Welcome to Pickup of the Day, where every weekday we’ll pick an under-the-radar player whose immediate value is on the rise. The idea here is to identify a starter who can give you some solid innings off the scrap heap, a talented backup who’s been given a chance because of a starter’s injury, an unheralded regular with a favorable matchup, or a potential breakout player who’s starting to put it together. Unlike regular waiver-wire advice, Pickup of the Day is geared more towards interim success, but hopefully we’ll have the intuition to help you snag a waiver-wire gem a few times this season.
Kyle Hendricks’ MLB career got off to a rough start. Well, for one-third of an inning, anyway. Hendricks yielded three runs in the first inning of his major league debut back on July 10 versus the Reds before recording his second out. Since then, he’s gone 41 frames while allowing just five earned runs (1.10 ERA). He gets by more on savvy than stuff, but Hendricks boasted a 2.69 ERA and 386/81 K/BB ratio over 452 1/3 innings in the minors. The 24-year-old is owned in just 16 percent of Yahoo! leagues at the moment, but that number figures to rise.
