We are officially in the fantasy baseball championship push.
Whether you’re trying to hold onto a top spot, pushing the leader, desperately trying to play catch up, or positioning yourself for playoff matchups, reinforcements and upside are vital this time of year.
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Most waiver wires have been picked over though and it’s difficult to find impact players readily available in most leagues at this point in the season.
Fear not, because there are still a handful of available players that have the chance to be difference makers that help push us towards glory.
MLB: New York Mets at Arizona Diamondbacks
2025 Fantasy Baseball Top 300 update: Juan Soto joins top five, Sal Stewart debuts
Roman Anthony surges, and Sal Stewart and Payton Tolle crack the top 200 in their rankings debuts.
Here are three players that are under 40% rostered on Yahoo leagues that you should strongly consider adding.
If you want a larger list, Eric Samulski wrote his extended waiver wire piece on Sunday.
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Kyle Bradish, SP Orioles
(38% Rostered on Yahoo)
Out for more than a calendar year as he recovered from Tommy John surgery, Bradish has been better than expected upon returning. Through two starts, he’s struck out 15 batters and walked two in 10 innings and only allowed four earned runs (3.60 ERA).
Most of that production came in his first start off the injured list when he struck out 10 Red Sox over six innings and allowed two runs via two solo homers.
His slider and curveball were sharp and combined for 11 total swings-and-misses while his fastball and sinker each sat around 95 mph, exactly where they were pre-surgery. It was a very encouraging return.
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He struggled a bit more with the Padres on Monday, where he only completed four innings and allowed six total base runners.
Yet, he was dealing with an erratic strike zone from home plate umpire Gabe Morales and didn’t allow much hard contact at all. If a 35-pitch second inning that spun off the rails went a bit different, we could’ve been looking at back-to-back excellent starts.
Apart from these great results and prominence of his breaking stuff, there’s been an interesting change to Bradish’s fastball shape over these two starts.
Over the last few seasons, he pushed his four-seam fastball mostly out of his repertoire to make room for more sinkers. That is, until these last two starts.
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It makes sense why he would’ve: opposing hitters slugged over .500 against that fastball since he…