A lot can change in two years, especially for a pitcher. Two years ago, Bryce Miller looked like a burgeoning ace, and then last season he looked like he barely belonged in the rotation – in fact, if it weren’t for an injury to Bryan Woo, Miller might not have even been in the Mariners rotation for the playoffs.
But if there’s one thing we should know about pitchers at this point is that you can never be quite sure about what the next step in their story will be. Miller spent most of last season pitching through bone spurs in his elbow, but he avoided surgery this offseason and suddenly looks like he might be on an ace path again. His season got off to a delayed start due to an oblique injury, but he was throwing harder than ever during his rehab assignment, and through two starts in the majors, that velocity is still there. And the results were there Tuesday against the White Sox, too. Miller took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and ultimately allowed just one hit and one walk over 5.2 innings of work. He struck out seven, a welcome sight after he struck out just three in his return to the rotation last week.
And the stuff looked tremendous. Miller generated 13 swinging strikes on 72 pitches, including seven with his four-seamer, which he threw 60% of the time. Typically, being that fastball heavy isn’t necessarily an approach we love to see, but with Miller sitting at 96 mph and flirting with triple digits, it’s hard to complain – this was a borderline elite four-seamer when he was sitting 95 thanks to the heavy ride he generates with it up in the zone, and it might have leveled up. He added three whiffs each on his slider and splitter and ultimately threw those three pitches 91% of the time. As he looks to pitch deeper into games and up his pitch count, I suspect we’ll see more variation in Miller’s approach. But he didn’t really need it in this one, and that’s pretty impressive in its own right.
Miller was a top-10 pitcher in Fantasy back in 2024, and while I don’t think it’s fair to expect him to be that good again, I do think we should view him as a must-add pitcher in any leagues where he remains available after this one. That’s the ceiling, but even if he falls short of it, he could still be a very valuable pitcher, especially if he sustains this newfound velocity. And he has shown enough to be worth chasing in all leagues.
Before we get to the rest of the newsletter, a quick note: I’m taking the next few days off, so there won’t be a newsletter in your inbox Thursday or Friday this week. We’ll see you back here Sunday to get ready for Week 10. Now, here’s what else you need to know about from Tuesday’s action around MLB:
Wednesday’s top waiver-wire targets
Here’s who we’re looking to add coming out of Tuesday’s action:
Griffin Jax, RP, Rays (26%) – On Tuesday, Jax had his best start yet since moving to the rotation, limiting the Orioles to just one solo, leadoff homer over five innings of work. He allowed just three hits and one walk in the start and, most notably, struck out six, showing strikeout upside for the first time since his move to this role. Jax has lost a bit of velocity in his starting role, and he saw a near-two-mph drop from the first inning to the fifth Tuesday, so it remains an open question whether he’ll be able to make this all work in the long run, especially since he only threw 62 pitches in this one. But the stuff looks like it’ll work in the rotation, and if you’re looking for an arm with upside to stash, he counts.
Corbin Burnes, SP, Diamondbacks (45%) – Another name to keep in mind if you’re looking to stash someone with upside! Burnes is working his way back from Tommy John surgery and is scheduled to face hitters in a live batting practice session for the first time next week. That doesn’t mean his return is imminent, or anything, but it does mean he’s continuing to make progress and is on track to return sometime this season. We’re almost certainly still looking at a second-half return, possibly in August, but that could still leave a couple of months where Burnes has the potential to make an impact for Fantasy.
Zebby Matthews, SP, Twins (35%) – I’ve been such a fan of Matthews in the past that I really wish I could buy into his pair of strong starts since returning from the minors. And thankfully, Tuesday’s start against the Astros was a lot more encouraging than his start against the Marlins last week. He got through six innings, allowing two runs this time around while striking out six, and he did it while adding 1 mph to his average fastball velocity. He still isn’t quite where he was last season, but he isn’t far off now, and it makes it a little easier to buy into him being a useful Fantasy option. Matthews has always had pretty good stuff, but he struggled with actually executing his pitches consistently – he wouldn’t issue many walks, but his actual command was poor enough that he would just get crushed when he wasn’t missing bats. If dialing back the velocity a bit allows him to command better, maybe it’s a tradeoff worth making. That’s speculative – and it’s worth noting that Mathews was struggling to the tune of a 4.72 ERA in Triple-A, so it’s not like we have a lot to go on here. But we can have some guarded optimism about Matthews after two solid starts to open his season.
