For a number of major league teams Mondays and Thursdays are travel days. Every Wednesday and Sunday, Fantasy Fill-Ins finds guys who should be widely available on the waiver wire and can step in for the day, helping you gain ground or hold off the pack.There are nine games scheduled for Thursday. That means we may need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find some solid fill-ins. Here are five of the best options.
Jack Cust, Athletics - Cust hasn't been the model of consistent hitting this season and as of late he's been less then stellar batting .221 over the last month. But, he has a pretty good track record against Scott Feldman (five hits and two home runs in 15 at-bats) so could fill-in nicely on Thursday. Cust is only owned in 16% of fantasy leagues.
Freddy Sanchez, Giants - Sanchez is going to do one thing, and one thing only for you -- help with your batting average. Don't expect runs, RBI or any kind of power at all. Sanchez, over his career, has six hits in 17 at-bats (.353) and over the past week is hitting .313 as well. He's only owned in 32% of fantasy leagues.
Lastings Milledge, Pirates - Milledge is 11-for-22 over the past week (.500 batting average) and has two stolen bases to boot. He's only owned in 20% of fantasy baseball leagues.
Andrew McCutchen, Pirates - McCutchen enters Wednesday night's game with a nine-game hitting streak going. He's also batted 10-for-24 (.412 batting average) over the last week and is only owned in 42% of fantasy leagues.
Willie Bloomquist, Royals - For a straight stolen bases play, Bloomquist could be your guy. Over the last week he's swiped three bags and he's batting .350 for an added bonus over that time. He's only owned in 4% of fantasy leagues.
Just in case you're wondering how credible these picks are, I wanted to share my report card with you. Since we started this Fantasy Fill-Ins segment I've made player selections five times (five players each time). Here are the results.
• 20 of the 24 players (83.3%) that I selected have hit safely the next day (it should be 25, but one of the games was rained out).
• My hitters have gone 31-for-101 (.307) with 11 runs scored, 15 RBI and two home runs.
