With the season now several weeks underway, one of the most fun things in fantasy baseball is evaluating where your roster is in terms of strengths and needs, and then shopping the waiver wire for who is available to fill those needs. Picking up a player who then makes immediate points contributions is really satisfying, and it’s a big part of the reason why so many late-round draft picks are expendable early in the year — if they’re not producing, there is always going to be somebody on the wire who is.
Knowing when to make these moves can be the difference between winning and losing a points league week, and a few early-season wins can end up being the difference at the end of the year between a playoff contender and a team watching from the outside. In other words, it all adds up, and being an active manager can make a huge difference in points leagues. With that said, let us get into some players who are currently massively under-rostered for the points production that they’re putting up.
2024 Points League Ranking – 711th; 2025 Points League Ranking – 91st; 38% Rostered (Yahoo)
With a 2.00 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and 9K/9IP through his first three starts, Max Meyer deserves to be rostered in all points leagues. It is understandable why some owners in categories leagues might be hesitant to sacrifice the win column with a Miami Marlins pitcher. In points leagues, though, when wins and losses factor into each outing but can mostly be pushed aside by otherwise consistently good performances, an arm throwing the way Meyer currently is will always have value, and he needs to be started until he proves otherwise. A former third overall pick in 2020, Meyer underwent Tommy John surgery on August 9, 2022 and has had trouble gaining momentum with his career ever since. There are many reasons to believe that this is the season Meyer is finally breaking out.
Meyer had a great spring and was on many sleeper and late-round lists coming into the season, and so far he has delivered on those optimistic prognostications. It should be noted that a highly-praised increase in velocity on Meyer’s four-seamer that he was displaying in the spring does not seem to have stuck around for his latest regular season outing against the New York Mets, but that didn’t affect his results whatsoever.
Previously known mostly for his wicked slider, Meyer also mixed in a four-seamer, changeup, sinker and sweeper in this outing to keep Mets’ hitters off balance and off the base paths. Though his four strikeouts in 6.1 IP aren’t anything to write home about, Meyer was able to induce nine ground-outs and cruised through most innings without any stress. This was all despite averaging around 95 MPH on the four-seamer rather than the 97 MPH he was throwing in the spring. With a host of early-season injuries already occurring to starting pitchers across the league, and a general lack of quality on most fantasy waiver wires, Meyer is a must-add if he is still available in your league.
2024 Points League Ranking – 179th; 2025 Points League Ranking – 66th; 22% Rostered (Yahoo)
Sal Frelick is quietly having a great start to the season while hitting in a prime run-producing spot of fifth in the Milwaukee Brewers‘ order each night. Frelick has legitimate prospect pedigree, having been drafted fifteenth overall in the 2021 draft out of Boston College. His power is limited, which has suppressed his value in category leagues (ranked 125th currently), but hitting for a .327 average with elite sprint speed (91st percentile) is a tool worth having on any points league roster. Frelick has one of the more extreme splits when it comes to his overall Statcast data, with all metrics relating to power being near the bottom of the league and all contact metrics coming in well above league average.
As long as he continues to put the ball into play, Frelick should be able to find enough ways to get on base, drive in runs, and score runs to be a valuable points league contributor, regardless of whether or not he improves any of the power numbers. The four hitters in front of Frelick in the lineup all have very high ceilings, with Brice Turang and Jackson Chourio already operating at an elite level to open the year, and Christian Yelich and William Contreras having shown enough production in past years to not be overly concerned about their slow starts. Mainly thanks to Turang, Chourio, and Frelick, the Brewers are fifth in the league in runs scored, so if Yelich and Contreras can heat up as well, then one can imagine this offense really starting to roll.
Frelick also stole 18 bases last season, and his three steals this year put him on a pace of about 30 steals for the full season. The tools all seem there for Frelick to finish as a top 100 points league player, and he should not be lingering around on the waiver wire much longer.
2024 Points League Ranking – 96th; 2025 Points League Ranking – 118th; 11% Rostered (Yahoo)
A player hitting third or fourth in a lineup every night after finishing last season in the top 100 players in points leagues would be expected to be rostered in just about every league, especially one whose production so far this season is nearly identical to 2024. This is not the case for Carlos Santana, though, who is still available in 88% of leagues. Likely ignored due to the fact that he is 39 years old, Santana was batting .286 through his first 47 plate appearances of the year, with two home runs and eight runs scored (he’s even thrown in one stolen base, impressive for a player with a sprint speed in the ninth percentile). His average has since dipped to .250 after a weekend series against the Royals in which he didn’t produce much, but there are still all the signs of a veteran hitter with a good approach who is firmly entrenched in the middle of the Guardians’ order.
Other than subpar bat speed and average exit velocity, Santana’s underlying metrics are all firmly above-average and show all the signs of a mature hitter with a sustainable approach. He makes up for his lack of bat speed with pretty consistent decision-making and contact skills that kept his overall approach above league-average last season, with several impressive peaks in between.
