Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Eddie Rosario and Jose Pirela are too hot to leave on the waiver wire
I am all about the long game in Fantasy Baseball. I try not to overreact to hot streaks from average players, because they usually don't last. But we're getting to the point in the season where that type of thinking is foolhardy.
Many leagues just have one or two weeks left in the regular season. If a guy is hot right now, what he'll be doing in a month is largely irrelevant. So let's go get Eddie Rosario (33 percent owned) and Jose Pirela (21 percent).
Rosario has torn the cover off the baseball to the tune of .356/.388/.756 in the month of August, but that's less than half a month, right? He had an .858 OPS in July. In June it was .861. He's still just 25 years old and now had a 105 OPS+ for his career. At the very least, Rosario looks like a slightly above-average hitter, but right now he looks like a league-winner. In a three outfielder league you might have a tough time finding a spot for him but his ownership suggest he's on the waiver wire in five outfielder leagues too. That's nonsense.
Pirela is two years older, which makes his star turn a little harder to buy, but he's also second-base eligible, which makes him much more appealing. He's been in the middle of the Padres lineup since the All-Star break, and he's justified it with a .307/.375/.574 slash line. Over the past nine weeks he's averaged 19.3 Fantasy points per week. That's top-10 production.
Here's the rest of Monday's waiver wire: