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Rejoice Rotoballers! It’s Week 12, and they’ve given control of Rotoballer’s 2B/SS Waiver Wire column to me for safe keeping while Kyle vacations. Considering how amazing my work has been on the Outfield Waiver Wire, I’m frankly not surprised that they begged me to provide my incredible, awe-inspiring insight for Rotoballers needing help in the middle infield.
Ok, I volunteered.
Regardless, we’re here and we’re going to take the depth of our reach a little further. Instead of the usual 35% cut off of the OF column, we’re going deep deep deep for players owned in 10% or less of all leagues that should be on the radar for almost all leagues. Rotoballers need to look long and hard for the best of the best fits for their rosters, and Rotoballer is where you find them.
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Week 12 Middle Infield (MI) Waiver Wire Targets
Matt Duffy, 2B/3B, Tampa Bay Rays (10% owned)
If you forgot about Tampa Bay Rays infielder Matt Duffy, nobody would blame you. After a breakout season in 2015 which saw him hit .295/.334/.428 with 12 homers and 12 steals with the Giants, San Francisco traded him to Tampa as part of an ill-fated deal for starter Matt Moore. Duffy proceeded to spend the next two seasons recovering from a litany of foot issues. When you read that a player spent two seasons doing anything other than playing baseball, you’d be forgiven for thinking that said player’s career was behind him.
But amazingly, Duffy has been producing quite nicely. So far, the 27-year-old has stayed relatively healthy while putting up a .311/.350/.429 line on 234 plate appearances. He’s chipped in four home runs, three steals, 18 runs, and 20 RBI with a solid 18.4% K rate. While that sounds kind of empty, over the last two weeks Duffy has stepped his game up in terms of counting stats. For 2018, just 17 of his 68 hits have gone for extra base hits. Over the last two weeks, that rate has jumped to seven of 15. And there aren’t power metrics that show an outlier, so there’s no reason to think that he can’t keep it up.
Duffy detractors will argue that the power isn’t there for him to be an option in deep leagues, and it’s true that Duff doesn’t bring a lot of pop. For 2018, he has just a .119 ISO, which is in line with his .116 career average. However, boiling his production to simple power is dismissive of what Duffy does at an elite level: spray the ball and solid contact. Duffy produces soft contact just 11.3% of the time, with the rest sitting in the medium to hard range. When he hits the ball, he hits it well and can square up to pitches. Further he pulls the ball, goes center, and pushes it to the opposite field at almost identical rates across the board. Few players can aim their contact, but Duffy is elite.
Let’s be clear, Matt Duffy will not win a championship by himself. He fits on a team that needs D.J. Lemahieu-style production with a chance for better power metrics, good run production, and some speed thrown in. That sort of profile has a lot of value, especially paired with a swing-and-miss masher like Joey Gallo where you can offset the strikeouts and batting average deficits. If I owned a guy like Gallo, even in a 10-teamer, I’d be snagging Duffy all day.
Amed Rosario, SS, New York Mets (8% owned)
Sooooo, Amed Rosario has been pretty bad in 2018. The former top prospect has lost almost all of his shine between the last two seasons, as the hit tool has not translated yet and the expected pop has yet to develop. Rosario’s approach has been dreadful and seems to be allergic to taking a walk, which is not good for a player producing an ISO of just .119 en route to a .237/.266/.356 line on 231 plate appearances.
That’s a lot of bad, and there’s more that could be mentioned, but the reason you need to know about Rosario is because no one believes in him at all at this point. However, the kid is six months from his 23rd birthday and has 384 major league at-bats to his name. The Mets are giving the youngster the trial-by-fire treatment, and the elite athleticism, incredible body, and still has all of the traits that got his bat comped to players like Jimmy Rollins and Hanley Ramirez. Rosario’s profile suggests that when it clicks, it’ll click fast. If that happens and he goes on a run, add add add as fast as humanly possible. To be clear, this wasn’t that week, but put him at the top of your watch list as a potential second half of the season add.
Freddy Galvis, SS, San Diego Padres (4% owned)
By now, most players are somewhat familiar with the story of Freddy Galvis, a Phillies farmhand who had a breakout 2016, helping to lead to San Diego picking him up as a free agent to bridge the gap between Fernando Tatis Jr. and a gaping hole at shortstop. Advanced statistics hate Galvis, and even in his 20 home run, 17 steal, .241/.274/.399 line from 2016, Fangraphs rated him as having a -19.6 offensive rating. No kidding, that’s “shouldn’t be a big leaguer” bad. Mostly, advanced metrics don’t like his BB/K rate, his low ISO, and his low OBP.
So, why is he here. For one, his ownership is a whopping 4%. For another, he spent the last couple of weeks smacking the ball around, relatively speaking. Galvis is quietly producing the hardest contact of his career, even though the .119 ISO doesn’t really reflect that. Over the last two weeks, his line of .277/.321/.468 has actually been depressed by an uncharacteristically low .268 BABIP. Basically, he’s hitting the ball harder, better, more often, and getting a little unlucky. For a shortstop, with all of the injuries we’ve seen this year, that sort of production makes him at least a little interesting.
Galvis has shown in the past that he can go on a tear, and there’s nothing to say that he couldn’t get his home run total up to the 20 he had in 2016. This is another case of value where you can find it, and I’d rather have Galvis getting at-bats at shortstop than Jose Iglesias, Marcus Semien, Miguel Rojas, Scott Kingery, or even Addison Russell. Shortstop is a tough spot to fill in 2018, and Galvis is capable of providing top-15 production at the position.
Kike Hernandez, 2B/3B/SS/OF, Los Angeles Dodgers (3% owned)
Enrique “Kike” Hernandez has had himself a hell of a week. Once a throw-in as part of the Dee Gordon deal to Miami, Kike has become a useful major league roster piece in the wake of Corey Seager’s unfortunate injury. While there have been significant struggles in 2018, the 26-year-old is on the verge of turning around his tough-to-look-at .218/.299/.449 line. Over the last seven days, he’s got a .375/.444/.938 line with an even BB/K and three homers over 16 at-bats. He’s been smacking the ball hard, squaring up and making great contact while producing good lift and getting lots of fly balls.
Kike has shown very good pop in his short major league career, but his value has been submarined by an ugly average and way too much swing and miss. While Kike’s 2018 average of .218 doesn’t seem like much of an improvement, it comes by way of a nasty .222 BABIP. Further, Kike’s been lifting the ball more and putting it on the ground less, giving him a better opportunity to put his power to use. Kike won’t make fantasy owners forget about Corey Seager, but he could be a cheap source of power for a club with limited option at short. The at-bats are likely to be there, so for the squad in need of a protein infusion, consider Kike.
More Waiver Wire Pickups and Adds
