| | | | Wednesday, June 26, 2024 | | I don't want to panic about Gerrit Cole … but it's hard not to. | | Cole's second start back from his elbow injury was an outright disaster, as the cross-city Mets jumped on him early and never let up, scoring six runs on seven hits over four innings. Cole became the first Yankees pitcher ever to have four walks, four homers, and no strikeouts in a start, and it came along with notably diminished velocity, to boot. | | Cole did say he intentionally dialed back after a high-stress first inning, but it was still rather stunning to see an ostensibly healthy Gerrit Cole peaking at 95 mph for much of the game. And, clearly, it limited his effectiveness, as Cole didn't record a strikeout and had just five swinging strikes on 33 swings. | | But the thing we have to keep in mind here is that this was just Cole's fifth start of the season, including his minor-league rehab assignment. On that assignment, he never threw more than 67 pitchers, so even with the aggressive activation, there was surely some work left to do to get Cole up to mid-season form. He isn't anywhere close to that yet, but I want to give him more than a couple starts before I conclude that he can't get there. | | But my confidence is certainly shaken after this one, and I don't think you can really view Cole as a viable starting option right now. He might go out in his next outing and throw six shutout innings, because he's an incredibly talented pitcher who could lock in without warning; I wouldn't be surprised if he did. But based on how these two starts have gone, I can't go into his next start expecting it. | | I'm not dropping Cole, and there's probably no way I'm looking to trade him right now. But I'm also not going to start him until he gives me a reason to do so. He definitely hasn't .. yet. | | | | Wednesday's top waiver targets | | | | Typically, I'm writing about the top waiver-wire targets to add from any given day's action, but today's going to be a little bit different, at least here at the top. Because, while it's important to highlight who you should be adding, there's another side of that coin: Who you should be dropping. And today, that's Brayan Bello. | | I'll admit, I've never totally understood the hype around Bello. As a young pitcher, he certainly isn't without his merits, but he's also probably just been kind of overrated in Fantasy for a pretty long time now. We're talking about a guy who pitched his way into top-100 consideration as a prospect only thanks to a partial season run in 2022, but didn't enter any season as a top-100 guy. He's had flashes at the MLB level but also has a career 4.66 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, and only 7.9 K/9 over the course of just over two full seasons. | | And he's been even worse than that this season. The Blue Jays jumped on him for seven earned runs over just 2.1 innings Tuesday, putting his ERA for the season to 5.55. He throws hard, but doesn't get whiffs with his fastball, and his slider and changeup are more decent pitches than truly elite ones at this point. | | There's been some bad luck, to be sure, with a 4.10 xERA entering Tuesday's start, but we're still talking about a guy who, so far in his MLB career, has never had a strikeout rate of even 21% – league average is between 22.2 and 22.7% in his three MLB seasons – and isn't so good at limiting hard contact that he can make up for it. | | Bello has the talent to come out the next time around and make this look silly, of course. But we're nearly 290 innings into his MLB career with an ERA north of 4.50, and yet he's still 75% rostered. There are too many good pitchers out there right now to justify this kind of roster rate for Bello. | | | | Mark Vientos , 3B, Mets (44%) – Vientos just keeps getting it done. He homered two more times Tuesday against the Yankees, his second straight game with a homer and fourth in five games, now giving him six in the month of June. He's done that while hitting .275/.329/.565, and that's coming off a .918 OPS in a smaller sample size in May. He's sporting improved plate discipline pretty much across the board, swinging at pitches in the zone more and out of the zone less, while making contact more often when he swings, helping him cut the strikeout rate from 30.5% last season to just 21.6%. He's sacrificed some quality of contact along the way, but it's clearly been a tradeoff worth making, with Vientos' expected wOBA jumping from .304 to .353. It's fair to be skeptical about how sustainable this all is, but it's gone long enough that it's worth buying in. | | Ty France, 1B, Mariners (35%) – A heel fracture derailed what was starting to look like a breakout for France, so it was nice to see him get on the board with his first homer since the injury Tuesday and his second and third hits. France went to DriveLine to work on his bat speed this offseason and hit .278/.352/.474 in May, so hopefully this helps him get back on track. | | Bo Naylor, C, Guardians (25%) – Maybe Naylor is just an extremely slow starter. He really struggled early on after his callup last season, and was hitting just .177/.255/.269 through the end of May this season, leading plenty of Fantasy players to abandon ship as he started to lose playing. Well, while he hasn't been a world-beater in June, he