Working the Waiver Wire: April 8

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  • By Anthony Kates

    Last Updated on April 8, 2026 5:18 am by Anthony Kates | Published: April 8, 2026

    It’s the third week of the fantasy baseball season, but it feels like the third month with the number of top players hitting the injured list. Just this past week Juan Soto, Hunter Brown, Cade Horton, Alejandro Kirk, Mookie Betts, Matthew Boyd, Justin Verlander, Jordan Lawlar and Zach Eflin all hit the IL.

    That’s a tremendous amount of talent to be removed from the active pool all at once, for both real life performance and for fantasy purposes, which makes articles like this one even more important.

    Though it will be next to impossible to replace all of the numbers that Soto, Brown, Betts or even Kirk could provide, I think the names I’ve got for you today will go a long way towards patching any holes on your squads that these injuries may have caused.

    *Note that all listed roster %’s are from Yahoo, at the time of the writing of this article. Almost all of our waiver wire recommendations are widely available across all major platforms, however.*

    Carter Jensen – C – KCR – 21%

    The fact that Jensen is available in 79% of is absolutely criminal. He is going to end the year as a top-10 fantasy catcher (if not close to the top 5) and fantasy managers gave up on him in droves over the first week-and-a-half of the season.

    He’s hit a home run in back-to-back games, after hitting a solo shot in Tuesday afternoon’s loss to the Guardians, and now has more extra base hits than singles.

    I can’t completely blame people for dropping him, since he has struggled this season. His contact rate is under 67%, his barrel rate is under 7% and his ground ball rate is 53.3%, but he has an established professional career of excelling at every level and producing well in each of those categories, so it is a matter of time before those numbers improve. He’s hitting the ball hard, he rarely chases, the swinging strike rate isn’t terrible, the strikeout rate will come down, the walk rate will rise and at the end of the year, the Royals will have two of the 12 best offensive catcher options in the league.

    Bryce Elder – SP – ATL – 42%

    Any time a a homegrown Braves pitcher shows a bit of a breakout, I pay attention.

    And that’s what we might be seeing with Elder right now. This is his fifth year in the big leagues and he is posting his best strikeout, walk, contact, chase, whiff and swinging strike numbers of his career.

    His slider has been dominant again, generating a 32.4% whiff rate and a 44.4% strikeout rate, limiting batters to just a .059 batting average. He’s added a cutter, that he throws exclusively to lefties, that has been his second best pitch on the season.

    He’s maintained his ground ball forward profile, with more than double the ground balls than fly balls, a hard hit rate under 38% and has yet to allow a barrel in two starts. His walk rate is down for the fourth season in a row, even though his zone rate is down, but chalk that up to a career best chase rate.

    There is the upside for a top 40 to 50 SP season here and it is available in more than half of all leagues.

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    April 8, 2026, 5:18 am