| | | | Monday, April 8, 2024 | | This is my 13th season writing about Fantasy Baseball for CBSSports.com, and I'll be honest, I can't remember a worse week than the one we just had from an injury perspective. | | It's already been a pretty crummy year for injuries, especially on the pitching side, where we lost Sonny Gray, Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, Eury Perez, Walker Buehler, Bryan Woo, Eduardo Rodriguez, Kyle Bradish and others entered the season on the IL. But things just keep getting worse, first with the news last week that Perez's elbow injury would, in fact, require season-ending Tommy John surgery. | | But that was just the first hit. Shane Bieber is following Perez to the surgeon's table, and Spencer Strider may not be far behind him. Scott White broke down the latest injury news in this column , and you should definitely read that for a thoughtful breakdown of everything you need to know – from what it means for Bieber, Strider, and the rest of the injured pitchers specifically to what it means for the Fantasy Baseball landscape as a whole, both the rest of this season and, potentially, beyond. | | There's been a lot of talk about the root causes of this rash of pitchers injuries, and while I have my thoughts – everyone throwing max effort all of the time feels like the Occam's Razor explanation to me – I'm not sure it ultimately matters. Because I'm not sure there's any easy short-term fix. Guys were getting hurt before the pitch clock, and they aren't going to suddenly stop throwing at max effort, because nobody ever voluntarily walks away from an arms race – pun unfortunately not intended. | | The why is a difficult question to answer that will take even more words than I usually spend on the Monday edition of this newsletter, so we'll stick with the other questions – who got hurt, how long will they be gone, and what does it mean for Fantasy? In today's newsletter, we'll start with the four big injuries from this weekend you need to know about before moving on to preview Week 3 and recap the rest of this weekend's news and performances. | | Because, as much as it hurts to lose Perez, Bieber, and Strider, the season does, in fact, have to go on. | | | | Weekend injury updates | | | | Spencer Strider's future is totally up in the air | | Strider underwent an MRI after feeling some elbow soreness after his most recent start, and the results showed damage to his UCL. That is typically a precursor to Tommy John surgery, depending on the severity of the injury, and Strider is going to visit Dr. Keith Meister for a second opinion to determine how to proceed. Meister is a busy guy these days, because he's going to perform Perez's Tommy John surgery. That feels ominous, no? | | Now, there's always a chance Strider can get through this without the season-wrecking surgery we've come to know and fear … but I don't feel like being optimistic at this point. We've seen guys try to rest and rehab their way through UCL damage, and while there are some high-profile examples of it working out okay – Masahiro Tanaka, notably – more often than not, it seems to end with surgery. At this point, I'm not expecting to see Strider again in an MLB game this season, but I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong. Unfortunately, you can't drop him until we know for sure. We're in limbo right along with him. | | Shane Bieber needs Tommy John surgery | | Apparently Bieber felt pain in his right elbow after his first start of the season, which makes it even more impressive that he went out and struck out nine over six shutout innings in his second outing. But now his season is over, and it comes at a terrible time for Bieber, who will be a free agent at the end of this season. You can safely drop Bieber in all redraft leagues, and his Dynasty value is very much up in the air at this point, too, since he'll likely miss most of the first-half of next season, too. For some Bieber/Strider replacement options, head to my waiver-wire breakdown column from Sunday afternoon . | | | | Luis Robert has a Grade 2 hip flexor strain | | Robert didn't get the "injury prone" tag as often as usual this offseason, mostly because he played a career-high 145 games last season. Of course, he finished last season on the IL with a knee sprain, and if that had happened in, say, April instead of September, I bet his price would have been a lot lower than it ended up being. Robert's latest injury is in the same spot where he hurt his hip in 2021, and Bob Nightengale reported Sunday that the White Sox privately believe he could be out 3-4 months. That's probably a worst-case scenario, but do we have any reason to assume the worst-case scenario won't come to fruition right now? | | Trevor Story has a dislocated left shoulder | | Story "hopes" to play again this season, which is extremely ominous to hear. And, even if he does, what can we expect from a veteran who has missed so much time over the past few seasons? This one really hurts, both because I have Story in a bunch of leagues and, more importantly, because I really though Story was going to have a bounce-back season after finally getting through camp healthy. At this point, you can drop him in all but the deepest formats, and you can consider David Hamilton as a sleeper worth considering in category-based leagues coming off a season where he had 17 homers and 57 steals in Triple-A – he hit his first MLB homer Sunday. We could also see Ceddanne Rafaela get some time at shortstop, and maybe this