In addition to Monday's nine featured Pickups of the Week, Yahoo! Sports fantasy expert Brandon Funston offers a Wednesday update on five hitters on the rise that weren't profiled in Monday's POW. The same criteria applies - players must be available in more than half of Yahoo! leagues. On Friday, we'll offer the same drill for pitchers.

Arizona shortstop set for his return – Tulo owners act now!

Stephen Drew (SS) Arizona Diamondbacks
A little more than 11 months after suffering an ankle injury that derailed the second-half of his '11 season (and nearly three months of '12), Drew is set to make his return to the Diamondbacks on Wednesday. In the three seasons leading up to '11, Drew twice finished among the top six shortstops in the Yahoo! game. He's a proven upper class middle infield run producer with .270, 15-home run upside. Troy Tulowitzki owners should consider themselves lucky if Drew is still available.

• Y! %23%
• LW rank1184
• AVG.000
• HR0
• RBI0
• R0
• SB0

TOYOTA TUNDRA – PICKUPS OF THE WEEK

This week, Yahoo! Sports fantasy expert Brandon Funston looks at nine intriguing fantasy baseball players still available on the waiver wire in more than half of Yahoo! fantasy leagues.

Sure, blame it on Rios for a dismal '11 season, but owners would be wise not to hold a grudge

Alex Rios (OF) Chicago White Sox
Rios is on a 10-game hitting streak, and his OPS sits at .907 for the season. A 20/30 clubber in '10, Rios is coming off his worst full season campaign of his career, though his batted ball profile shows that he was a victim of an unhealthy amount of bad luck – his Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) was 80 points lower (.237) than his career average (.317). As his Yahoo! ownership rate shows, last season's detour through hell has made Rios an easy player to get your hands on this season. That shouldn't be the case for a 31-year-old with three seasons of top 60 fantasy production in the past five years.

• Y! % 46%
• Y!

Given a threshold of 50 percent ownership in Yahoo! leagues, give or take a few percentage points, here's the best lineup that fantasy owners could hope to put together off the waiver wire this week:

BATTING LINEUP
	OF –> Alejandro De Aza: You can't fault De Aza's numbers as a member of the White Sox. In Chicago, De Aza owns a 5x5 line of .312, 6 HR, 30 RBI, 44 R and 15 SB in 218 ABs. His career OPS splits for LHP and RHP are nearly identical, giving more validity to the idea that he might be able to bring a similar level of production to an every-day role. Now the ChiSox's regular leadoff hitter, De Aza sits among the top 75 in the Yahoo! game, and is top 30 in the league in extra-base hits. He can still be had in roughly half of Yahoo! leagues.
	2B –> Jose Altuve: We billed the Astros' mighty mouse as a nice late-round flyer that could provide some speed and pop at the plate. And, so far, he's done just that, hitting .351 with a steal and five runs scored in his first nine

Also see: All-Bust Team | All-Rookie Team

You ever lie awake at night and imagine what it would be like to own every pick in the first round of your fantasy baseball draft? Yeah, me too. Here's how my fantasy dream team would look for 2012:

DREAM TEAM LINEUP CARD
	LF –> Jacoby Ellsbury: From an overall fantasy value standpoint, Ryan Braun should probably be the left field nominee. But Ellsbury offers this dream team some needed speed, so he slides over to left and settles in at the top of this vaunted batting order.
	CF –> Matt Kemp: The No. 1 player in the Yahoo! fantasy game in '11 finished among the top 7 in MLB in all five standard fantasy categories (AVG., HR, RBI, R, SB). And he finished just one home run shy of becoming just the fifth member of MLB's 40-40 club.
	1B –> Albert Pujols: Normally, a hitter switching leagues might be cause for concern – foreign environment, unfamiliar pitchers, etc. But we learned long ago that Pujols is no normal human being, if he's even

We've reached the season's silliest week, where curveballs are the name of the game. Green Bay and Houston are locked into their playoff spots, and they have little motivation to play their starters more than they would in the first or second week of the preseason. Other teams, like Atlanta, may find out before kickoff that their fates have become set (in Atlanta's case, a Detroit win would lock them into a No. 6 seed), so they would then be in the same position as the Packers and Texans. And then there's the non-playoff teams, with nothing to play for. Any player nursing an injury in this crowd faces serious danger of deactivation (Vincent Jackson, Roy Helu, et al), as there's just no reason to try to play through pain and risk further injury at this point.

This week, more than any other, owners need to be paying full attention to the situations of every team. As I've said before, I won a league last year thanks to late-season additions Tim Tebow, Joe McKnight and Joe Webb. Obviously,

Alright, we're changing the Skinny up this week. Most leagues are down to their Championship Week – just two teams left to face off for the title. Rather than make those owners wade through the usual game capsules, I thought I'd cut straight to the chase this week and just post my early rankings for each position, color-coding the matchup column so as to show which light (green, chartreuse, yellow, red) I would have placed that player under had I been doing this the usual way. And I've made parenthetical note of each player dealing with a notable injury, adding a "?" or "GTD" (game-time decision) designation after the listed injury if the ailment is troubling enough to potentially mess with the player's ability to get on the field in Week 16.

Owners will also have to monitor the Green Bay situation. If San Francisco loses on Saturday, the Packers would officially clinch home-field advantage in the playoffs before they kickoff on Christmas Day. With a very beat up offensive line and

I'm off to a terrible start in my fantasy leagues, with most of my squads at 1-2. But I don't own Michael Vick(notes) anywhere, so at least I'm spared that misery. Seriously, what a nightmare Vick is turning out to be. We knew the he was an injury risk, but we're only three weeks into the season and he's headed for his second questionable tag because of his latest injury (Week 3 right hand contusion follows in the footsteps of a Week 2 concussion). Half games and scattered DNPs seem like an inevitable part of the equation over the remaining 13 games of the season, unless he completely alters his style. Of course, it's that style that allows him to tap into that unmatched upside, so it's a double-edged sword. If I was a Vick owner, I'd be waiting for him to string together two healthy, classic-Vick type performances and then I'd take the best offer I could get for him. There's too many good quarterbacks this season – 20 averaging 20-plus fantasy points per game compared to 12 last

With passing numbers gone wild through the first two weeks of the 2011 campaign, it sure seems like the usable waiver wire running back pickup is a vanishing species. In my 12-team buddy league, there's only one running back available that has amassed more than 100 yards from scrimmage – Roy Helu(notes). And in the Yahoo! Friends and Family League, you can't find a running back on waivers that's owned in more than 19 percent of Yahoo! leagues – Ricky Williams(notes). This dearth of running back help is going to be particularly troubling for those with RB issues come bye weeks. Sure, injuries always present opportunities, but times are tough enough right now that even a Jamaal Charles(notes) season-ender does little to ripple the waiver pool – Dexter McCluster(notes) and Thomas Jones(notes) were already on rosters in most of my leagues. I suspect that it's going to continue to take a shrewder eye than usual to find useable RB help this season, although I think we might see some