Troy Melton, SP, Tigers (9%) – Let’s keep going with the “interesting names to stash” targets. Melton is working his way back from an elbow strain suffered back in February, but he looked really strong in his recent tune-up start Tuesday at Triple-A. He struck out six while allowing one run over five innings, and he sat at 96.5 mph and topped out at 98.1 over his 63 pitches. He probably needs another start or two to get built up over 80 pitches before he returns, but the reeling Tigers sure could use a jolt, and Melton showed some upside with the Tigers last season. He’s worth stashing in deeper leagues, at least.
Kaelen Culpepper, SS, Twins (12%) – Speaking of players who could be on the verge of getting to the majors, the path for Culpepper is starting to take shape. The 23-year-old infield prospect recently moved to third base at Triple-A, which is notable because the Twins just sent third baseman Royce Lewis back to Triple-A amid a deep slump. The goal might be to just get Lewis back on track and call him back up, but they might be giving Culpepper a look at the hot corner before giving him the call. He is hitting just .253 at Triple-A, but he makes plenty of contact and has nine homers and nine steals in 39 games, so Culpepper could be a pretty interesting target for Roto leagues.
Nick Morabito, OF, Mets (1%) – Morabito got the call Tuesday and was immediately in the starting lineup in place of AJ Ewing, a surprise given how well Ewing has played so far this season. Morabito isn’t quite the same level of prospect as Ewing, so I’m hoping whatever playing time he gets moving forward doesn’t come at Ewing’s expense, but he’s also an interesting player in his own right. He had 14 steals at Triple-A, and that’s probably the primary way he’ll make an impact in the majors if he does, at least for now. He’s more a name to keep an eye on than one to add, but you could view him as a potential target for deeper Roto leagues.
Tuesday’s standouts
Bo Bichette, 3B, Mets – In the grand scheme of things, two months isn’t a very long time. In baseball, it’s barely any time at all, at least when it comes to how you should view a player with an established track record. I know it doesn’t feel that way in the moment – everyone else is getting great production from their top-100 players, and you’re stuck there with Bo Bichette doing absolutely nothing. And what’s worse, he was doing nothing, and there wasn’t even much to be optimistic about – the underlying data for Bichette has been pretty poor all along! But here’s the thing: Two months is nothing. Bad two-month stretches – even stretches as seemingly hopeless as Bichette’s! – happen pretty regularly for good players, and they usually don’t mean anything. And all of a sudden, it looks like Bichette is starting to turn it around. Just like that, he hit his first homer in over 20 days Monday and then followed it up with two more Tuesday. If you benched Bichette for this week, I get it. But this is why I’m hesitant to lose faith in proven stars even when they are deep in multi-month stretches. They usually figure it out eventually, and you want to be there when they do.
Nick Kurtz, 1B, Athletics – I saw the comments. When Kurtz got off to a slow start and had a sub-.700 OPS on April 16, I saw the “sophomore slump” comments. “He was overhyped!” Well, the underlying numbers told a different story, and now a month later, so do the surface-level numbers, as Kurtz is now hitting .272/.428/.479 after a two-hit, three-RBI game Tuesday. And here’s a fun wrinkle: Kurtz stole another base Tuesday, his sixth of the season, after he stole just two last season. The power production has been underwhelming so far, but even that doesn’t seem too concerning – his average exit velocity and hard-hit rate are both up from last season, and he’s still hitting the ball in the air plenty, so I don’t see much reason to think he won’t be an elite power hitter moving forward. This is still a top-20 player in Fantasy to me.
Nolan McLean, Mets vs. WAS: 5.2 IP, 8 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – McLean didn’t pitch well Tuesday, but there was a bit of bad luck along the way, too. McLean had the three unearned runs, obviously, but then there was the grand slam he gave up to James Wood, which bounced off Morabito’s glove. It would have been a tough catch, and it seems reasonable not to classify it as an error, but Wood wouldn’t have come around to score if center fielder Tyrone Taylor had been aware that the ball got away from Morabito and squirted into center field – heck, it’s conceivable that only two of those runs might have scored with better luck. As it was, McLean still got hit hard plenty, so it’s hard to chalk all of this one up to bad luck. But it wasn’t necessarily as bad as the box score looks.
Dylan Cease, Blue Jays @NYY: 5 IP, 4 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 9 K – I don’t want to hear it. I understand some of you may not have a ton of patience for Cease, but this was just his second start of the season, allowing more than three runs, and his ERA is still below 3.00. We have seen a tick up in the walks over the past few starts, but it’s the two starts where he walked only one combined that are the outlier for Cease, who has always been effectively wild even at his best. He won’t sustain a sub-3.00 ERA, sure, but Cease still looks like one of the best picks you could have made at pitcher coming off an unusually elevated ERA.
