With the final full week of August coming, here are five players to seek on the waiver wire in your fantasy baseball league.
5-Minnesota Twins SP Ervin Santana
Santana is 3-0 with 19 strikeouts and four walks over his last three starts (19.1 innings), and over his last 10 starts he has a 1.84 ERA. It’s unlikely he’ll land on a better team before the end of the month, but mixed league owners should not forget about Santana down the stretch.
Yahoo! Ownership: 52%
4-New York Yankees OF Aaron Judge
See Gary Sanchez down this list, then plug-in Judge’s numbers over six games entering Saturday (.304/.360/.609, two home runs and four RBI). AL-only league owners should have a particular interest in Judge.
Yahoo! Ownership: 53%
3-Cleveland Indians OF Tyler Naquin
Naquin’s walk-off inside the park home run Friday night was all over the highlight reels, but that should not obscure the solid season he’s having (.316, 14 home runs, 39 RBI entering Saturday). Somehow Naquin’s ownership rate on Yahoo! has dropped a bit over the last day or so, which is fairly inexplicable and provides an opportunity to add him.
Yahoo! Ownership: 30%
2-Miami Marlins SP Tom Koehler
Before you laugh at Koehler’s inclusion on this list, let me point out he has a 1.62 ERA with a 30:7 K/BB ratio over his last six starts (39 innings). His track record might point to that being unsustainable, but an overall increase in his swinging strike rate along with a decline in contact rate this year are positive signs. Koehler is not a fantasy ace, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be useful as the season winds down.
Yahoo! Ownership: 45%
1-New York Yankees C Gary Sanchez
Sanchez has been one of the key cogs in the Yankees’ recent youth movement, going 21-for-50 with five home runs in 13 games since being recalled (entering Saturday). That kind of production is not necessarily sustainable, but Sanchez is still a fantastic fantasy asset for the stretch run of 2016.
Yahoo! Ownership: 56%