Last Updated on August 8, 2025 11:48 am by Paul Williamson | Published: August 8, 2025

Real-life baseball trades may now be relegated to a backburner concern for front offices until the offseason with the deadline now passed but that doesn’t mean the hot stove has suddenly gone cold in the fantasy world. For many, the MLB trade deadline is a reminder that the deadline in your own leagues is rapidly approaching and something you want to be well prepared for, rather than getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar by other owners as you attempt to pry loose a win-now piece from a team focused on next year. In other words, it’s often beneficial to make your moves now – in part because the cost of acquisition is likely to go up but also because you’ll have a longer runway of time for that player to contribute to your squad.

Some of the names below may not even require you parting with anything of value, considering they are available on waivers in a majority of leagues. Even if they are though, I believe they’re worth targeting and acquiring at their current values.

Let’s dive in!

Cade Horton – SP – CHC – 38% Yahoo, 52% CBS

Last 14 Days: 17.0 IP – 0.00 ERA/2.51 FIP/0.70 WHIP – 12:4 K:BB – 0 HR

Whenever you put up seventeen straight scoreless innings – and your roster rate is somehow still below 50% – you better believe you’re going to take home top honors for today’s edition of Working The Waiver Wire.

Thanks to this recent stretch, Horton now has quietly worked his season-long ERA down to a tidy 3.18, paired with a respectable 1.22 WHIP, all while giving up walks at just a 7.6 percent rate, good for a placement in the middle of the pack (59th-percentile) amongst starters. Still though, a 23-year-old with prospect pedigree is owned in less than half of leagues – so what gives?

You may be able to sniff out the issue just by looking at his statline from the past two weeks, because for as impressive as he’s been in the run prevention metrics, Horton has struggled to rack up the necessary strikeout totals to maintain his fantasy relevancy – even during his hottest stretch of the season, he still only managed a strikeout rate of 20.0 percent, while his swinging-strike rate actually fell below his season average, going from 11.8 percent to 8.9 percent. Perhaps this three start sample of slightly improved raw strikeout totals is just a mirage but there still are some signs that Horton could eventually work his way into a strikeout rate around league average, namely the 62nd-percentile chase rate and 68th-percentile whiff rate that he carries for the season.

Digging further into the specifics of his arsenal, it just seems to be his four-seam and the lack of swing-and-miss on the pitch that is dragging down his entire profile;

Horton averages 95.6mph on his heater, so it’s not even an issue with velocity, moreso pitch movement. To that end, Stuff+ grades his four-seam out at as his third-best pitch, scoring a below-average 91 while his top two both come in above-average. That said, his Location+ on the offering does grade out as a shade above average so he is able to command it reasonably well.

Realistically, it will take a not-insignificant bit of tinkering to his pitch options in order to unlock a new level of ceiling for Horton but he’s starting to prove that the floor is perhaps significantly higher than we initially thought.

Colson Montgomery – SS – CHW – 38% Yahoo, 59% CBS

Last 14 Days: .209/.209/.628- 6HR/0SB – .347 wOBA – .419 ISO – 122 wRC+

Just like if you pitch seventeen straight innings without being scored on, if a player allows me to bust out one of my favorite baseball sayings and I get to do so in meme format, then they’re definitely getting written about. So without further ado…

Selected in the back half of the first round in the 2021 draft, Montgomery carried reasonably high expectations even as a high school hitter, receiving a $3-million dollar bonus on the strength of his power and on-base skills. After a cup of coffee in the complex leagues as a 19-year old in 2021, Montgomery came out the following year and slashed a combined .274/.381/.429 across three levels (A/A+/AA), which officially put him on the map as a prospect, but then struggled at Triple-A to the tune of a .700 OPS – though he did so at the precocious age of 22, under-age for the level by a year or two.

His struggles began to mount through his first 23 games of the year though, as Montgomery managed a paltry .149 average with just a .479 OPS while striking out 41.7% of the time. Even though he was still younger than most of his competition at Triple-A, it’s impossible to just look past an output so putrid while simply claiming he’ll just work through things, so the White Sox took a drastic step – they demoted him. Not back to Double-A, nor even to High-A. No, Montgomery was sent all the way down to the Complex leagues in order to clear his head while reworking his swing mechanics in an attempt to get him back on track.

The experiment has seemingly worked wonders, with Montgomery posting a .926 OPS over his next 32 games at Triple-A and earning himself a promotion to the big leagues for his MLB debut. Having now racked up 27 games in the majors, Montgomery is delivering on the type of power-over-hit profile expected of him, though perhaps more towards the extreme end of that archetype than expected, as his home run total (6) over the past 14 days is six higher than his walk total (0). With such a small sample, Montgomery is far from the requirements to qualify for the batting leaderboards but he’s currently running some of the worst chase, whiff, strikeout and walk rates of any hitter – but he is also showcasing elite talent in the top-five percent for barrel rate, launch angle sweet-spot rate, bat speed, and expected slugging.

Often with players like this, analysts will throw out a classic “better in OBP formats” comment due to his potential for near-Mendoza line averages but it’s really only formats that consider slugging in which Montgomery is currently able to hit himself out of being an anchor in the remaining categories. Still, this is a player who has shown top-notch mental fortitude and resilience, so I’m a believer in even brighter days ahead. For now, as we await a more complete profile, enjoy the home run binges as they happen – I get the sense there will be more to come.

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Jeff Clowers

• Working The Waiver Wire: August 8th
• Working The Waiver Wire: August 1st
• "The Dynasty Diamond": July 29th