Waiver Wire Offseason: AL

Lester is unproven? Lester’s an ace!

How about Cuddyer?  He had some forgetable seasons there and now he’s a slugger again?

Adam Jones?  Will he continue to improve? Significant BB/K improvement, higher HR totals this year but I’m still waiting for him to run and worried about his injury.  Keeping him at $3 is almost a no-brainer (only because it’s him or vazquez) but I am having trouble assessing his value relative to my other keepers.

Have you don Zobrist yet?  It seems like he just continued what he did in his little playing time last year as far as power (HR/FB same, HR/PA is similar but he walked more), but the BABIP correction and higher LD% helped his BA a ton.

Thanks for the column!

Hey, thanks for the comments!  Lester, Verlander, Jones, and Cuddyer are all in the queue for next week… good choices. 

I noted Carpenter in a comment over on the NL side to make sure Mike saw it, and without thinking too much, my take on him is that I’d fully expect him to be great again, albeit with a higher-than-average chance of a season-ending injury.  Clearly, in the case of someone like him, the questions are “how great?” and “how much more likely?”  I think I’ll pose that to the group, since he’s a fairly unique case.