Hannahan and Viciedo: Waiver Wire

Jack Hannahan (Yahoo: 3 percent owned, ESPN: 2 percent owned)

The months where Joe Mauer isn’t the most productive graduate of Cretin-Derham Hall High School are few and far between, but Hannahan ended the month so hot, the Indians are scrambling to order him flame-retardant pants. For the month, Hannahan hit .420/.491/.660 with three home runs, all of which came after the 29th. Apparently, having a newborn at home is the new market inefficiency.

Assuming that Hannahan hasn’t entered into some Faustian Bargain, there’s virtually no way he’ll continue to have this kind of success. If this were August 1 instead of September 1, I doubt Hannahan even registers on most fantasy players’ radar, but we’re in that part of the season where grabbing the hot hand can seem like a winning idea, and thus, here we are.

He bears all the hallmarks of one ripe for regression — call me a monster if you must, I just don’t think his .514 August BABIP is going to stick around — but it should be noted that his blistering month only pushed his 2011 BABIP up to .305, so he was in line for a stroke of better luck. If you accept that Hannahan had bad luck early in the season, then regressed to the mean rather all at once, then his September production should be something resembling his true talent level. For Hannahan, this makes him a non-factor: his power is spotty at best and his average isn’t much better. If you need a Hail Mary to make it into the playoffs this week, I’d rather wish on Hannahan than Alex Rios, but expecting him to continuing hitting multiple home runs a week is a bridge too far.

Dayan Viciedo (Yahoo: 12 percent owned, ESPN: 12 percent owned)

If, or when, the White Sox miss the playoffs, you won’t have to listen to AM radio in Chicago long before you hear someone say that Adam Dunn is a waste of money and that if the team had just played Viciedo all year, they would have made the playoffs. I’m not ready to go quite that far, but Vicideo’s translated line of .256/.309/.412 is a bit better than Dunn’s .163/.290/.289, so maybe there is some truth in the madness.

ZiPS has Viciedo hitting .266/.299/.453 with 3 HR for the rest of the season, which strikes me as a little low. It would not surprise me to see him hit an extra home run or two and hit closer to .280. At the moment, he holds only 3B eligibility, though I expect that he’ll have qualified as an OF by the end of next week, as he started in right field twice this week.

In the minors this year, Viciedo hit 16 of his 20 home runs off of right-handers as part of his .305/.357/.501 line against them. He wasn’t bad against lefties, hitting. 270/.386/.459 against them, but if you’re desperately looking for the second half of a platoon, you can justify using Viciedo part time to try and capitalize on his power. If you don’t need to platoon him, I wouldn’t bother with finding a partner for him; he’s playable all by his lonesome. With Carlos Quentin’s return still a few days away and with Dunn’s struggles, I see no playing time issues for Viciedo. He may have been called up before September, but as Viciedo is just 22, the Sox almost surely will use the next month to see if they have their starting third baseman for 2012 and beyond.