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
Jordan Romano (LAA) – RP (Yahoo! – 39%)
It’s a beautiful time of the year – spring has sprung, baseball is back, and bullpens are horrifying morasses. There’s no time like the present to grab a bunch of relievers and hope someone works out. There are plenty of these guys who could headline this section: Lucas Erceg (39%), Cole Sands (16%), Paul Sewald (32%), and Riley O’Brien (23%), just to name a few. You can use my method and go to the add players section, sort by saves, and just add whoever has the coolest name. Or more responsible managers can check out our daily Relief Pitchers articles and do their due diligence. It’s an ever-evolving landscape, and it pays to stay on top of these messier closer situations, especially if you went light on closers during the draft. You don’t need to pay for saves, but it doesn’t pay to punt them either.
Ryan Weathers (NYY) – SP (Yahoo! – 30%)
This gig is much easier now in my second year; I can keep recycling my favorite picks from last year. Weathers was a consistent target for me from way back in May of ’25. He missed almost three months but managed a 3.99 ERA with 8.69 K/9 and 2.82 BB/9. His ERA through the first half of the season was 3.28, and I think that’s a much better picture of who Weathers is. Statcast would agree with me on that: his xERA for his first start this year was 3.37 in a game where his actual ERA was 2.08. He only went 4.1 innings, but he held the Mariners to one run and notched seven strikeouts with two walks. He’s still got everything that I loved about him from last year: the velocity, the control, multiple good off-speed options. He’s still getting stretched out, and injuries have always been his biggest stumbling block, but he’s on track to have a fantastic year.
Andrew Painter (PHI) – SP (Yahoo! – 40%)
A long-heralded rookie conveniently making an excellent debut on the day I write my Waiver Wire article? Don’t mind if I do. Painter painted the zone in this one, with eight strikeouts in 5.1 innings. He held the Nats to one run with a single walk and four hits and earned himself the win. The story of his minor league career has been about his massive talent not quite translating to positive results, but he flipped the script this spring, where he posted a 2.31 ERA in 11.2 innings of work. We must acknowledge the risk of chasing after these shiny young pitchers. Painter had a 5.26 ERA in the minors just last year. But now the 22-year-old has demonstrated that he can make it work in the bigs. The floor on who Painter can be is low, but the ceiling is high. Take a shot on him if you can do it without risking too much.
Jordan Walker (STL) – OF (Yahoo! – 10%)
I have no idea what the year of the Jordan Walker breakout will look like. It’s been promised for four years now, and I’ve been duped and bamboozled in each one. I don’t know what the breakout year will look like. It will probably start with him batting .385 with a homer sometime in his first four games, if I had to guess. Probably with a 90th or higher percentile in just about every batting metric that Statcast tracks, if you really want me to imagine it. It might come with a .985 OPS, or something in that ballpark. Well, I won’t be fooled for a fourth year. I guess I’ll close this article and go back to my homepage. Hold on. Wait a minute. Huh.
Yahoo! and ESPN Most Added Players
Yahoo!
Mad Max Scherzer is still kicking and tops today’s top adds with a sweetheart home match-up against the Rockies. I wouldn’t read too much into this start when it comes to evaluating Scherzer for the rest of the year. He was scoreless in 13.2 innings during the spring, but his strikeouts are down, and his walks are up. His 5.19 ERA last season is an indicator that he’ll be lucky to be more than a streamer this year – but you might as well stream him in spots like this.
Cody Ponce was putting together a terrific season debut, which was tragically cut short. His stuff looked great in the 2.1 innings we saw, but it all came to an end following a hyper-extended knee during a fielding attempt. He was put on the injured list with an ACL sprain and stands to miss significant time – though manager John Schneider hopes he will pitch again this season. You can keep him on the IL if you have room, but I’m not holding my breath for him this year.
The legendary Joey Wiemer –10-consecutive-times-on-base-streak will live on forever in our hearts. Not on the field – just in our hearts. We can file this one firmly in the “that’s baseball” column. Wiemer’s a journeyman with a career .679 OPS on the short side of a platoon. Is a breakout technically possible? I guess it is? There’s no harm in rolling the dice if it’s not going to cost you anything, though there are better dice rolls to be had.
While we’re on the topic of surprising season starts and dice rolls, Emerson Hancock is up next. In 2025, Hancock gave up six earned runs in 0.2 innings in his debut. This year was an improvement: going nine times as long and giving up zero times as many runs. His six scoreless innings were accompanied by nine strikeouts, and it’s hard to say anything bad about this start. He’s rocking a new approach with the four-seamer as his primary pitch and the sweeper as his off-speed pitch of choice. The fastball topped out at around 93.5 mph, which makes me nervous, but it’s hard to argue with the results here. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some regression now that teams have scouted his new approach, but I think he has a good chance to improve on his 4.90 ERA from last season. He’s not your waiver wire ace, but he’s looking like a serviceable arm.
Another surprising and familiar face, another gem. Lance McCullers Jr. threw seven innings and gave up just one along the way. Nine strikeouts and one walk rounded out his line, and it’s hard to say anything bad here either. The velo is up a tick from last year, sitting at 92.2 mph rather than 91.5. He used six different pitches, demonstrating that he can still dip into his kitchen sink of tricks. When it all comes together, it can work. But I can’t imagine it will come together often enough to make him a must-add pitcher. He’s a streamer for me this year.
ESPN
Check out the Yahoo! section above for write-ups for the first three of these guys.
Sal Stewart is having a colossal start to the season, with a 1.931 OPS and a home run in his first four games. I think a lot of people missed the excellent debut he had last year, too, ending the campaign with an .839 OPS with five home runs in 18 games. He was the Reds’ top prospect, and he crushed every level of the minors – and now he’s extending that success to the majors. He’s above the rostership threshold where I can make him a priority pick, but he’d be right up at the top otherwise.
José Soriano was someone I wrote about on this same date exactly one year ago. He was 29% rostered at the time, and I wrote, “What if you took Framber Valdez and gave him three more ticks of velocity on every pitch? Soriano is an elite groundball pitcher coming off a stellar season opener where he went seven scoreless innings. Yes, it was the White Sox, and yes, he only notched five strikeouts, but Soriano looks like he’ll be a Quality Start machine… This is the guy the Angels should be building around.” I stand by all of that with two small updates for this year: he’s gone 12 scoreless with 11 strikeouts now across two starts, this time against the Astros and the Cubs. He had a rough spring, but he’s looking so very back. This is the guy to get if he’s still available.
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 I’d like to highlight.
Noah Cameron (KCR) – SP (Yahoo! – 31%) vs MIN
My April 1 pick, Cameron, had a rough spring, but that’s not the death sentence people are expecting it to be – look at José Soriano. Cameron impressed with a 2.99 ERA last year, and I think he can easily find his way back to that. He’ll square off against the 1-3 Twins, and it should be a good landing pad even if he hasn’t quite shaken his spring struggles. I like these kinds of streamers early in the year, the ones who have a chance to stick in your rotation if things go well.
David Peterson (NYM) – SP (Yahoo! – 35%) @ SFG
My pick for tomorrow, not the most exciting arm, but the Giants are spiraling, and it’s a short slate of games.
