Welcome to the Waiver Wire Picks, our daily fantasy baseball article that looks at the best players in baseball that you should be adding to your rosters. We’ll look at the players that are likely to be available in most leagues, as well as some deep league waiver wire options, and we’ll also look at the most added players in fantasy baseball across the major sites, and let you know which players to add and which you can leave on the wire.
Top Priority Players to Add
Angel Genao (CLE) – 2B,3B,SS (Yahoo – 15%)
How many players have achieved a .2 WAR in just their first game? After smacking four hits all over the diamond on Wednesday, Genao can make that claim.
And this didn’t come out of nowhere. Genao’s got a solid prospect pedigree, ranking inside the first forty spots of the Top-100. He’s got a 40% OBP in the Minors this season with a nearly 1:1 K:BB rate and decent power, with enough speed to warrant 20/20 potential. In his impressive debut, Genao’s Average Exit Velo was 93.7 mph—and while he chased a few pitches out of the zone, he whiffed on zero.
The major question: how long is he up for? Genao took Jose Ramirez’s spot at third base in his initial game. But with Ramirez back in the lineup Thursday, Genao moved to second and Bazzana DH’ed. Cleveland has a pretty crowded infield, so it remains to be seen if he sticks it out in the bigs for the rest of the season. If he performs anywhere close to what he did in the minors, he will.
Endy Rodríguez (PIT) – C,1B (Yahoo – 7%)
Not too long ago, this switch-hitting catcher was ranked as a top-50 prospect, winning an MVP award in the minors with a .997 OPS. Then injuries derailed his very promising career. Rodriguez missed all of 2024 with a UCL tear and various soft tissue injuries held him to 52 at-bats in the Majors in 2025 (where he batted .173).
He probably thought he’d peaked, just as most scouts did. But Endy got another shot this season when Joey Bart hit the IL in May, and he batted .269 in that stint and carried an .858 OPS. Unfortunately, another injury cropped up in mid-June and Rodriguez missed about a month. But he’s back now, and the Pirates apparently feel good enough about him to trade Bart.
Here’s where things get more interesting. The other catcher on their roster, Henry Davis, typically serves as the personal backstop for Paul Skenes. But Endy took his place in Skenes’s last start and has now played in five consecutive games. And he’s been raking, with a 1.035 OPS in August and a pair of homers in his last three.
Endy’s got solid pop with a 92.3 mph Average Exit Velo, gets on base consistenly with a 15% Walk rate, and can even swipe a few bases (he’s got six steals and has been caught just once, not bad for a catcher). If he starts playing nearly every day (he can also take the field at first base), he could be a stud.
Cooper Pratt (MIL) – SS (Yahoo – 19%)
Another top-50 prospect (though more recently than Endy), Pratt’s now been up for about six weeks. His first two weren’t terribly impressive (he had a .532 OPS in June), but he did steal five bags without getting caught. Then he found some fire in July, hitting .329 on the month with a 13:12 K:BB ratio, swiped another five bags, and even bopped a pair of dingers.
He’s now settled in around the seven or eight spot in the Brewers’ lineup, and seems to be getting comfortable. Aside from the steals —and he could amass forty over a full season—Pratt has some other tools. He’s showing solid skills and has his average up to .289, and he walks more than 12% of the time. He’s not hitting for much power just yet (a 4% Barrel rate), but his ‘Sweet Spot’ metrics are more than solid.
At just 21—he was drafted out of High School—Pratt has a bright future. The only knock I’d give him is he’ll need to hit lefties if he wants to keep playing every day—his splits against them are pretty miserable with a .138 average and zero extra-base hits.
Yennier Cano (BAL) – RP (Yahoo – 7%)
There have been times in the past when the Baltimore bullpen has been in shambles and Cano’s had to step in and be the guy. Take 2023, when he was an All Star as a setup man, delivering a 2.11 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP over the season, and then filled in for Felix Bautista. Cano had another good season in ’24 but fell off last year with an ERA over five and a WHIP of nearly 1.5.
Baltimore kept him on board and believed in him, and that belief has paid off for both the Orioles and Cano, who just signed a two-year extension. But a 0.91 WHIP and the best ERA of your career should earn a decent pay raise. Cano’s given up just a single home run in over 50 relief appearances this year, and batters are hitting just .156 against his sinker (a pitch he throws 55% of the time), and .105 against his sweeper (thrown 14% of the time). He’s become the most dominant reliever arm in Baltimore, if not the AL East.
