Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 12? (2025)

Michael's fantasy baseball waiver wire analysis for Week 12 (2025), and whether to buy into MLB hitters and pitchers. Should you avoid these popular names?

Welcome back to the Week 12 edition of our Buyer Beware series for the 2025 season, in which we put a few popular waiver wire names under the microscope.

This week we examine three exciting names that we mostly like as talents -- Roman Anthony, Evan Carter, and Ben Casparius. However, each one of these trio carries risks that may not be reflected by the FAAB bids they’ll garner.

Hence the thrust of this week’s article is not “avoid at all costs,” but rather, “add cautiously.” Roster rates are taken from Yahoo! 12-team Fantasy Baseball leagues. Let’s get to the names!

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Roman Anthony, OF, Boston Red Sox

65% rostered

Anthony is a universal top-two overall prospect in the game and is ranked as the top position player by most outlets. This is a classic example of the “buyer beware” being more about “beware overspending,” rather than a dig at the player’s skills.

Anthony has big power, good plate patience, and is believed to have sufficient contact skills to get to that thump. Here are his early Statcast returns:

Anthony is known for his premium bat speed and it is already showing in his early MLB sample. He is also not whiffing often and holds just a 6.5% swinging strike rate.

While Anthony is only batting .083 (through Thursday), he’s suffered from an unlucky .111 BABIP. His early 23% strikeout rate isn’t disqualifying given his power.

Despite the slow start, Anthony should be a productive bat. But will that bat shine this season, and brightly enough to matter for fantasy?

Like many youngsters, Anthony has run high ground ball rates. It was over 52% in Triple-A and sits above 55% so far in the majors. Putting the ball on the ground that much makes it tough to access power.

We have already seen similar prospect risks play out so far with Jac Caglianone. Cags has had a slow start with the Royals, despite plus bat speed and hard hit rates. He did not come with playing time concerns either.

So far Anthony has played every day, including a start Friday against the first lefty Boston has faced since his call-up. But Jarren Duran was getting a rest day and the team has indicated Anthony could sit versus southpaws. The Sox have platooned others fairly aggressively.

Boston also has bats like Alex Bregman and Wilyer Abreu working back from injury. It is a very crowded roster and even if Anthony plays every day at first, will that continue if he slumps for a week or two?

It’s not fun to be prudent but we will keep our Anthony FAAB bids reasonable.

Evan Carter, OF, Texas Rangers

33% rostered

Once a highly-regarded prospect in his own right, Carter has been on fire since returning from the injured list June 3rd, slashing .440/.500/.880 with three homers in 25 at-bats.

We saw the upside here a couple of years ago when Carter came up late in the 2023 season and hit .305 before ripping a bunch of extra base hits as the Rangers won a World Series. Nevertheless, we should be a bit wary given a couple of factors.

First, Carter has never been able to hit lefties and this limits his playing time. He has dominated righties in his career to the tune of a 143 wRC+. Against lefties? It’s a -29 wRC+. Yes, MINUS-29.

Let’s compare his rolling wOBA versus righties and lefties:

Even at Carter’s best, a sub-.200 wOBA versus lefties is not playable for the Rangers or fantasy managers.

As a result, Texas has not given him many opportunities to be a full-time player. Carter has been on the bench each of the last three times the team has faced a southpaw starting pitcher.

Carter also dealt with back injuries last year, an issue so troublesome that he had an ablation surgery in the offseason to address it. While his recent IL stint concerned a strained quad, clearly there is elevated injury risk here.

It isn’t easy to find potential 20/20 guys on the wire in June. But there is some performance and playing time risk with Carter too. We will make moderate bids in five-outfielder leagues where we have a need at the position.

Ben Casparius, SP-RP, Los Angeles Dodgers

14% rostered

Casparius has been outstanding for the Dodgers, pitching largely out of the bullpen along with a couple of short starts. He holds a 2.86 ERA and 1.02 WHIP in 44 innings. Manager Dave Roberts indicated recently that Casparius will get some short-term run in the rotation.

The underlying metrics have been strong for Casparius as well. He is striking out 26% of batters with just a 5% walk rate. His velocity is up to 96.2 from 95.5 miles per hour last season. The pitching models like what he’s doing too (120 Stuff+).

While there are no apparent flaws in his current skills, Casparius has never pitched like this before. That 5% walk rate? It was 11% last season and never sat below 11.5% in the upper minors. That could regress for him in the starter role.

Casparius has also allowed just one home run, but has a below-average 34.7% ground ball rate. It’s unlikely he maintains his ridiculously low 2% home run to fly ball rate—league average is 11%. Doing so won’t be aided by playing half the time in Dodger Stadium, which has been the second-best venue for hitter home runs, per Statcast’s park factors.

Casparius is also likely to be limited in terms of length. His “starts” have been more like those of an opener, with four innings and 54 pitches the maximum workload he’s handled.

With the skills Casparius has shown and a possible two-start week coming up, it’s understandable that he is getting hyped this week. Just be aware we may have already seen his best and bid accordingly.

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