makes it more likely we see top prospect Marcelo Mayer this summer, though he still has a lot to prove at Double-A first. | | Believe it or not, there's still a whole bunch of news from this weekend we haven't even touched. Keep scrolling. | | | | Week 3 Preview | | Seven teams play seven times in Week 3: The Twins, Astros, Rangers, Braves, Reds, Brewers, Mets, and Phillies. The good news is, every other team is scheduled to play six times this week, so the schedule probably shouldn't play too big a role in how you set your lineup this week. | | Week 3 waiver targets | | If you're looking for Strider or Bieber replacements, that's where I started with this week's waiver-wire column. Here are my top targets for 12-team leagues, with deeper league streamers and upside stashes to be found inside the column's body: | | Mackenzie Gore, Nationals (67%) Tanner Houck, Red Sox (67%) Luis Severino, Mets (72%) Zack Littell, Rays (71%)Luis Gil, Yankees (62%) | | And here's my top target at every other position: | | C: Henry Davis, Pirates (58%)1B; Alex Kirilloff, Twins (37%)2B: Brice Turang, Brewers (54%)3B: Michael Busch, Cubs (41%)SS: Vaughn Grissom, Red Sox (36%) OF: MJ Melendez, Royals (51%), Ceddanne Rafaela, Red Sox (49%), Lars Nootbaar, Cardinals (47%) | | For more deep-league targets, plus my thoughts on each of those players and more, head here. | | Week 3 sleeper hitters | | Best hitter matchups for Week 3 | 1. Diamondbacks @COL3, STL3
2. Athletics @TEX3, WAS3
3. Phillies @STL3, PIT4
4. Reds MIL4, @CHW3
5. Astros @TEX1, @KC3, TEX3 | | Worst hitter matchups for Week 3 | 1. Cardinals PHI3, @ARI3
2. Cubs @SD3, @SEA3
3. Angels TB3, @BOS3
4. Twins LAD3, @DET4
5. Mets @ATL4, KC3 | | Top sleeper hitters for Week 3 | | Maikel Garcia, 3B, Royals (70%) HOU3, @NYM3Tyler O'Neill, OF, Red Sox (67%) BAL3, LAA3 Eugenio Suarez, 3B, Diamondbacks (59%) @COL3, STL3MJ Melendez, OF, Royals (40%) HOU3, @NYM3 Michael Conforto, OF, Giants (69%) WAS3, @TB3 | | Week 3 sleeper pitchers | | You can check out Scott's two-start pitcher rankings here, too. He ranks every projected two-start pitcher for the upcoming week, tiering them from must-starts to no-thanks. | | Top sleeper pitches for Week 3 | | Reese Olson, Tigers (54%) at PIT, vs. MIN Reynaldo Lopez, Braves (56%) vs. NYM, at MIAJordan Hicks, Giants (57%) vs. WAS Tanner Houck , Red Sox (56%) vs. LAASean Manaea, Mets (75%) vs. KC | | Weekend Standouts | | Good pitchers | | In roughly the order of how I rank them the rest of the season right now, in case they're available in your league. | | Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers @CHC: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K – Yamamoto struggled in his first start, but he's been pretty awesome in two since, striking out 13 while walking two in 10 shutout innings. We'd like to see the Dodgers let him pitch deeper into games at some point, especially since he hasn't pitched on only four-days rest yet, and it's at least possible that holds his ultimate upside back a bit this season. | | Jared Jones, Pirates vs. BAL: 6 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K – We're only two starts into Jones' career and I'm already wondering how high is too high to rank him. He has a somewhat limited repertoire on paper, throwing his fastball and slider 86.9% of the time so far, but that doesn't account for the fact that Jones can manipulate his slider well, sometimes throwing a harder version more akin to a cutter and sometimes taking something off of it for bigger whiff pitch. He won't keep pitching this well, but the stuff clearly plays up – 21 whiffs against the Orioles! – and I'm starting to think the biggest hurdle to greatness is just staying healthy. And seeing as that's seemingly the biggest hurdle for everyone right now, I might just move him into the top-40 of my SP ranks this week. | | Bryce Miller, Mariners @MIL: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 7 K – If you remember how his rookie season started, you probably expect me to pump the breaks on the Miller breakout talk. However, I'm kind of buying in right now. Early last season, he was succeeding basically only on the strength of his four-seam fastball, throwing it like 70% of the time or more in his best starts. Through two starts this season, he's thrown it just 37% of the time, with his new splitter emerging as his go-to secondary. His slider and sweeper remain non-factors for the most part – he has two swinging strikes on 37 pitches between them – but the splitter has been a real weapon early on. It leaves him without a go-to swing-and-miss pitch against righties, but increased sinker usage could give him an option for quick outs to mitigate that. On the whole, he looks a whole lot more interesting right now than he did at any point as a rookie. I'm gonna try to put some trade offers out there to see if I can snag him for cheap. | | Reid Detmers, Angels vs. BOS: 6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 12 K – Was I just a year early? Detmers has 19 strikeouts in his first two starts, with both his four-seamer and slider sporting massive swing-and-miss rates and his curveball and changeup both performing well in the early going. Detmers has always had huge upside, and it seems like taking a few mph off his slider has helped him rediscover the feel for the pitch. Given the attrition at the position, Detmers looks like a top-50 option, and that's not the ceiling. | | Michael King, Padres @SF: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K – Talk