You’ve heard it referred to as “hidden gems” or “buried treasure” ...

I guess this is being a little more realistic, though.

We are here, at the bottom of the barrel – a player pool totally depleted of the upper-echelon talent you yearn for and the popular sleepers everybody wants to point out on their roster and smile out; here, only the leftovers remain.

But who are we to turn our noses up at leftovers?

Who am I to turn my nose up at leftovers? I ate a nice plate of leftover chicken casserole before sitting down to enjoy Tennessee vs. Alabama on a lovely Saturday afternoon, so y’all know I’m not too proud to say there’s something good to find in the leftovers.

Chicken casserole is still pretty good two days later.

So, too, are a few of these players – still pretty good after being picked over and thumbed through eight or nine times.

Background and Set-Up

If you’re new to my writing, "Drew writing," welcome. Those of you who have been here before are well aware I like to explain what brought me to this writing, as well as the rationale and logistics behind the data I share.

In my home league, a Yahoo 16-team, Head-to-Head Categories League with OPS and QS added, contract system, auction drafting, and players only added to the pool once they have made their major league debut (or are added to their team’s 40-Man Roster), pitching has always been king.

For the most part, each of the 16 teams can be counted on to roster at least eight starting pitchers on average, meaning only about 15 percent of the available starting pitchers are available on waivers at any given point.

The bottom 15 percent, some may argue, and I will not argue against this sentiment.

With so many pitchers rostered, this means the wire is primarily filled with Yahoo’s best blend of bottom-barrel pitching: chum-level starters, a few eighth-inning set-up types, a few more seventh-inning guys, a boatload of middle relief options, and minor leaguers.

My team’s pitching staff is not terrible, but I am always on the hunt for a strong buy or a good bargain, so I took it upon myself to find these diamonds in the rough, the buried treasure at the bottom of the barrel.

…if any exist.

I downloaded a custom leaderboard from Baseball Savant loaded with various pitch-tracking metrics collected over the 2024 season and hoped to find the 88th(ish) percentiles of these different statistics, reasoning if a pitcher still available on the waiver wire in my league had statistics which rivaled (or exceeded) those of pitchers who have already made their way to my league mates rosters, they are probably worth monitoring at least, or rostering at best.

So what are the stats? 

The 88th percentile innings pitched mark is 153.1, and the strikeout rate is 31 percent. The walk rate is 5.2 percent, and the whiff rate is 33.3, but I even managed to go as granular as seeking out the 88th percentile slider MPH (88 MPH), average RPM (spin rate) for a curveball (2675 RPM), and the average vertical break on a changeup (36”).

Again – I knew if I could find pitchers whose performance or metrics rivaled those we as a league quickly snapped up, I could find value left at the bottom of the barrel.

I have taken the liberty of writing about five pitchers at varying levels of usefulness to your fantasy teams and will provide a less-deep list of players who stood out for each group, too, along with my recommendation for your action.