RADIO
The second half of the 2019 regular season is underway. It'll be a few more weeks before fantasy football starts siphoning off the also-rans, which means extracting value from the waiver wire will continue to be a tough row to hoe.
Tough - not impossible. Whatever your league depth, there are freely available players who can be an asset to your championship crusade. Conveniently enough, this column is a place for us to identify some of those guys.
As a reminder, our focus is on players who are below 50% owned in Yahoo leagues, and standard 5x5 scoring. Your mileage may vary, in terms of availability or league settings. Using that cutoff point for ownership rate, however, these are your corner infield waiver wire targets and adds for Week 16 of the 2019 fantasy baseball season.
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Pickups for Shallow Leagues
Danny Santana (1B/2B/OF, TEX) — 34% Owned
Baseball is not bound by any semblance of logic or reason, and every year there are a handful of players who simply spit in the eyes of analysts and succeed despite everything that says they should not. Santana is a prime example of this in 2019. He is absolutely playing over his head, his plate discipline remains abhorrent...and yet he is currently headed for a .300 20/20 season. There are some signs that he has made actual adjustments that bode well for his ROS production (increased barrel rate, launch angle, and exit velo), but absolutely no one saw this coming and it's kind of incredible that it persists. Anyway, the universe is chaos, so just pick him up and accept that no one really knows anything.
Christian Walker (1B, ARI) — 31% Owned
Walker has continued to play almost every day despite the return of Jake Lamb a couple weeks ago. At this point, it seems as though his job is secure. And why not? All the 28-year-old has done is hit .256/.325/.497 with 18 home runs in 89 games, while chipping in above-average run production and a handful of stolen bases to boot. After an extended slump that covered most of May and part of June, he's been a top-40 hitter over the last month of action.
Pickups for Deeper Leagues
Nate Lowe (1B, TAM) — 21% Owned
Lowe didn't do much in his first cup of coffee with the Rays, but since getting another crack at the major leagues, he's resembled the player who inspired plenty of sleeper buzz this spring. The 24-year-old has hit five homers in eight games since returning to the bigs earlier this month, pulling his overall line up to .299/.360/.567 in 75 plate appearances. Playing time is always a question with Tampa's crowded roster, but if Lowe keeps mashing it's difficult to imagine Ji-Man Choi will provide all that much resistance.
Evan Longoria (3B, SF) — 21% Owned
News broke over the weekend that Longoria is dealing with a bout of plantar fasciitis in his left foot. It certainly hasn't been evident in his recent play, as the veteran has been one of the best hitters in baseball this month. He's hit six home runs in nine games, giving him an absurd .393/.469/1.107 slash line during that time. Unsustainable, certainly, but Longoria hasn't looked this good in a while and he's still hitting in the middle of the order. There are worse flyers out there.
Maikel Franco (3B, PHI) — 17% Owned
Franco briefly ignited the passions of fantasy owners with a bravura opening week before spending most of the next three months looking like a fringe MLB player. He's been swinging the bat much better of late, however, with a .354/.403/.662 line over the last 30 days. That includes three homers in his last six games, capped by a walk-off on Sunday. With Andrew McCutchen and Odubel Herrera out for the year, Scott Kingery has mainly played center field instead of taking Franco's job at third base. Prospect Alec Bohm looms, but for now Franco looks to have saved his season.
Jake Bauers (1B/OF, CLE) — 15% Owned
On the whole, Bauers' first season in Cleveland has been disappointing. However, he's performed significantly better since the start of June, hitting .279/.321/.510 with six homers over that period. The lack of stolen bases (just 2-for-5 this year, with only one attempt in the last two months) is unfortunate, but the first step in salvaging his year is figuring things out at the plate. The 23-year-old may be doing that.
For Your Radar
Joey Wendle (2B/3B/SS/OF, TAM) — 6% Owned
It hasn't been a great sophomore season for Wendle after a surprisingly strong rookie campaign. He's missed a significant chunk of the year with multiple injuries, and has only hit .192/.265/.250 when he has played. So why give him a second thought? Two reasons. First, the majority of his peripherals aren't much different than a year ago, which suggests better days ahead at the plate. Second, he's swiped four bags in his last 10 games. The 29-year-old stole 16 bases last season, and could be a sneaky speed play moving forward. The positional flexibility is a nice bonus.
More Waiver Wire Pickups and Streamers
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