Fantasy baseball waiver wire: Brandon Woodruff scare adds urgency as closer chaos continues

Injuries continue to create new Fantasy opportunities

If you ask Brandon Woodruff, he isn't hurt. But it's hard to take players at their word on these kinds of things, and it's especially hard to do so when said player saw a 7.1 mph drop in velocity and second-inning departure from his start Thursday. And especially when that pitcher missed most of two seasons with a devastating shoulder injury before undergoing surgery. 

The Brewers aren't taking Woodruff at his word, for what it's worth. Manager Pat Murphy acknowledged the team is already having discussions about putting Woodruff on the IL, and he already had an MRI taken on his arm. The results of that MRI will determine whether this was truly just "dead arm," or if there's something more troubling going on under the hood.

But honestly, my hopes aren't high at this point. In fairness, I've been pretty skeptical about Woodruff for the past year, and he has mostly proven me wrong. But his velocity and the quality of his stuff had been dipping even before Thursday's start, and as good of a story as it's been for him to succeed since his return from surgery, I've been worried about the bottom falling out for a while. And it might have just happened.

That doesn't mean you should just drop Woodruff everywhere. It would, of course, be a lot easier to keep him stashed if he goes on the IL, and if he doesn't, that'll put an awful lot of pressure on him to show immediate improvement whenever he takes the mound next. This is one situation where, assuming you have IL spots to play with, you'd vastly prefer to see Woodruff put on the IL rather than try to pitch through whatever's going on.

But if he doesn't show that immediate improvement? I'm going to have an extremely short leash with him. He had already seen his strikeout rate dip to 20.0% before this start, leaving him more dependent on his defense for success than ever before. It was mostly working, but this is the kind of thing that works right up until the point where it doesn't. That point might have come Thursday. 

Here's what else you need to know about from Thursday's action around MLB: 

Friday's top waiver-wire targets

Here's who we're looking to add coming out of Thursday's action: 

Kyle Finnegan, RP, Tigers (10%) – We're just throwing darts to a certain extent. The closer position has been an unmitigated disaster to this point, and Kenley Jansen and his 6.14 ERA and 1.64 WHIP aren't even among the dozen or so biggest problems right now. But he is a problem, and unfortunately, he's a problem the Tigers have an in-house solution for in the form of Finnegan. I'm not saying they're ready to pull the plug on the future Hall of Famer, but the Tigers are a team with playoff aspirations and a closer who was very good in the role last season, so it wouldn't be shocking if Jansen had a very short leash moving forward. 

Spencer Steer, OF, Reds (54%) – I'd feel a lot better about the profile for Steer if he still looked like a 15-plus steal guy, but I don't think that's still here. It puts a lot more pressure on what has been a pretty marginal bat over the past few seasons, but in his defense, Steer's swinging it a lot better right now. That could be because he played through a shoulder injury early last season, and he's now healthy, leading to a career-best 90.2 mph average exit velocity and 16.4% barrel rate. Or it might just mean he's on a hot streak that won't last. You won't be surprised to learn I lean toward the latter being the likelier outcome, but it's fine to add him and see if he can keep it up, especially now that he has outfield eligibility again. 

MJ Melendez, OF, Mets (1%) – It was never supposed to go this way, but the Mets have turned into one of those teams with so few viable bats that they've had to turn to cast-offs and also-rans. It's a strategy that is usually employed by the dregs of the league, but it does have the benefit of occasionally turning up some useful players, and maybe the Mets are benefiting from that in the form of Melendez, a former blue-chip prospect who was designated for assignment by the Royals this offseason. He went 2 for 2 with a homer Thursday, his second of the season, and he's suddenly hitting .345/.406/.655. It's a small sample size, and it has still come with his usually untenable strikeout rate, but he's hitting the ball hard and has enough latent, theoretical talent to possibly figure something out here. Lord knows the Mets need talent. 

Sean Murphy, C, Braves (6%) – I'm fascinated to see what the Braves do when Murphy is back from his hip injury. Drake Baldwin is pretty clearly the better half of their catcher duo, and he might just keep playing every single day even when Murphy is back. But the question is, will Murphy effectively split time evenly, moving to DH on days when Baldwin catches, and then playing catcher when Baldwin is getting the day off his feet to DH? Murphy probably needs to hit better than he did in either of the past two seasons for the Braves to justify playing him nearly every day, and he would need to hit better than that to matter at the suddenly deep catcher position anyway. But if he's healthy and can get back to 2023, when he had an .843 OPS and looked like one of the best catchers in the game, the Braves might be happy to just keep both in their lineup every day, more or less. And so would you. If you happen to not have stumbled into a good second catcher, Murphy is worth a look. 