And with many of their core relievers injured, Cano’s earning save chances, with two over the last two weeks. While Andrew Kittredge is also in the mix, Kittredge has a WHIP of 1.44 and an ERA over four. Cano might just grab onto this role until Ryan Helsley comes back, which at this point is at least until September.
Jackson Jobe (DET) – SP (Yahoo – 14%)
Jobe was the bluest of blue chips just a few years ago: drafted third overall and a top-10 prospect for multiple seasons. He settled into Detroit’s rotation last year and was starting to really shine until he tore his UCL. A TJ procedure followed soon after.
Now fourteen months later, Jobe is ready to take on a Major League mound once again, with his first start scheduled for this weekend. He’s looked solid in his rehab efforts, and most importantly, the velocity has been there. He’s touching 100 on the gun in some cases (which is actually harder than he threw before the injury) and got double-digit whiffs in just four innings of work in his last outing.
Jackson will surely get handled with kid gloves by the Tigers, but with the ascension of Max Clark and Jobe’s return, the team is desperately looking to turn the page after trading away Skubal. Jobe will be part of the team’s central core for a long time.
Yahoo and ESPN Most Added Players
Yahoo!
Martín Pérez might earn the title of ‘most-streamed pitcher over the course of a season’ before the year is over. And I can’t knock it: though he barely cracks 90 mph on his fastball (he only throws it 5% of the time anyway), the 35-year-old is more than serviceable in the right matchups, which is why more than 19k Yahoo players added him yesterday.
Unfortunately for those 19k Yahoo players—and everyone who already owned him—Pérez’s night was cut short after three innings thanks to a rain delay. He was cruising against the Marlins, too, with zero hits allowed. The good news is he should be available again next week.
As for the rest of the pitch-and-ditch arms, Dustin May had his first start with his new team, and got the QS and the W, striking out five and allowing six baserunners in six innings. Dustin has a tendency to blow up every once in a while, but he can be very good in between those outings. Now with a winning team, he’s worth keeping.
David Peterson looks like he’s happy to be out of New York, with an ERA more than two runs lower as a Cub than a Met. I wouldn’t suddenly call him a great pitcher, but Peterson threw well enough yesterday to keep the Cubbies in it (and they won in extra innings). While not getting the K’s he was getting in NY (though he struck out eight Yankees last week), his strikeouts are mostly lowered because he’s facing a lot fewer batters per inning.
| Metric | Mets (2026) | Cubs (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| IP | 68.0 | 38.0 |
| ERA | 6.09 | 4.03 |
| WHIP | 1.65 | 1.24 |
| H/9 | 10.8 | 8.0 |
| K/9 | 8.3 | 5.9 |
| BB/9 | 4.0 | 3.1 |
Brandon Young is the last pitcher on the board here, and I honestly can’t see why his ownership rate is higher overall than the other three pitchers (okay, Peterson I get). But Perez and Dustin May should be miles ahead of Young, who had a very unspectacular home start against the Angels, which he lost. He was 8-2 before this start (which maybe was the source of his appeal), but you don’t need to be chasing wins with a guy who was 1-7 last year and is on a mediocre team. He’s going to regress, and hard.
ESPN
Streaming Pitchers
Check out Nick Pollack’s SP Streamer Rankings for the complete breakdown on every start for the next few days. There are two pitchers to highlight.
Keider Montero (DET) – SP (Yahoo – 27%) @ SFG
Montero falls into the soft-contact, low-strikeout, how-does-he-get-away-with-it crowd. But he’s been more successful at getting away with it than most, with a 3.17 ERA and a WHIP right at 1.00. His K-rate is thirteenth-percentile (better than his Whiff rate, which is eighth), but he walks almost nobody, keeps the ball down, and jams his fastball on hitters to get a .198 BAA. And while he only throws his changeup 14% of the time, batters are hitting just .125 against it. He should go to it more often.
Gage Jump (ATH) – SP (Yahoo – 13%) @ BOS
While Jump has been up and down lately (and more down than up), the Athletics‘ #3 prospect is still striking out more than 25% of batters. And his struggles might partially have to do with the Athletics‘ ballpark, as he’s got some crazy home/road splits: at home, he’s 2-5 with a 6.16 ERA and 1.71 WHIP. In away games? 2-2 record, 2.51 ERA, 1.15 WHIP. Hopefully this trend continues at Fenway Park on Saturday. But the last time Jump faced off against the Red Sox, he ended up with a QS/W, struck out seven, and allowed zero runs. I’ll roll the dice to see if he can do it again.