is hitting .289/.325/.553 after going 3 for 4 with three runs, a double, and a triple Tuesday. Naylor still has a rare skill set for a catcher, capable of chipping in a handful of steals while ideally sporting an OPS near or above .800, as he did last season. It's been a tough start, but there still aren't many No. 2 catcher types with his kind of upside, and I'll bet on that upside. | | Hayden Birdsong, SP, Giants (4%) – Birdsong was largely viewed as a lower-end top-10 prospect for the Giants coming into the season, but he seems to have leveled up on his way to what is expected to be his season debut Wednesday against the Cubs . His promotion is surely partially about desperation, but Birdsong has pitched well enough to justify an aggressive promotion after just two games at Triple-A. In 13 starts between Double-A and Triple-A, Birdsong has a 2.52 ERA with a 31.1% strikeout rate and 10.8% walk rate. The arsenal is headlined by a mid-90s fastball that profiles as a bat-misser, and then a slider/cutter, curveball, and changeup that all probably lag behind where the fastball is right now. He's run into some troubles in two starts at Triple-A, and has thrown 90-plus pitches just once this season, so Birdsong is by no means a can't-miss prospect who you have to add ahead of his debut. But if you've taken chances on the likes of Drew Thorpe or Cade Povich lately, I don't think Birdsong is that far behind them on the pecking order. | | | | News and Notes | | The White Sox are going to start being proactive about limiting Garrett Crochet's workload. In fact, they already have, pulling him after 91 pitchers and 5.2 innings of work Monday against the Dodgers . There won't be a hard and fast rule about how many pitches or innings Crochet throws in any given start, but we probably shouldn't expect him to throw 100-plus with any regularity. Crochet is up to 94.1 innings this season, eclipsing the 85.1 he threw since being drafted in 2020, and this could lead to some frustrating performances moving forward. I still expect Crochet to be a very good pitcher, but this might be a sell-high window if someone in your league misses this news. | | Kyle Tucker took swings off a tee Sunday and could be cleared to begin running soon. He's been out since June 4 with a right shin contusion, but is finally starting to make some progress. I'm hopeful for an early July return at this point. | | Rangers GM Chris Young said that Josh Jung is dealing with tendon inflammation and said a return before the end of this week is ambitious. Jung was supposed to take batting practice Tuesday, but it looks like he's being slowed down again. | | Kodai Senga said Tuesday that he expects to begin a minor-league rehab assignment next week. He's not likely to return until after the All-Star break. | | Bo Bichette returned from the IL, was in the lineup batting leadoff. | | Edwin Diaz did not appeal his 10-game suspension and began serving it on Tuesday. | | Nick Lodolo was placed on the 15-day IL with a left finger blister. | | Bryan Woo was placed on the 15-day IL with a right hamstring strain. It's a low-grade strain, but it could still keep him out until the All-Star break. | | Teoscar Hernandez has missed two straight for personal reasons, but should be back in the lineup for the team's next game. | | Starling Marte was placed on the IL with a right knee bone bruise. He's expected to be sidelined for at least four weeks. | | Nolan Arenado was back in the lineup after missing a pair of games with left forearm soreness. | | Astros manager Joe Espada said Tuesday that Justin Verlander has yet to resume throwing. He's been shut down for more than a week with neck discomfort. | | Christian Encarnacion-Strand will undergo season-ending surgery on his right wrist on July 11. He'll be in the late-round sleeper discussion next season. | | Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said Christian Scott has a good chance to be called up soon, as the team has a stretch of 17 games in 17 days that begins on Friday. He remains worth stashing, and I would prioritize him over the other rookie pitchers who have made their debuts lately. | | Chris Paddack was placed on the IL with right forearm fatigue. There was another report that prospect David Festa is a candidate to replace Paddack, and he's in the same range as Birdsong if and when he gets called up. | | Brandon Lowe has missed three straight due to a broken right pinky toe. | | Ryan Weathers will be re-evaluated later this week and could begin a throwing program. He's been out since June 7 due to strained index finger on his pitching hand. | | Henry Davis will begin a rehab assignment at Double-A on Wednesday. He's been on the concussion IL since June 15. | | Tuesday's standouts | | Luis Castillo, Mariners @TB: 5.1 IP, 5 H, 4 ER, 4 BB, 4 K – Castillo has just been a little bit off lately, in a way that is surely frustrating for those of you with him on your team, as his ERA is up to 5.08 in the month of June. It was around 3.00 before that, and Tuesday was the first outing where his command was an issue, so I'm not really sure there's much more here than just typical variance. Castillo just kind of seems to go through a stretch like this every season, but his track record is long enough that we know not to worry about it. | | Ranger