury that looked like it might completely derail his season before it even began. The two homers pushed Stanton’s OPS north of 1.000 for the season, and now that he’s outfield eligible (Tuesday was his sixth appearance in the outfield), he’s an even more useful Fantasy option. At 63% rostered, he needs to be a priority on waivers in all Fantasy formats, right?

Well, maybe not, because playing time is probably going to continue to be hard to find for Stanton for the time being. Aaron Judge still hasn’t been cleared to play the outfield, and it’s not clear if or when that is going to happen as he continues to deal with a flexor strain in his throwing elbow. Manager Aaron Boone told reporters Tuesday that he thinks it’s unlikely Judge will be able to throw at full strength at any point this season, and while Judge pointedly pushed back on that, players are often more optimistic about their chances of overcoming injuries than is realistic. 

Which means there’s a decent chance Judge is going to be limited to DH duties for a while. And while the Yankees have been more willing to play Stanton in the outfield than I expected, it’s hard to ignore that he needed three days off immediately after playing three games in a row in the outfield, which suggests that anything close to full-time in the field is probably untenable for Stanton. 

And it’s not just those two. With Stanton needing time in the outfield, Jasson Dominguez has been getting squeezed out of the lineup lately. They’ve also had to find ways to get Ben Rice‘s bat in the lineup more, pushing him behind the plate more often, pushing a slumping Austin Wells to the bench. And, when Wells is in the lineup, Rice has been pushing Paul Goldschmidt to the bench instead. The Yankees are trying to find ways to squeeze six players into four lineup spots, and the math just doesn’t add up here.

Which is a shame for Stanton, especially. He clearly still has a lot left in the tank, and if it looked like he was going to play more or less every day as a DH, he would clearly have a ton of value for Fantasy. He’s on a 40-plus homer pace, and even if you can’t buy the .306 batting average, he’s doing enough to matter even if he was hitting something like .250.

But unless Judge makes a lot more progress in the next few days than his manager seems to think is likely, Stanton seems likely to remain just a part-time player moving forward. And, of course, even if Judge is cleared to play the field this weekend, there’s no guarantee he’ll remain healthy the rest of the way. The Yankees’ math problem probably isn’t going away, and it’s going to limit the value of several otherwise viable Fantasy options. It’s hard to get around that right now, and it makes it tough to justify adding Stanton more aggressively, even though he probably deserves it.

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

Wednesday’s top waiver-wire targets

Bryce Miller, SP, Mariners (77%) – It wasn’t a good start for Miller, which is concerning given that he didn’t exactly dominate on his rehab start. The 13 hard-hits allowed, with an average exit velocity of 100.8 mph, is especially concerning. But it wasn’t all bad either, and in fact, I think the positives mostly outweighed the negatives, at least if we’re trying to project forward. Miller’s velocity was up quite a bit, a good sign for the health of his elbow, and he generated 15 whiffs on 85 pitches, including at least two on five different pitches. He’ll have to command better to take advantage of it, but I still see enough talent here to think Miller can be worth using moving forward, especially with two starts on the way for next week. 

Owen Caissie, OF, Cubs (28%) – The Cubs have a similar math problem in their outfield, but I do wonder if there’s at least a chance for Caissie to force them into keeping him around and part of the team’s short-term plans. If there is a chance, he’s doing what he can to take advantage of it, going 4 for 9 with a homer and four RBI in three games against the Brewers over the past two days. He’s benefitted from a planned absence for Kyle Tucker, and once Tucker is back, Caissie sure looks like the odd-man out among Tucker, Ian Happ, and Pete Crow-Armstrong (and Seiya Suzuki, if you want to include the DH spot in the discussion). But, while the Cubs don’t seem at much risk of missing the playoffs, they’ve been in an offensive malaise for a while now, and the vibes aren’t great. Could Caissie hit well enough in his chances to at least turn this into a rotation, where he plays, say, two-thirds of the games? That might be enough to keep him relevant in deeper leagues, and if someone has to miss any time with injuries, Caissie could get even more runway. There’s enough upside that, if you have a roster spot to play with, you can at least consider stashing Caissie. 

Kyle Teel, C, White Sox (22%) – It’s really hard to break in at catcher right now for Fantasy, and Teel has been a pretty fringe-y option as a result. But he might be changing that with his play of late. Teel entered the season as one of the top catching prospects in the game, and for his first 45 games or so, he was putting up pretty impressive underlying metrics, but didn’t have the production to back it up. Well, he has six hits in 10 at-bats over the past two games with a pair of homers and is now suddenly hitting .274/.363/.411 for the season – with an expected slugging percentage of .479. That probably still keeps him on the outside looking in for one-catcher leagues, but if you need a second catcher – say you just lost Francisco Alvarez in the midst of arguably the best stretch of his career – Teel belongs in the conversation. 

Parker Messick, SP, Guardians (5%) – The Guardians’ reputation as a pitching factory has taken a hit, but Messick still looks like a prospect worth getting at least somewhat excited about as he gets set to make his MLB debut. That’ll happen Wednesday against the Diamondbacks, and he has a chance to stick around with the Guardians having a hole in their rotation. Messick had a 3.47 ERA with 119 strikeouts in 98.2 innings at Triple-A this season while pitching his way onto the top-50 in FanGraphs.com’s mid-season rankings update. Messick isn’t a flamethrower, sitting at 92.6 from the left side, but his changeup is a plus pitch, and he has a five-pitch mix that has led to an excellent 13.2% swinging strike rate for the season. He isn’t a can’t-miss prospect, but Messick is an interesting talent worth keeping an eye on, and in deeper leagues, he could be worth adding even before he makes his debut. 

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