RADIO
Michael Griffin recommends catchers (C) who can be valuable waiver wire targets or adds to help fantasy owners for Week 8 of the 2017 fantasy baseball season.
Have you ever been reading a book or watching a TV show and things keep happening to characters that you don't care about... but they steadfastly refuse to show any events happening to the more important people? That's what this past week felt like when scanning catcher's statistics.
Sure, Salvador Perez went on a homer binge, including three in the span of a doubleheader. That's fantastic and all, but he's also not waiver wire material. Kyle Schwarber hit a homer that might have still been traveling if it weren't for pesky walls. Again... almost everybody owns him. The people that ARE eligible to appear in this column? They have had next to no movement. Which has left us like this when we scour the statistics:
10-12 Team League Catcher Pickups
What we can assure you though, is that the following catchers were NOT chosen by A) having the writer close his eyes and randomly stab the screen with his finger, B) drawing names out of a hat, C) having a cat nudge the screen with their paw and then choosing that. We did our diligence and will stand by what we offer. Don't say anything bad about the cat, though...
Here are some catcher waiver wire pickups for Week 8, to consider adding to your teams. We'll show you three players to snag in 10-12 player leagues and also three to look out for in two-catcher leagues. All of these players are just at or below 50% ownership in Yahoo! fantasy leagues.
Russell Martin (TOR) - 41% owned
Russell Martin is here partly because he's the first sub-50% owned catcher - yes, it's that ugly - on this list and because he's got the potential to turn things around after coming back from shoulder inflammation. While the fall from productivity can be more precipitous for catchers - playing a position with all that wear and tear on the body will do that - we're holding out hope that that's not the case. He's back and active, so give him a chance.
Francisco Cervelli (PIT) - 20% owned
Francisco Cervelli has become a threat in both runs and RBI now. He's fourth among catchers in runs and is tied for sixth in RBI. Cervy is not going to help you in the power department, but he's shown that he can drive people in and also score some himself, even though Pittsburgh is struggling again this season. Any port in a storm, right?
Stephen Vogt (OAK) - 24% owned
OK. Stephen Vogt is here because he's still close to being a regular as the other people in this column. Travis d'Arnaud is just coming back from (yet another) injury and it would be great to see him stay in the lineup consistently. Vogt has found himself on the bench more often than not lately, but as it's been said in previous columns... the pickings are really slim here.
Two-Catcher League Pickups
Austin Hedges (SDP) - 30% owned
Sorry, Austin Hedges... we're going have to demote you to second-catcher status again. Your having only one RBI and no homers in your past 10 games had something to do with that decision. The sad thing is that you are STILL second in homers among all catchers. If that doesn't say something about the state of the position, it's hard to say what will.
Jett Bandy (MIL) - 12% owned
Jett Bandy gets the nod over his teammate, Manny Pina by virtue of his having three more home runs and two more RBI. It was really close, but ultimately, it felt like Bandy would be able to help more as a second catcher. He also gets more playing time, which means that there would be a lot less empty space in the lineups. Who knows what next week will bring, though? There could easily be a flip-flop.
Tony Wolters (COL) - 2% owned
You want runs? Tony Wolters will give you runs. He'll give you so many runs that you'll get tired of having so many of them. "Please, Tony. No more runs." Aw, who are we kidding? We'll take every single run that he has to offer. Since returning to action, he's crossed the plate at least once, and he's now third among all catchers in that category. Now, if he was driving them in as well, he'd be in the first category, but this is still a darn fine showing.