Jesus Luzardo, Phillies vs. CIN: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – That’s two good starts in a row for Luzardo, though it’s interesting that those two have come with just nine strikeouts across 12 innings. Luzardo didn’t seem to have the best feel for his sweeper in this one, which could help explain that. Either way, he’s still sporting 10.7 K/9 and excellent peripherals and seems to have put the poor starts behind him. For now. He’s always a volatile pitcher, but you keep him in your lineup because the good outweighs the bad in the long run.
Kyle Bradish, Orioles @TB: 5.1 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 6 K – I just want him to lock in finally. We’ve certainly seen worse starts from Bradish, but he still just isn’t throwing strikes the way he needs to to really thrive, and that’s frustrating. He didn’t have the curveball working well in this one, and since his fastballs have been hittable, that’s going to get him in trouble. I remain hopeful that Bradish can be a difference-making pitcher eventually, but he still isn’t there yet, and it’s frustrating.
Emmet Sheehan, Dodgers @SD: 4 IP, 5 H, 4 ER, 1 BB, 2 K – Given how weird the Dodgers have historically been with Sheehan, there’s definitely a part of me that wonders how strong his grip on a rotation spot will be when Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell are back from the IL. The good news for Sheehan is that probably won’t happen until at least July, so he still has time to figure things out. But he continues to leak velocity badly as his starts go on, and he continues to struggle to impress. Now, in the interest of fairness, he had been pitching better entering this start, with two or fewer runs in three of his previous four starts, but even then, he had failed to finish five innings in two of them. He still has time to turn things around, but my confidence in Sheehan is flagging.
Landen Roupp, Giants @ARI: 6 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3 K – Roupp continues to do an excellent job of limiting damage on contact, this time allowing just six batted balls with an expected batting average over .500 out of 20 balls in play. He didn’t miss many bats in this one, but he did at least avoid walks, and that’s a workable tradeoff. This all still feels a bit precarious to me, but Roupp has been good enough for long enough that he’s earned some measure of trust with his newly expanded arsenal.
Ben Brown, Cubs vs. MIL: 5 IP, 7 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 6 K – I’m still just not sure Brown has a deep enough arsenal to make this work, especially if teams are going to keep stacking their lineups with lefties. It worked in his first two starts, but the Brewers finally got to him in this one, and his lack of a platoon-neutralizing pitch remains a red flag. It’s not like this start was entirely without positive signs, of course – Brown got up to 82 pitches and held his velocity well into the fifth inning, and he generated 15 swinging strikes, a big number. I think Brown can continue to be pretty useful as a starter. I’m just not sure I buy that he’s going to be able to become a must-start pitcher for Fantasy with his limitations.
Kumar Rocker, Rangers @COL: 7.2 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 7 K – Now there’s a surprise. Coors Field is a weird venue, and the thin air up there makes analyzing even very good starts kind of pointless. But Rocker has pitched pretty well lately, lowering his ERA to 3.60 after a pair of scoreless outings. Of course, he’s walked seven to 10 strikeouts in 12.2 innings across those two starts, so I’m really not buying this. But I’ll keep an eye on it just in case Rocker can start building on this.
Reid Detmers, Angels vs. ATH: 5.2 IP, 8 H, 8 ER, 2 BB, 8 K – At one point during his six-run third inning, Detmers allowed four consecutive hits, all on batted balls with an average exit velocity of 88.6. There’s some bad luck here … but it’s not enough to explain this outing away. The truth of the matter is, Detmers just remains a headache. He isn’t terrible, but he isn’t good enough to overcome these stretches where everything just falls apart on him. I can talk myself into a lefty starter with three pitches with a whiff rate over 30%, but I’m just not sure I want to try with Detmers at this point. I just don’t know if he’s worth the hassle at this point. I’m treating him as just a streamer.
Anthony Kay, White Sox @SEAA: 5.1 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K – Great start! In Seattle, the best pitching environment in baseball, where his fastball suddenly started missing a bunch of bats. That’s an outlier for Kay, and one I don’t expect to continue. His xERA is over 6.00 for the season still, and his recent run of success doesn’t look like something we need to be chasing outside of very deep leagues.
Foster Griffin, Nationals vs. NYM: 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 0 BB, 5 K – And just like that, Griffin’s ERA for the season has jumped up nearly two runs over his past two starts. If you were streaming him, I hope you jumped ship after the disaster last time out; if not, now’s the time.
