Hello friends, and I hope your fantasy baseball week is going better than mine is. I’ve had some particularly brutal Sonavabench! moments, and what on earth is going on with the horrible, horrible pitching?! I feel like not a day goes by where I don’t have a bad-to-vomit-inducing start from at least one SP plus a reliever blowup or two in most of my leagues. (And I wrote this before the ugliness that Wednesday brought: Yu Darvish’s botched attempt to not suck, Taijuan Walker not being able to make it out of the first inning after looking pretty good in his previous two starts, Mackenzie Gore just not being able to get it together against the Marlins, Strider not even being good, plus epic meltdowns from both the Cubs bullpen and the gut-punch Jason Adam/Pete Fairbanks daily double). Is it the pitch clock? Are the hitters adjusting faster than the pitchers, and is it just going to keep getting uglier and uglier as the season progresses? And with all of this bad pitching, why am I getting mediocre-at-best offensive output from most of my teams?
The season will be a third of the way over before we know it, but I know that I for one need to take a little step back this weekend and remember just how much baseball is left and how much things can change in a short amount of time in most league formats. In deep leagues, it can be particularly frustrating to get behind early, but let’s keep chugging along and see if there’s any relief to be had on the deep-league waiver wire. Since we stayed NL-exclusive last week, this time we’ll keep things in the Junior Circuit and look at some American League players who are 10% owned or less in CBS leagues.
Zach McKinstry. As a utility man for the Tigers, McKinstry is not exactly a flashy fantasy name these days, but he’s been playing well enough to be on the AL-only radar. He qualified at 2B and 3B going into the season, and has now played a couple games at short and 12 in the outfield this year as well. In 91 at bats he has two homers and 5 steals, plus a more-than-pleasant .275 average/.362 OBP, and should continue to see fairly regular at bats at multiple positions.
Jake Bauers. Bauers caught my attention earlier this week when I realized he was leading off for the Yankees and batting in front of that Aaron Judge fellow, which alone seemed like enough to warrant deep-league fantasy consideration. Bauers has played exclusively in the outfield so far in 2023, but qualified at OF and 1B in most leagues to begin the year. He’ll likely continue to see at bats versus right-handed pitching, at least until Giancarlo Stanton’s over his latest hamstring issue.
Robbie Grossman. Grossman is 9% owned in CBS and likely rostered in most very deep leagues, but he’s provided just enough production to enter the conversation in leagues that are ever-so-slightly shallower. He hasn’t stolen a base yet, which is a bummer and a bit of a surprise given that he’s averaging 11 a season over the last 3 years — but maybe that will change as it’s not like the Rangers aren’t running at all; they are right in the middle of the MLB pack when it comes to steals. He also has 5 homers and a not-hurtful .254 average (which admittedly is probably likely to regress now that I think about it). Finally, the thing that was most interesting to me is the fact that he’s on pace for 90 runs and 82 RBI, which plays in a lot of leagues outside that 9% range.
Nick Allen. This entry singlehandedly comprises the “here’s what going on with the A’s right now, in case you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to regularly check in on a team being driven into the ground by ownership to the point that it makes you very sad” portion of this week’s post. Allen has been playing a lot of short lately (he qualifies at 2B and SS in most leagues) and actually playing quite well, hitting .429 with a homer over his last 5 games as I write this. I was going to try to come up with one other interesting thing to say about him, but gave up and will just move on to the next blurb instead.
Andy Ibanez. I was reminded of just how deep my AL-only league is over the weekend when I put what I thought was an embarrassingly high FAAB bid on Ibanez, and then didn’t come that close to getting him. His numbers so far this season are far from impressive, just as they’ve been for most of his career so far and likely will continue to be… but he’s been playing regularly for the Tigers and picking up an occasional counting stat or two, which may be enough to make him relevant to fill out a banged-up roster in the deepest leagues.
Willi Castro. I keep almost picking up Castro in my AL-only league and then not doing it because I figure he’s worthless from a fantasy perspective, and then he keeps being just a tiny bit less worthless than whatever stiff I did actually end up grabbing and putting in my active lineup. He’s been playing a little bit here and there for the Twins, with 17 games in the outfield, 9 at third, 7 at short, 3 at second. He also has one appearance at RP, so you know we’re talking about an end-of-the-roster guy here. Anyhow, in 64 total at bats he has 10 runs scored and 5 steals (in addition to a single homer and 5 RBI), which as I said is better than the zeroes I’ve ended up with in my final active roster spot in a few deep leagues some weeks this season.
