RADIO
Sean Scampton recommends outfielders (OF) who are valuable waiver wire targets or adds for Week 23 of the 2018 fantasy baseball season.
Happy Birthday to me, Rotoballers! But I guess most of you don’t care so much about my birthday. While that is quite hurtful, I get it. No hard feelings. I’ll go cry to my beautiful fiancée and stare at my multiple fantasy championship belts. That’s right, multiple belts.
How’d I get multiple belts from different leagues? Grinding and finding value where no one else is looking. Why am I in multiple leagues that reward their champions with WWE-style belts? Fair question, but if your league doesn’t then I question your resolve.
Regardless, Happy September, fam! Some of you had tough weeks and are effectively toast for the 2018 season. Therefore, we’ll continue dedicating a spot to an undervalued dynasty or keeper option that should be on your radar. For the rest, we’ll be looking at the upcoming week for each of our outfielders in hopes of finding the best fit and value for your league. Good luck, RotoBallers. And enjoy the top outfielder waiver wire adds for week 23.
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Week 23 Outfield Waiver Wire Targets
Joey Wendle (OF/2B/3B, TB) - 19% owned; 6 games vs. CLE, TOR, BAL
Rays utilityman Joey Wendle has been quietly effective all season, producing a .296/.345/.425 line with seven homers and 12 steals across 441 plate appearances. He’s not going to fill up the box score like other utilitymen, but few players available at this point in the season offer the ability to contribute a little pop and a little speed in addition to a high average. Points based and H2H leagues should be looking for a guy just like Joey Wendle, and even savvy owners in 10-team leagues should be able to find spot starts for the 28-year-old.
As far as how to utilize Wendle, he’s a pure splits play. Now, if you’re starting him consistently in a deeper league, you don’t need to necessarily avoid lefties if the Rays are putting him in the lineup. He’s effective enough against southpaws, with a .279/.324/.393 line in 61 at-bats. But all of Wendle’s pop has come against righties, 27 extra base hits and seven dingers versus five extra bases hits and no homers against lefties. If you’re utilizing Wendle this week, you’ve got some plum matchups against teams with poor right-handed starting pitchers. Deploy away.
Hunter Renfroe (OF, SD) - 19% owned; 6 games vs. COL, ARI, CIN
Hey don’t say I didn’t try to tell you. Too bad I didn’t put any money on that guarantee to homer this week. Last week saw the 26-year-old launch four massive dingers on 25 at-bats. Despite the subpar first half of the season, the last week brings his season total to 19 on 340 plate appearances. That doesn’t look terribly impressive, but 12 of those have come since the All-Star break. Yeah, I could give you statistics on Renfroe’s hitting line and contact rate, which is much improved from last season, but you don’t care about that. If you roster Renfroe, you’re looking for long balls, and by every metric he’s launching them at a better and more sustainable clip then at any point of his major league career.
Renfroe is a great bet to drop bombs this next week. Renfroe is the kind of power option that is capable of giving your team a massive edge in power. I’ll be honest, I’m a tad concerned about the two games at Arizona’s humidor equipped ballpark, but Renfroe puts balls in the upper decks at Petco, so I’m sure there’s nothing to be concerned about. Bombs away.
Randal Grichuk (OF, TOR) - 10% owned; 7 games vs. MIA, TB, CLE
Speaking of long balls, I’m contractually obligated to mention the 27-year-old Grichuk anytime he launches multiple homers. Ok, that’s not necessarily true, but there are more Toronto fans in the Rotoballer Slack than you might think. Anyway, Grichuk did indeed launch two homers this week to go along with a .455/.500/.864 line. The Blue Jay’s ability to produce lift on contact gives him the chance to have big weeks like this, but he’s also far more prone to disaster because he doesn’t possess the prodigious raw strength of a guy like Renfroe.
Toronto plays all seven days this week, giving Grichuk the most opportunity to make an impact. He faces some tough pitching groups in Tampa and Cleveland, but he gets the nod here because all seven games will take place in the T-Dot. Grichuk is far more effective, particularly with long ball, at home. Of the 19 homers he’s hit in 2018, 13 of them have come in the 172 at-bats he’s taken in the Air Canada Centre. I wouldn’t deploy Grichuk on the road personally, but at home he’s effective enough to get some time in the lineup.
Austin Meadows (OF, PIT) - 7% owned
New Rays outfielder Austin Meadows is far from an unknown, especially to prospect heads like myself, but few have paid much attention to him after Pittsburgh dealt him as part of a package for starting pitcher Chris Archer. Truth be told, his value had dropped by a far amount in 2018 as he struggled between 179 plate appearances at triple-A and 165 plate appearances with the big club. Meadows wasn’t bad, necessarily, but certainly not the potentially transcendent bat that the Pirates had hoped for. Because of this, he sort of fell off of the minds of fans the way post-hype types tend to.
But Meadows has been quietly for the Rays Triple-A squad since being acquired. In 106 plate appearances, the slugger has hit an unreal .344/.396/.771 with 10 home runs, a .427 ISO, and a miniscule 12.3% strikeout rate. Those 10 dingers are more than he hit in those 344 plate appearances with Pittsburgh. Meadows has looked like an absolute monster since the Rays let him loose, and he might be cheap enough to acquire in dynasty leagues and keeper leagues that savvy owners would be wise to try to snag him now. There’s still room for growth in Meadows profile, as he’ll need to improve against off-speed pitches to reach his full potential, but he’ll get substantial playing time with an improved Tampa lineup next season. Hitting next to Tommy Pham, a healthy Kevin Kiermaier, and a more seasoned Mallex Smith, Willy Adames, and Jake Bauers, Meadows provides a true middle of the order bat and could be a major producer in 2019.