This approach has led to exactly 23 home runs for Santana in each of the last two seasons, and he is at a similar pace so far this year. Especially important for points leagues, Santana does a great job limiting strikeouts, which helps him maintain a solid points floor. His career strikeout rate of 15.8% is well below the league average of 22.2%, and he is continuing that trend this season.
His ceiling is likely limited by his lack of speed and some expected decline in power for his age, but there are far fewer productive players currently being rostered in most points leagues. Santana’s ability to be selective and mostly swing at the pitches he wants to hit should help ensure that he is on base often enough and taking part in enough run-scoring rallies to continue to be a valuable points league player.
2024 Points League Ranking – 957th; 2025 Points League Ranking – 130th; 17% Rostered (Yahoo)
Tyler Mahle has begun the 2025 season by giving up only one earned run through his first 12 innings on the mound for the Texas Rangers. This includes an impressive outing against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, where he threw 7 innings of two-hit ball against the team currently leading the league in runs scored by a wide margin (the Cubs came into that game having scored 94 runs compared to 82 for the second-ranked New York Yankees). Though only compiling four strikeouts in that outing, Mahle only handed out one free pass and looked in control all evening.
Unable to rely on pure velocity (Mahle’s four-seamer is averaging only 91.9 MPH this season), Mahle mixes in splitters, sliders and cutters that all grade out extremely well when looking at their respective PLV ratings.
Mahle’s four-seamer has a PLV that is still slightly above league average despite the low velocity, as it combines good horizontal and vertical movement to induce whiffs at an impressive rate:
Especially important are the metrics at the bottom of the above image, showing that despite the below-average velocity and middle-of-the-road extension, Mahle’s four-seamer grades out well across the board on every other important metric. The pitch has great arm-side break and good induced vertical break, and Mahle locates it consistently well. Even if he does not end up racking up the strikeouts, suppressing his category league value a bit, it looks like an arsenal that can lead to more than enough quality outings and plenty of points for Mahle.
The Rangers are playing good baseball to start the year, off to a 9-7 record and looking like the favorites to win the AL West. With a seven-inning performance against the league-leading offense already under his belt, it looks like they will be trusting Mahle to deliver a decent amount of innings for them as they push to contend again after a disappointing 2024 season following their 2023 World Series win. With the Rangers putting their trust in Mahle to be one of their horses this year, it seems like only a matter of time before his ownership rate in fantasy dramatically increases. He’s absolutely worth a look as a back-end rotation guy for your points team.
2024 Points League Ranking – 194th; 2025 Points League Ranking – 124th; 12% Rostered (Yahoo)
Mike Yastrzemski has shown the ability to hit the ball out of the park since his arrival in the big leagues in 2019, with a career pace of 25 home runs per 162 games played. If he stays in the San Francisco Giants lineup every day, he has the clear potential for 20-25 home runs this season, and his current batting average of .300 suggests he has started this season more locked in than ever. Yastrzemski has previously had several years of struggles at the plate in terms of a poor batting average, but he did hit .280 through his first two seasons (163 games), so it is not like he has always been a poor average hitter. Even with the fluctuations in batting average, Yastrzemski’s power has remained consistent throughout his career.
So far in 2025, there are more reasons than just the home runs to be excited about what Yastrzemski is doing at the plate.
Those expected numbers are especially reassuring since Yastrzemski does have an inflated BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .450 compared with the league average of .281, so there is certainly some luck involved in his current batting average. Again, though, the fact that his expected numbers are not too far off from his actual numbers suggests that he is doing more than his fair share of the work in terms of hitting the ball well and creating his own luck to some degree.
The Giants have so far been the surprise team to many to start the year, with an 11-4 record and an offense firmly in the top half of the league. Yastrzemski was recently moved up in the order from eighth to sixth, and went 6/17 with two doubles and two home runs in that spot, including an impressive walk-off into McCovey Cove on April 9 against the Cincinnati Reds. Even more recently, he was moved into the lead-off role for the first two games in a weekend series at Yankee Stadium, so it will be very interesting to see if he continues to get more time at the very top of a very hot Giants lineup.
Manager Bob Melvin and new president of baseball operations (and franchise legend) Buster Posey have explicitly made it clear that they are trying to instill stability and consistency within the roster and the lineup this season. This has led to Posey making zero roster moves so far during the 2025 season, compared to the ten that his predecessor had already made at this early point in the year last season. That philosophy has seeped down to the manager as well, as Melvin has clearly preferred putting out a lineup of consistent personnel day-to-day rather than constantly moving players in and out the way that many modern-day managers like to do. This is all relevant for Yastrzemski because he has been a player who has often been taken in and out of the lineup in years past, never once having surpassed 500 at-bats in a single season. Perhaps a bit of stability is all that was needed to unlock a different level of hitter. Given the fact that he is available in just about every league right now, he’s definitely worth an add this week if you’re in need of production at either the outfield or utility position.