Suarez, Phillies @DET: 6 IP, 9 H, 4 ER, 0 BB, 4 K – If you've been reading long enough, you know I've been expecting some regression from Suarez for basically the entire season, but it would be premature to say that's what we're seeing here since it was the first game since May where Suarez allowed more than two earned runs, and just the fourth start all season where he did so. Suarez's velocity was actually up slightly in this one, but he generated just four swinging strikes on 88 pitches; even with all else he does well, that's not a recipe for success. Chalk it up as an aberration, and as far as these things go, it's hard to complain too much when these are the "bad" starts. | | Hunter Greene, Reds vs. PIT: 4 IP, 7 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – Greene has apparently been struggling with the heat in his past couple of starts, and that was on full display Tuesday as he literally threw up on the mound after delivering a first-inning pitch. Given that, it seems fair to write this one off as Greene being at less than 100%, and his velocity was still fine, and the Pirates still struggled to square Greene up. Most of what we've seen from him this season has been very promising, so I'm not too worried here. | | Kevin Gausman, Blue Jays @BOS: 6 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 5 K – I've pretty much just pivoted to "Gausman is just a guy" at this point, and it's made it a lot easier to stomach these mediocre results. You drafted him as an ace, but with Gasuman's velocity still down over 1 mph on his four-seamer and his splitter struggling to be as effective as in year's past, I just don't think it makes much sense to have those expectations anymore. Gausman is a decent start, but not someone I expect to be a difference-maker at this point. | | Bobby Miller, Dodgers @CHW: 2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 1 K – Miller is still averaging right around 97 mph with his four-seamer since coming back from his shoulder injury, but that's down about a full mph, and it has clearly impacted his effectiveness. Miller has never gotten the kind of strikeout numbers you would expect from just watching him pitch, and he has just three in 8.1 innings since coming back from the IL. I still have faith that he'll get right at some point, but Miller probably shouldn't be viewed as a must-start pitcher until he figures it out. | | Mackenzie Gore, Nationals @SD: 5 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 3 BB, 1 K – I didn't see much reason to be alarmed with Gore here beyond the box score, but I'll grant that he doesn't exactly have the track record that allows us to just skip past poor performances – and he's had a few of those lately. Gore now has a 5.88 ERA in the month of June, with both the strikeout and walk rates moving in the wrong direction. Of course, he also just finished a three-start stretch where he had 24 strikeouts to four walks, so I certainly don't want to hit the panic button. I'm holding Gore through this rough patch, though he's an iffy start for the next time out against the Mets. | | Hunter Brown, Astros vs. COL: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 7 K – Brown is feasting on a really easy schedule lately, putting up a 1.47 ERA with 48 strikeouts over 43 innings against the Rockies (away from Coors), White Sox, Tigers, Twins, Mariners, and Angels . The thing is, even if you assume the matchups have played a part in what Brown has done, that doesn't take that much away from what he's accomplished, especially since it's come with a change in approach to prioritize his sinker more. Brown isn't an ace, but I do think he's pitching like a must-start pitcher right now, regardless of matchup. | | Seth Lugo, Royals vs. MIA: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K – This performance lowered Lugo's ERA to 3.69 for the month of June, and you know what? That sounds about right. The 2.29 ERA isn't sustainable, but Lugo can still be a very useful pitcher with an ERA below 4.00 and close to (but likely less than) a strikeout per inning. | | Tyler Anderson, Angels vs. OAK: 5 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 5 BB, 2 K – I just don't know how Anderson keeps getting away with this. He has a 3.00 ERA in the month of June despite just 17 strikeouts in 30 innings – with as many walks. There's going to come a point where Anderson is one of the most obvious drops in Fantasy, and the hope is you'll cut bait before he inevitably wrecks your ratios. I'd be willing to drop Anderson at any point right now despite his continued success. | | Kyle Hendricks, Cubs @SF: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K – Despite his overall struggles, Hendricks has continued to limit hard contact better than almost any pitcher in baseball, so I'm not exactly surprised that he's been able to return to the rotation and find success. Hendricks was still a very useful pitcher last season, and if he outperformed Anderson the rest of the way, I wouldn't be surprised at all. | | | | | | | | NBA Draft | | BIG3 | Stars from across the world await the start of their NBA careers. Watch live as their fate unfolds on CBS Sports HQ with pick-by-pick analysis, player comps and instant reactions tonight at 7 PM ET.
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