Last Updated on July 4, 2025 12:33 pm by Paul Williamson | Published: July 4, 2025

Guess what, America? This article is an imported product!

That’s right, you’re getting a Canadian on this here Fourth of July. Don’t worry though, despite our countries’ differences of late, I promise to never turncoat on our readers and to continue providing quality fantasy analysis nonetheless – as long as you don’t tariff me in our trades! Sit back, relax, and enjoy your brats, day baseball and fireworks. This Canuck has your waiver wire picks covered.

Below, we dive into the two surprise Lopez’s (Lopezez? Lopezi?) that have shown legitimate breakout potential, as well as two starters who are experiencing newfound levels of success thanks to a change in which organization they call home.

Oh and don’t forget to nab Joey Chestnut off waivers if your leagues counts Dogs/9. The GOAT is coming off a shocking year-long suspension and may still be available in certain formats.

Away we go!

Otto Lopez – SS – MIA – 46% Yahoo, 53% CBS

Last 14 Days: .364/.440/.545 – 2HR/1SB – .425 wOBA – .182 ISO – 173 wRC+

A Statcast darling in the early part of the season, Lopez struggled to deliver on the hype, posting just a .624 OPS through April but he’s been on a steady rise ever since, with a .762 OPS in May and an .812 OPS in June.

Even with the disappointing-to-mediocre surface numbers he put forth through the first two months of the season, Lopez’s strong month of June has helped elevate him to the upper five-percent of all hitters when it comes to expected batting average (.301) and he’s no laggard in xwOBA (86th-percentile) and xSLG (78th-percentile) either. He does this by limiting strikeouts to just 13.5% (90th-percentile) while adding enough walks (9.2%) to give him a solid OBP floor but his power ceiling is still something that’s in question as he currently holds a 19th-percentile mark in the category for the season.

But again, let’s separate out his monthly outputs;

There’s some overall fluctuations there – in no small part because Lopez missed about a third of May, making the sample size even smaller – but the early season doldrums where he couldn’t seem to find a hard hit even if he were at a UFC fight are now seemingly in the rearview. If they are in fact, and he’s able to put forth a line more closely aligned with his expected rates…

… then he will suddenly be a much hotter fantasy commodity in the second half of the season – especially with shortstop eligibility.

Jacob Lopez – SP – ATH – 36% Yahoo, 74% CBS

Last 14 Days: 10.1 IP – 2.61 ERA/3.86 FIP/0.97 WHIP – 7:2 K:BB – 1 HR

When the Tampa Bay organization is willing to cut bait on a young starter, we’ve been conditioned to assume the worst of that player going forward – after all, they have a reputation as one of – if not the – best organizations at developing out-of-nowhere starters over the past 10-15 years but even All-Star hitters sometimes strike out 25% of the time and the Rays are no less immune to the occasional swing and miss. Enter Jacob Lopez, acquired by the Athletics in the same trade that sent Jeffrey Springs from the Florida peninsula to the West Coast.

Though Springs was arguably the headliner of that deal, Lopez has outperformed him by almost every measure en route to a 3.88 ERA and 56:18 K:BB rate over his first 46.1 innings in Oakland Vegas Sacramento an Athletics uniform. He is suffering from a bloated 1.34 WHIP but that comes with a .314 BABIP against which could see a touch of positive regression and his 3.50 BB/9 isn’t particularly worrisome as he pairs that with a 10.88 K/9.

Under the hood, Lopez lives in the land of extremes with upper-quartile rankings in important metrics such as xBA (78th), average exit velocity against (77th), whiff rate (74th), Barrel% (85th) and hard-hit rate (85th) but he sits near the bottom rung when it comes to his 90.7mph average fastball (8th-percentile) and groundball rate (1st). When you’re playing with 1970’s level fastball heat and let hitters put those batted balls in the air, it’s going to lead to the occasional blowup (or two). To that end, Lopez’s worst two starts of the season (by a significant margin) came in back-to-back outings, giving up lines of;

4.1IP – 5H – 5ER – 3HR- 1BB – 9K

1.2IP – 6H – 7ER – 2HR – 1BB – 0K

Though he rescued the one outing by tallying nearly double-digit strikeouts, the other highlights how low the floor can go when things aren’t clicking for Lopez. But if we’re going to play with small sample sizes, what has Lopez done since those two disaster outings?

How about 26.1 innings of 1.37 ERA (2.67 FIP) with a 1.03 WHIP and a 30:8 K:BB while giving up just a single barreled ball (1.5%)? There will likely be some stinkers mixed in but Lopez has shown that he can perform at a high level for a reasonably long period – enough to earn our trust as a spot starter at minimum, with the upside for more.

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Jeff Clowers

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