Major League Baseball enters its second week, and fantasy baseball players are already feeling the sting of injuries. Gary Sanchez, one of the massive breakouts of 2016, is already on the shelf. It isn’t a short injury, either, as Joe Girardi said on Monday that he expects Sanchez to miss four weeks. So expect a month, at a minimum. Never fear, as most of us play in shallow talent pools for catcher, so you have valid options on the waiver wire. Like every week, we base our free agent pieces on Yahoo! Ownership, with 50% or less ownership gets you consideration, and one deep league option available in 90% or more of Yahoo! Leagues.
[Jeff]
Stephen Vogt, Oakland (49% owned)
If you need a catcher to replace Sanchez, then you should go snag Vogt. Vogt is likely your best option if he’s available in your league, but that’s almost literally a 50/50 prospect at this point. For the season, he’s hitting .261/.292/.478 and he’s already found his first dinger of the season and is part of the A’s offense that might just have some heft behind it. He had a bad 2016 campaign, but early indications are that he seems to be on the comeback trail to bounce back to 2015 form.
Geovany Soto, White Sox (9% owned)
Soto has been around the block, and was the architect of five double-digit dinger seasons in the five seasons he managed to play more than a half-season Unfortunately, the last of those seasons came in 2012 and since then he has managed to play only slightly more than a regular season (186 games). IN those 186 games he was low average and high power. Now he’s (presumably) healthy and back to his dong-smacking ways. He already has three on the season and sports a (sure to regress) 1.519 OPS. He’s a short-term play, but he’s the hottest hitting catcher available in 90% of Yahoo! leagues.
James McCann, Detroit (8% owned)
There’s not much separating McCann and Soto from the guys owned in 20% of leagues or fewer, so there are two deep dives this week. McCann is all-power and no average. Right now he’s hitting .214 with two home runs. Yesterday that was .273. He’ll put some over the fence, but he has the most important thing in deep fantasy baseball leagues: playing time. McCann is Detroit’s everyday backstop, so he’ll at least collect at-bats. If you’re desperate enough to hunt down here, that might be good enough.