Ronald Guzman (1B, TEX) - Week 9 Waiver Wire Pickups

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ANALYSIS: Texas Rangers first baseman Ronald Guzman was drafted in 2011 out of the Dominican Republic and slowly brought through the minors to ultimately get called up for a short stint with a couple of the starters getting injured. At first glance, Guzman is not anyone that will grab your attention. The average fantasy manager will see a guy that is hitting .229 with six HR and 20 RBI. However, he is hitting .364 with four home runs, six runs scored, and nine RBI over the last week

Guzman started off the season horribly and it took a streak to get his stats raised from horrible to just plain bad. On May 21, he started a streak where he hit a HR in three consecutive games and four out of five games. This helped raise his average to .229 from .187  prior to the streak. Guzman does need to work on his plate discipline. He not only has a 31.7% strikeout rate, he swings at pitches outside the zone at a rate of 39.2%. Not to belabor the point, but Guzman also has a 13.8 swinging strike rate and only walks 6.7% of time.

He is worth owning in deep leagues to take a chance on whether he has rectified something in his batting strategy in his recent offensive burst. If Guzman continues to hit near the bottom of the lineup, however, it will be tough for him to accrues stats and maintain his reliability, even in deep leagues. He faces off against the Mariners and Angels this week, which should be in his favor.