about a guy who really needed a good showing. After walking 10 in his first 7.1 innings of work, King settled in much better this time around. His velocity is still down, and I might consider selling coming off this start if anyone is buying, though I was more skeptical than most coming in. | | Jordan Hicks, Giants vs. SD: 7 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 5 K – Hicks is intentionally ratcheting his velocity down, and so far doesn't seem to be suffering much for it. His sweeper is still nasty, and his new splitter has been unhittable so far, which is helping make up for the fact that his sinker is getting hit a lot harder and in the air more. It's a tradeoff that may be worth making, but I do wonder if it'll catch up to him at some point, especially if Hicks' control problems crop up again. | | Mackenzie Gore, Nationals vs. PHI: 5.2 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 6 K – I was pretty out on Gore last season, and now it feels like I'm the only person excited about him. His fastball velocity is up more than 2 mph so far, and his changeup is down more than 2 mph, which is a potentially significant change for a guy who has been searching for a fourth pitch to round out his arsenal. He's generating a bunch of weak contact in the early going and might have four above-average swing-and-miss pitches now. Like with Miller, I'm trying to trade for Gore where I can. | | Jack Flaherty, Tigers vs. OAK: 6 IP, 9 H, 6 ER, 1 BB, 5 K – Given how the past few seasons have gone, I'm not sure we can or should just write off any poor outing from Flaherty. His velocity was up from last season, but down from both the spring and from his first start, which was the source of much of the enthusiasm, so we're in a holding pattern with Flahert – I wouldn't drop him, but I want to see a bounceback start the next time he goes out there. | | Ryan Pepiot, Rays @COL: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 11 K – I can't figure Pepiot out, so it's totally fitting that he had the best start of his major-league career at Coors Field. He got 21 swings and misses, 13 of them coming with his four-seam fastball, and this was a good reason not to drop him if you were considering it. However, Coors is such a weird, one-of-one environment for pitchers, that I'm not sure even a good performance there tells us much of anything. | | Luis Severino, Mets @CIN: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K – That's the bounceback I was hoping to see from Severino, who now has 13 strikeouts to just two walks on the season. His soldier still doesn't seem right – he threw just four of them in this one, with his velocity way up on both that pitch and his cutter, but not his fastball. Severino is clearly working through some things – he introduced a sweeper in this start, too – but the fact that he was able to get decent results despite that is a reason to be optimistic … I think. | | Dean Kremer, Orioles @PIT: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 K – With 11 strikeouts to one walk in his first two starts, Kremer looks pretty awesome. He won 13 games last season with just a 4.12 ERA, so he doesn't need to be that good to benefit from the team around him. | | Max Meyer, Marlins @STL: 6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K – With Edward Cabrera and Braxton Garrett working their way back, every pitcher except for Jesus Luzardo in Miami's rotation might be pitching for their jobs right now. Only Luzardo has been better than Meyer so far, so his spot might be safe, but I can't exactly give a full-throated endorsement to adding him right now, because he hasn't been that impressive. | | Cody Bradford, Rangers vs. HOU: 7.2 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K – Bradford became kind of a meme on the FBT podcast this spring after I snagged him in a few H2H points leagues as a cheap SPaRP and was met with a chorus of, "Who???" from the peanut gallery. Well, who's laughing now? Bradford doesn't have much strikeout upside, but he's showed terrific control and a knack for soft contact so far this season. Now, his role in the Rangers rotation is in question with Michael Lorenzen expected to be activated soon, and I'm not sure I would make Bradford a priority add even if he had a rotation spot locked up. But I do think you can probably use him in the right matchups moving forward. | | Ryan Feltner, Rockies vs. TB: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 10 K – I don't know where this came from. The last time Feltner had 10 strikeouts in a game was on April 22, 2022, against the Round Rock Express – yes, a Triple-A team. His previous career-high in strikeouts in 32 MLB starts was just seven. So, yeah, I'm inclined to write this one off as a fluke. Feltner isn't totally without appeal, to be clear, but his team and home park will always limit his upside even if there was reason to be excited. | | Bailey Falter, Pirates vs. BAL: 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K – Falter had a stretch in 2022 when he was pretty useful, and I can envision a scenario where he pulls off a poor man's Bailey Ober impression and is once again pretty useful for Fantasy. But I don't think there's enough strikeout potential here to view him as anything more than a streamer, and even then, a pretty low-end one. | | Bad pitching performances | | Kevin Gausman, Blue Jays @NYY: 1.1 IP, 4 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 0 K – I could write off a bad start pretty easily. Heck, even