Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Oakland Athletics SP Drew Pomeranz

By Brad Berreman @bradberreman24 on May 13, 2014

Drew Pomeranz started the season in the Oakland Athletics’ bullpen, but he made his first start in part of a doubleheader against the Seattle Mariners last Wednesday, pitched well enough (five shutout innings) to stick in rotation and Dan Straily was demoted to make room for him.

Pomeranz will start Tuesday night at home against the Chicago White Sox, which looks more favorable than you might think with first baseman Jose Abreu (14 home runs and 38 RBI) in the lineup. The White Sox lead the American League in runs scored right now (201) and Abreu has obviously become an immediate force, but only one other White Sox player has more than 20 RBI (Alexei Ramirez) and no one else has more than five home runs. Chicago also leads all of baseball in strikeouts with 364, so if Pomeranz continues to exhibit good control (four walks over his last 17.2 innings) he should be able to avoid big trouble.

AL-only league owners should already have Pomeranz on their radar, and I would expect he was a popular speculative addition late last week in deeper mixed leagues as well. But he is still widely available in Yahoo! leagues as a whole (17 percent owned), despite his ownership rising significantly in recent days, and another good outing would provide another major boost to his ownership rates regardless of league host.

Tuesday’s schedule has a few big-name, high-end options for daily contests (Cliff Lee, Stephen Strasburg, Adam Wainwright, David Price, James Shields), and most people will have at least one in their lineup. But Pomeranz is a solid value beyond that top tier, and a very good option in that format.

Brad Berreman is a Senior Writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter or connect on Google +.