| | | | Friday, May 16, 2025 | | Patience is a virtue. It can be hard to actually remember that in the moment, but then, it wouldn't be a virtue if it was easy, would it? | | Brandon Lowe came into the season with pretty big expectations thanks to the Rays ' new home in the homer-friendly George M. Steinbrenner Field, and while you didn't have to wait long for his first homer (he hit it on the third day of the season), Lowe was pretty bad for most of the first month of the season. Longer, in fact – he had an OPS below .600 as recently as the start of Thursday's game. | | He finally got over that ignominious threshold with his two-homer performance against the Blue Jays Thursday, and now has seven hits over his past three games, raising his season-long OPS by nearly 100 points as a result. It's a limited track record of success, but it is, I think, the start of Lowe being well worth the wait. | | Partially, my optimism comes from the fact that Lowe's underlying metrics have been right where we wanted them to be all along. He entered Thursday's game with a .262 wOBA but with a .337 expected wOBA, one of the biggest gaps in baseball. Lowe has been hitting the ball hard all along – 91.9 mph average exit velocity, 44.6% hard-hit rate, 10.9% barrel rate – and has been elevating to his pull side well – career-high 27.7% pulled-air rate – and we've been waiting for the results to follow. | | They finally are, and Lowe has spent the past few days making up for lost time. I don't think he's going to stop anytime soon, so if he's still available in your league, now might be your last chance to add him. He's still one of the best sources of power at the second base position. | | Here's what else you need to know from Thursday's action: | | | | Friday's top waiver-wire targets | | Josh Lowe, OF, Rays (67%) – Lowe has had a tough time since his 2023 breakout, with each of his last two seasons derailed more or less before they even began by injuries. This time around, it was an oblique injury on Opening Day that cost Lowe more than a month and a half, but he was back Thursday, looking no worse for the wear. Lowe was back in the leadoff spot for the Rays against the Blue Jays and went 3 for 5 with a homer. Lowe had a solid second half in 2024 and was looking to build on, it so hopefully he's put the injuries behind him and can live up to his former hype. | | AJ Smith-Shawver, SP, Braves (73%) – Smith-Shawver's splitter might be a real game-changer. He didn't have that pitch in 2023 and barely got to use it in 2024, but so far it's been a real weapon for him during what is looking like a breakout 2025. He threw it 28 times Thursday against the Nationals along with a steady diet of elevated four-seamers and that was pretty much all he needed to generate six strikeouts during his six innings of work. That splitter has a whiff rate over 40%, as does his curveball, and it's helped him overcome some iffy metrics on his four-seamer. The fastball still looks like it could be a problem – he had just a 15% whiff rate and a .478 xwOBA on the pitch entering Thursday – but there's clearly something here, and it's worth chasing. Let's not forget, despite making his MLB debut back in 2023, Smith-Shawver is still just 22. He might just be figuring it out now. | | | | Drake Baldwin, C, Braves (20%) – Sean Murphy is under contract for three more seasons after this one (with an option for a fourth), but Baldwin might be already forcing them into some tough decisions. The team's top prospect just keeps crushing the ball, racking up three more hits Thursday to push his season line to .360/.407/.573. Baldwin isn't playing every day or anything close to it, but he has started four of the past 10 games, and if he can keep this up – his underlying metrics suggest he can – he might already be pushing to make this a 50-50 split. And if anything happens to Murphy – or Marcell Ozuna , which would open the DH spot – Baldwin could be a must-start catcher in any format. For now, he's a big part of the youth movement at the catcher position and probably just needs to be rostered in all two-catcher leagues. | | Zebby Matthews, SP, Twins (35%) – Matthews' demotion at the end of Spring Training was frustrating, but it was illuminating in one way – we got a proof of concept for the improved skills he showed in spring. Matthews' velocity is up 1.6 mph from where it was last season on his four-seamer, and it's led to better results than he managed in his time at Triple-A last season. I'm not sure I buy Matthews as a true 28.1% strikeout rate pitcher, but I feel more comfortable with his zone-heavy approach working if he's sitting 96-97 than when he was around 94-95. There are probably always going to be some homer issues for Matthews, given how much he works in the zone, but I'm hoping the improved stuff will help him avoid the 2.63 HR/9 he dealt with in the majors last season. Matthews is getting the call to start Sunday against the Brewers, and while I don't think I would necessarily start him in that one right away, I do want to add him in as many spots as possible now. | | Shawn Armstrong, RP, Rangers (1%) – It's not clear how serious either Chris Martin (elbow) or Luke Jackson's (hand) injuries are, but with both banged up, Armstrong has gotten the past two saves for the Rangers. I don't think it's particularly likely he's just going to take the job and run with it, but he's getting a taste and proving he can handle it, so maybe if Jackson ends up going on the IL, Armstrong will get the opportunity to replace him – the Rangers have been weirdly reluctant to pigeonhole Martin in the ninth-inning role, after all. | | | | Thursday's standouts | | Jacob deGrom, Rangers vs. HOU: 8 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K – Okay, well now he's starting to look like the old Jacob deGrom again. Remember when deGrom said he was intentionally throttling down his velocity to stay healthy? Well, his velocity has consistently trended up, to the point where deGrom was sitting at 97.9 mph in this one, not far from where he was sitting in 2022 and 2023. It's made him more effective, naturally – he had six whiffs with his four-seamer and 16 overall Thursday – but it does raise the question of whether he'll be able to sustain this. At this point, I guess I'm just not going to worry about it – I wasn't exactly convinced that dialing the velocity down was a panacea to keep deGrom healthy, anyway, so I'll take the maximally effective version of him, anyway. As long as he lasts. | | Hunter Brown, Astros @TEX: 8 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 9 K – That's about as tough-luck a loss as you're going to see in the modern MLB. It was technically a complete game, as the