Hi my name is Jack Thaler and I hope you enjoyed last week's edition of My Fantasy Baseball Experience. This week I will be focusing on teaching you how to treat unlikely and sudden breakouts and downfalls while also giving you my hitter and pitcher pickups of the week.
In baseball there are always going to be players who breakout and regress from season to season and in fantasy it is very important how you treat these types of players. For example this season players like Hunter Goodman, Javier Baez, Pete Crow Armstrong, and Andy Pages have had breakout seasons so far and players like Sandy Alcantara, Jose Berrios, Mark Vientos, and Willy Adames have shown regression so far. How I would try to handle a situation like this is I would try to hoard as many breakout players as possible and try to trade for players who have regressed. Right now we are about ⅓ of the way through the season and there is still room for the players who have regressed to completely turn it around and for the breakouts to completely lose it. I think that people over-value players who have broken out and think too highly of them while not thinking about how some have not shown much former success.
Right now out of the four breakout players I listed I would trade Goodman and Pages because Baez has had success in the past and Pete Crow is still young and was a former top prospect. While Pages is still young he was never a top prospect and Goodman is playing in Coors which explains the power outburst and he should slow down. I would trade for the two pitcher regression players in Berrios and Alcantara. Berrios was awesome in 2024 and I expect him to figure it out soon and as I said last week Alcantara is a former Cy Young winner and has been putting up good numbers in his last couple starts.
Now that I have talked about breakout and regressing players I will give my waiver pickups of the week.
Pitchers:
Jose Soriano
Justin Verlander
Emmet Sheehan
Jose Soriano is a young pitcher with electric stuff and he has been on fire to start the year, I always thought Soriano could be an ace level pitcher and 2025 could be his year I would pay attention to Soriano on the wire and try to pick him up as soon as possible, there is no clear risk I can give except his health because he throws extremely hard for a starter. The reason I will give for you to pick up Justin Verlander is because he is Justin Verlander and even though he has gotten off to a rocky start I still believe he can turn it around, he is coming off the paternity list and has been injured but you should try to pick him up. Emmet Sheehan is a young pitcher who has shown flashes of greatness on the hill and he was just called up and made his first start on the eighteenth going four innings giving up one run, he is a definite pickup.
Hitters:
Jurickson Profar(OF)
Cam Smith(3B)
Nick Kurtz(1B)
Jurickson Profar is coming off of his steroid suspension and is coming back soon. Even though he used steroids he had an incredible 2024 and I believe he can still perform close to that production level. Cam Smith is a young exciting player who has been on an incredible run lately and I believe he is extremely undervalued so if he is available in your league try to pick him up. Nick Kurtz is a former top prospect who has been a home run machine lately and I believe Kurtz is undervalued as well which makes him a must add for anyone's fantasy team.
I hope these waiver adds help you and I hope to see you next week for my third edition of My Fantasy Baseball Experience.