a bad start with a significant drop in velocity can be written off pretty easily – it's April, it can be cold out there, you know! But a bad start with a significant drop in velocity for a pitcher coming back from a shoulder injury? Yeah, that's too many red flags to ignore. Now, in fairness, Gausman had a start almost exactly a year ago where he dealt with a similar velocity dip and pitched effectively, so it ended up barely a footnote in another successful season. Maybe that's what this will end up being, but given the circumstances, it's hard not to be worried right now. | | Max Fried , Braves vs. ARI: 4.1 IP, 10 H, 7 ER, 1 BB, 5 K – Fried's velocity has actually mostly been fine, but the results have been absolutely disastrous, as he's now allowed 10 runs in five innings to open the season. Beyond the crooked numbers on the scoreboard, I don't see much to be too concerned about so far, so I might even be inclined to throw out a few buy-low offers for Fried … until I remember the time he missed with a forearm last season. Given all that stuff at the top of the newsletter makes it awfully hard to justify buying a player with that in his recent history. | | News and notes | | Gerrit Cole is scheduled to resume playing catch either Monday or Tuesday. He's been shut down for nearly a month after being diagnosed with nerve irritation in his throwing elbow, though if you think a few weeks off means Cole is in the clear after all that up there, you're a more optimistic person than I am at this point. | | Jhoan Duran threw on flat ground from 105 feet Saturday and said afterward that he no longer has pain in his oblique. He still doesn't have an official timetable, but it sounds like he could move somewhat quickly from this point on – though I'd still expect him to be three weeks away. | | Manny Machado has been playing catch from longer distances lately and is "a little ahead of schedule" in terms of rehabbing from offseason elbow surgery. The Padres won't consider having him return to the field for a few more weeks, though. | | Sonny Gray will make his season debut Tuesday against the Phillies. He's expected to be limited to about 65 pitches, so I probably wouldn't start him if I could avoid it this week. | | Walker Buehler was terrific in his second rehab outing, striking out six over 4.2 innings, while getting up 65 pitches. It's not clear when he's going to return to the majors, but it'll have to be by the end of April at the latest. I wouldn't be surprised if he made just one or two more starts before coming back, and I'm expecting him to be pretty good when he's active. | | Lars Nootbaar will be re-evaluated Monday and if everything checks out, could be ready to return. Don't be surprised if Victor Scott is sent back down, because he's looked pretty overwhelmed with the bat. That was always a possible outcome when he got the call. | | Nick Lodolo is targeting a return Friday against the White Sox for his season debut. He's one of the more high-variance pitchers out there, because I could see him pitching like a top-24 starter or posting an ERA starting with a five, but I'm rostering him wherever I can because I'm a sucker for upside and strikeouts. | | Willson Contreras was initially in the lineup Saturday but then scratched again due to hand soreness. He's missed three straight. Hopefully he's close enough that you can start him this week, and I wouldn't go out and use a roster spot on another catcher if I could help it. | | Alex Cobb has been shut down from throwing a few days due to some flexor tendon inflammation. He was rehabbing from offseason hip surgery, but this is a worrying speed bump. | | J.D. Martinez won't participate in baseball activities for two days after reporting overall body soreness. He could be ready to join the Mets Friday against the Royals, though. As J.D. and I graduated from high school together, I can attest that, at our age, general body soreness is a concern. More for me than him, I think. | | Mike Clevinger is set to make his White Sox season debut around May 1. I have very little interest in him. | | To the IL this weekend | | Eloy Jimenez with a left adductor strain. He'll be eligible to return this Friday, so hopefully we get some updates throughout the week. | | Geraldo Perdomo has a torn meniscus and is expected to miss at least one month. Before the season, that would have meant Jordan Lawlar time, but the top prospect is recovering from thumb surgery that is expected to keep him out until May at the earliest. That means Blaze Alexander will continue to play pretty regularly. He's been solid in the early going, and had 10 homers while hitting .290/.401/.472 in 79 games last season. He's a deep-league target, but I'm not ready to add him in 12-team leagues. | | Jakob Junis with a right shoulder impingement. Aaron Ashby was recalled from Triple-A to replace him, and he's worth a look in deeper leagues. Ashby has shown some strikeout upside in the majors and had some hype before missing the 2023 season recovering from shoulder surgery. | | Yankees reliever Jonathan Loaisiga will miss the rest of the season with a torn UCL in his right elbow. He is having season-ending surgery. | | | | | | | | The Golazo Show | | CBS Sports HQ X March Madness | Catch coverage of the UEFA Europa League Quarterfinals this Thursday at 2 PM ET on the Golazo Show, airing live on the CBS Sports Golazo Network, our free, 24/7 channel dedicated exclusively to global soccer coverage.
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