Ervin Santana (SP, MIN) - Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues

OWNED IN: 19% of FleaFlicker Leagues

ANALYSIS: Ervin Santana strikes me as one of those post-hype guys who flies under the radar simply because he has been around for so long. A suspension for a positive drug test prior to the start of last season likely added to the perception that he is an unreliable option, but the veteran does enough things well that he deserves a spot on your 12-team league if he is still on the wire.

Santana has raised his punchout rate to above 20 percent after a dip in 2015 thanks to a slight uptick in his swinging strike rate. He has also cut his HR/FB rate to 8.6 percent, while increasing his ground ball rate by about four percent. All of these small improvements have led to a very serviceable pitcher, with nothing falling too far outside the range of his career averages.

If there is one glaring weakness in Santana's profile, it is his career-worst walk rate of nearly nine percent. This number has been on the rise for the past three seasons, but Santana is inducing enough weak contact (24 percent) to mitigate the effects of so many runners on base. The soft contact rate is the major outlier for Santana here, as he has never broken 20 percent in any other season in his career.

In sum, Santana is a fairly unexciting pitcher whose trouble with the free pass may prevent him from holding a 3.13 ERA all season. One does not have to be perfect to be valuable, however, and Santana can certainly be helpful in deeper leagues.