The first week of fantasy baseball is a lot like the first week of college.

Even if it’s not your first time, everything is a little disorienting and out of sorts – you’ve got new lessons to learn, like Torpedo Bats 101, and you may already be dropping draft picks faster than you’d drop a Friday class that starts at 7am. But by the second week, you’re beginning to feel a little bit more at home; you know how to get around and you’re maybe even starting to figure out who you might become long-term friends with.

Could one of these names below be your new bestie?!

Well, I don’t know about you but my hit rate on keeping up with people from my college days is fairly low. I do still remember the glory days fondly though, so even if it was just a short-term boost, it was still a worthwhile experience. Same goes for the four players on today’s waiver wire report. Your mileage may vary by graduation season’s end but right now, they’re certainly worth having on your team for the immediate future.

Kyren Paris – 2B – LAA – 64% Yahoo, 67% CBS

Probably the hottest player (non-Judge division) in MLB currently, Paris broke an AL record earlier this week by being the first player ever with five home runs and four stolen bases in their first 10 games of the season. The comparison to Judge seems fairly absurd as Paris came into the 2025 season with only one career home run in the majors but as one of my leaguemates (incessantly) reminds me, Paris spent the summer reworking his swing with the help of Judge’s swing coach and now has a motion that bears quite the resemblance to that of the 2024 AL MVP.

His Statcast is strikingly similar as well, with elite production in important metrics such as Barrel% and xwOBA – two statistics that are known for stabilizing earlier than most, meaning there’s more statistical signal and less noise than others. So is Paris actually, uh, how you say… très bien?

Oui!

Though just as often overhyped during Spring Training as a player who is in “the best shape of their life”, I hold more faith in the potential for breakout coming from a legitimate swing change so I’m willing to completely toss out what I thought of Paris previously and to start fresh with my impressions. That first impression was shock by the amount of deep red on the charts, followed by the impression that a fourth-percentile whiff rate is reason enough to abandon ship before the bottom drops out.

But the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that the profile works as whole – specifically because of his propensity for whiffs. It’s a bit counter-intuitive at first but think of it this way; would you rather whiff entirely on a 1-0 pitch or make weak contact that ends in a groundout? On the surface, making contact seems like it is always the best option but elite sluggers know that they’re more likely to see success as they see more and more pitches in an at-bat. And if you happen to connect on a home run? Well, nobody’s going to remember you whiffing on the first two pitches.

The thing that really exemplifies that mindset is the huge improvement between his whiff rate and his actual strikeout rate. The ability to generate batted balls that are potentially home runs early in the count, while still being able to shorten the swing when behind in order to prevent punching out is an under-the-radar skill that’s not quite captured by one Statcast metric. Instead, it takes a couple in tandem to paint a full picture of just how impressive he’s been through the first couple weeks.

I’m a believer in Paris.

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