lone run Brown allowed in the sixth inning was enough to cost him the game as deGrom dominated on the opposite side. Brown's early-season velocity jump has dissipated a bit, but he's still throwing around 0.7 harder than last season, and his four-seamer continues to be a dominant pitch, generating eight swinging strikes on 23 swings in this one. I'm still a bit skeptical about his ability to continue to run a strikeout rate in the 30% range without multiple strong swing-and-miss secondaries, but he's generating a decent number of whiffs in the strike zone and more chases than ever before, which helps. He looks like one of the best pitchers in baseball right now, with a 2.18 ERA and 210 strikeouts in 194.1 innings in his past 32 starts over the past calendar years. Maybe he's just a top-12 SP now. | | Kevin Gausman , Blue Jays vs. TB: 5.2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER, 0 BB, 6 K – THrough his first four starts, Gausman had a 2.49 ERA and 0.71 WHIP and looked like he was rediscovering his difference-making upside, but things have kind of fallen apart on him. After Thursday's start, Gausman has just one quality start in his past, with a 6.66 ERA. The interesting thing, though, is he still has 26 strikeouts in 25.2 innings in that span and it's not like he's had either homer issues or walk issues throughout all five starts. He's mostly just getting crushed on contact, which has, of course, always been the problem for Gausman. He mitigated that issue at his best with sky-high strikeout rates and great control, but he's basically been an average strikeout pitcher since the start of last season, and with his splitter still not generating the kind of whiffs it used to – and his slider looking like an outright disastrous pitch these days – I'm just not sure he has the upside to be a difference maker anymore. | | Tomoyuki Sugano, Orioles vs. Twins: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 1 BB, 3 K – Sugano had been dancing around disaster lately, putting up excellent starts despite mediocre strikeout rates, largely thanks to his ability to avoid free passes. Of course, he was also getting incredibly lucky when it came to both success on balls in play and performance with runners on base, and that success didn't carry over to Thursday's start. It wasn't a disaster, but Sugano's 4.87 expected ERA entering this start suggests disaster is always looming. I don't know if anyone is buying, especially coming off this start, but I'm trying to see Sugano if I can. | | Zack Littell, Rays @TOR: 7.1 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 2 K – Littell is basically Sugano but without the mystery box appeal. He has pinpoint control and almost no strikeout upside, and with mediocre quality of contact skills, things tend to get very ugly when they go wrong for him. They didn't here, but there's little in Littell's track record to suggest he's much more than a streaming option against the right matchups. I would not trust him against the Astros next week. | | Nick Martinez, Reds vs. CHW: 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K – Martinez is just another version of the Sugano/Littell archetype, but he is at least finding some success lately after struggling early on. This was his fourth quality start in a row, mostly against really good matchups – and the White Sox on the road are certainly one of the best, still. He gets the Pirates and Royals in his next two starts, so he might continue to be useful for at least a little while longer, even if the upside in the long run is pretty limited. | | Chris Paddack , Twins @BAL: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K – Give Paddack this: I think most would have assumed he would be out of a job by now after his nine-run season debut. But he's mostly managed to right the ship since then, albeit in a way that largely lumps him in with the Sugano and Littells of the world – he has just three starts out of nine with more than three strikeouts. Which is all to say, you should be pretty skeptical that Paddack is anything more than a streamer as well, and I'm not sure I really want to stream him against Cleveland – he held them to just one run in their previous matchup, but with just two strikeouts. The juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze there. | | CJ Abrams , SS, Nationals – Abrams looks like the best version of himself yet. He homered for the second time in three games Thursday and is already up to six for the season. He has cut his chase rate to a career-low 31.4%, while his expected wOBA on contact has jumped from a roughly average .370 last season to a borderline elite .450 mark in 2025. The problem, of course, is that this is exactly what Abrams did last season at this time – in fact, he had seven homers by the end of April, though he had already started slumping to an .813 OPS by this point. Maybe this year will prove more sustainable, and there's certainly nothing in his current production that looks like a fluke. It's just a question of whether he can avoid falling apart as the season goes on like he did in 2024. | | News and notes | | Spencer Strider will return next week against the Nationals. Bryce Elder was optioned to the minors, which means Grant Holmes will also stick around in the rotation. Strider was sitting around 93-94 mph in a simulated game earlier this week, so I'm still not sure I'm expecting him to be Spencer Strider right away, but I'm still excited to see him get back. Hopefully, he lasts longer than one start this time. | | The Twins optioned Simeon Woods Richardson to Triple-A to make room for Matthews. | | The Twins passed on David Festa because he's dealing with arm fatigue, despite success at Triple-A. | | Yordan Alvarez is still a few days away from returning to the lineup. He hit in the cage Thursday and continues to make progress, so hopefully we see him by next week. | | Tyler Glasnow threw off flat ground Thursday but has no timeline to throw off a mound as he deals with a shoulder injury. | | Ketel Marte left late Wednesday due to stiffness in his hip. The removal was precautionary and they expect him to be in the lineup Friday. | | Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa both left Thursday after a nasty collision. They are in the concussion protocol and will be evaluated over the next few days. | | TJ Friedl was out of the lineup Thursday with a bone bruise on his right wrist but hopes to return on Friday. | | Yu Darvish allowed two runs over four innings in his rehab start at Triple-A Wednesday. He got up to 51 pitches, so will likely need a few more starts before he is cleared to return from his elbow injury. 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