Nate Lowe, 1B, Reds (9%) – It's been a pretty long time since anyone got excited about Lowe for Fantasy, but I ask you this: Did you realize he had 84 RBI last season? I bet you didn't. That was mostly a product of playing every day, something he isn't actually doing for the Reds right now, but he might be playing his way into a bigger role. With Eugenio Suarez sidelined by an oblique injury, Lowe has been playing more lately and has been red hot with five homers in his past six games, with multiple hits in three of them. And the underlying numbers back it up, with Lowe putting up his best quality of contact metrics and strikeout rate of his career. That's probably at least in part due to his limited role (especially against lefties), but with what he's showing right now, he should remain a lineup stalwart and a viable hot-hand play until Suarez is back. 

Thursday's standouts

Framber Valdez, Tigers @ATL: 6 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 8 K – To a certain extent, every pitcher is a random number generator, but everyone's range of outcomes for any given start varies. For a pitcher generally viewed as a borderline ace, Valdez has a tendency to frustrate more than most because he's so dependent on that big, slow, loopy curveball for his success, and that can be a tough pitch to command. When he doesn't have his feel for it, he can be a headache. But the thing is: He always gets it back, and it's why I'll never actually lose faith in him. There have been some rocky starts in the early going, but Valdez is someone you just leave in your lineup and trust the good will outweigh the bad. It always does. What was interesting here was the 10 whiffs on his changeup, something we almost never see from Valdez. It's something to monitor moving forward. 

Logan Webb, Giants @PHI: 7 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K – Webb goes about it in different ways than Valdez, but the end result is usually pretty similar, and as such, I've been pretty unconcerned about his slow start. Thursday was arguably his best start of the season, which is funny because his sweeper continued to fail to miss any bats, which has been his biggest issue so far. He's a pitcher whose feel for his arsenal tends to come and go, but like Valdez, he always tends to find it in the end. Webb remains a very interesting buy-low target for me. 

Freddy Peralta, Mets vs. WAS: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K – Peralta didn't have his best command and was let down by his defense a bit Thursday, and still got a good start in against a Nationals lineup that has been red hot to start the season. He's a frustrating pitcher in his own right, one I thought was being overdrafted coming into the season. But he's also an obvious must-start pitcher, and his 3.52 ERA for the season seems like a good place to continue to park your expectations. 

Andrew Abbott, Reds vs. COL: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – Phew, he needed this one. Plenty of you probably already wanted to drop Abbott, and if he struggled against the Rockies away from Coors Field, it'd be hard to make any real argument against dropping. He did what he was supposed to do against arguably the best matchup in baseball, which doesn't exactly mean he's a must-roster pitcher. But if you haven't dropped him by now, I'd give him next week's two-start schedule to see if he's truly back on track. That being said, I don't think I'd actually want to start him at the Cubs and vs. Houston. 

Michael Soroka, Diamondbacks @MIL: 3 IP, 10 H, 8 ER, 2 BB, 2 K – This was my concern with Soroka, even as he was running up really impressive strikeout numbers. He was getting away with a lot of loud contact, and if the strikeout rate came back to earth, it was all going to collapse. I'm not giving up on him entirely, but if he's more like a 24-25% strikeout rate guy, he's probably not going to be a must-roster pitcher. It's a thin line to walk. 

Bryce Elder, Braves vs. DET: 6 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K – I'm not even mad. It's funny to me that Elder has a 1.88 ERA and keeps putting together good performances with nothing really underlying them. It's going to fall apart at some point, and the only question is if you get off the ride before it crashes. 

Noah Cameron, Royals @ATH: 5.1 IP, 9 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – Cameron was someone who outperformed his peripherals for pretty much all of last season, and some guys just have that skill. It was reasonable to take a very cheap flyer on him in your drafts just to see if he was one of those guys who might be able to do it consistently. A month into the season, and it's clear last year was the fluke, and his peripherals have grown significantly worse. He's an easy drop. 

Lance McCullers, Astros @BAL: 6 IP, 2 H, 3 ER, 4 BB, 9 K – Given all he's been through, it's remarkable that McCullers is still capable of these kinds of starts, and this is the second one with nine strikeouts. Of course, in between, he had four starts with just 15 strikeouts combined, so I think it's fair to write the two good starts off as more or less a fluke. A good story, but not something you want on your Fantasy roster.