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Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Are Bobby Bradley and Luis Urias 12-team material yet?

Jul. 1, 2021
Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Are Bobby Bradley and Luis Urias 12-team material yet?

On a day when the long ball reigned across MLB, a couple two-homer performances in particular stood out.

Bobby Bradley, the Indians' first baseman for the past four weeks or so, continued his massive power display with his seventh and eighth home runs during that stretch. Luis Urias, meanwhile, closed out his impressive June with his fourth and fifth home runs for the month.

The question is whether either deserves to be picked up in the more than 60 percent of CBS Sports leagues where they remain available.

We're talking standard 12-teamers, basically. To this point, I've avoided recommending them outside of deeper leagues, where by now they're already rostered.

For Bradley, strikeouts are a real concern. He accumulated them at about a 33 percent rate in the minors the past three seasons, which led to him batting .196 prior to his promotion this year. We've seen major-leaguers succeed with that sort of strikeout rate in recent seasons, but they've needed premium average exit velocity and an optimal average launch angle to do it. Bradley has demonstrated neither thus far. And while his strikeout rate since the promotion is a not-as-bad 28 percent, it's 33 percent over his past 13 games.

As for Urias, his most likely outcome is still a low-impact one. The former Padres prospect's production has been stunted in the majors for several years now. This June was the best month of his career, and the numbers were still fairly modest: a .284 batting average, five home runs and an .875 OPS. It would be great if he could repeat them month after month, but judging by his track record, that's a big ask.

He is triple-eligible, though, which is worth something in its own right, and there's something to be said for any player with the kind of raw power Bradley has. But I think both players' June production was the maximum extent of their potential rather than being the tip of the iceberg.

Neither should be rostered in much more than 50 percent of CBS Sports leagues, I'd say, and I can muster more enthusiasm for all three of the hitters included below ...


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