When a pitcher is coming back from a forearm or elbow injury, you’re just holding your breath with every pitch. And when Kyle Harrison left Wednesday’s start early, it was hard not to fear the worst.
But you can safely exhale. Harrison left the game Wednesday against the Pirates after just five innings and 69 pitches, but the team declared shortly after that he left with cramping in both of his calves – so, nothing to do with his arm. I’m sure that wasn’t comfortable for Harrison, but it should be nothing a bit of extra Gatorade can’t handle.
And, if you were worried about how Harrison would look after a nearly month-long absence from the rotation, well, we got good news there, too. Because he looked about as good as ever, limiting the Pirates to just one hit over five innings, walking just one and striking out 10 for his fourth double-digit strikeout effort of the season. He struck out eight straight to close out the start, even, so if the calves were an issue, they weren’t enough to slow him down. His velocity was down a bit on his four-seamer and a bit more on the breaking ball, but neither was terribly concerning, especially with how effective he was. Harrison doesn’t need to sit 96 to dominate, thanks to the combination of his delivery from the left side of the mound and the movement profile on the four-seamer, both of which were intact in his return from the injury.
That’s not always guaranteed to happen, but Harrison looked so good Wednesday that I think we can be pretty confident he’s going to be good moving forward. If healthy, of course, but that’s always the concern. We can’t guarantee that’ll be the case moving forward, but he sure looked healthy in Wednesday’s start, and unless that cramping issue is hiding something more serious, it sure looks like you can get back to treating Harrison as a must-start pitcher.
That’s a relief.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here’s what you might have missed from CBSSports.com’s MLB coverage in recent days:
Prospects report. Get to know the 12 biggest prospects who changed hands at the deadline.
Deadline winners and losers. Scott White takes a look at the biggest winners and losers from Monday’s wild deadline.
Prospect callups. George Lombard highlighted the first crop of post-deadline promotions to get to know.
Deadline grades. The Dodgers get an ‘A’. How did everyone else fare?
Best non-Skubal moves. Which teams who didn’t trade for the best pitcher in baseball did the best job re-tooling?
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Wednesday’s action:
Angel Genao, SS, Guardians (15%) – When Genao’s promotion was declared, I thought he was going to be a lot less expensive than George Lombard when waivers ran this week, because he came to the majors with a lot less hype (and, let’s be honest, because he doesn’t play for the Yankees). But Genao might have spoiled that himself Wednesday by going 4 for 5 with a run and an RBI in his MLB debut. Remember, this guy was hitting .300 with 13 homers and 11 steals in the minors and has played his way into top-25 global prospect consideration, so he’s very much a player worth getting excited about now that he’s here. Lombard will probably still cost a bit more – he has a bit more job security and might have a bit more present power than Genao – but the chances of Genao going under the radar just took a big hit. He still has the upside to be worth chasing, though if Jose Ramirez doesn’t go on the IL, the playing time is definitely in question.
Noah Cameron, SP, Royals (74%) – We’ve seen good stretches from Cameron before. I mean, heck, he finished last season with a 2.99 ERA; the whole thing was a good stretch! But we’ve never seen a stretch like this one from him, as he struck out nine in eight innings Wednesday against the Twins, giving him 24 strikeouts in 23 innings over his past three starts – his previous high for a three- start stretch was 22 strikeouts and 20.2 innings, respectively. It’s also the third time in a row Cameron deprioritized his four-seamer, throwing it less than both his changeup and slider. He had 17 whiffs in the start while matching his career high in strikeouts, and he’s been impressive enough lately with these tweaks to his arsenal that it’s worth adding him in all leagues just to see if it can prove sustainable.
Jacob Lopez, SP, Athletics (14%) – I’ll remind you that Lopez had a 12-start stretch from June through August last season when he had a 2.30 ERA with 10.8 K/9 before an elbow injury ended his season. He hasn’t been anywhere near that good so far this season, but he’s showing some signs here lately. He struck out nine over five innings while allowing two earned runs and walking just one, and it brings him to 27 strikeouts to nine walks in 19.2 innings over his past four starts. The starts have been brief and the control hasn’t been great on the whole, but it’s enough to get me interested in Lopez again, at least as a deep-league streamer who gets two starts against the Rays and Rangers next week.
Endy Rodriguez, C, Pirates (21%) – I think after all this time and all those injuries, Rodriguez might just finally be healthy and figuring it out. Fantasy players have been slow to buy in, but Rodriguez just keeps producing, this time homering in consecutive games Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing him to seven homers and six steals in 43 games. Project that over 129 (roughly a starting catcher’s usage and an easy multiplication for me to do) and you’re looking at a 21-homer, 18-steal pace from a catcher hitting .269 with really good plate discipline. With a 92.3 mph average exit velocity and 11.2% barrel rate, the power doesn’t look like a fluke, and if the batting average is a little inflated, it’s not so out of whack that you think it’s going to collapse (he has a .249 expected average, for example). This all just looks like a very solid profile from a former top prospect, and at this point, I’m buying at least in any two-catcher league.
Mitch Bratt, SP, Diamondbacks (3%) – Where’d this come from? Bratt entered Wednesday’s start with just 12 strikeouts to 15 walks in 20.2 innings across five starts, generally looking like he didn’t really belong in the majors. But he dominated against the Padres, striking out nine over seven shutout innings with just three walks. That did only come with eight whiffs on 92 pitches, so he wasn’t necessarily quite as dominant as the box score would make you think. But Bratt did have a 2.41 ERA with a 25.2% strikeout rate at Triple-A before his promotion, so this isn’t as out of nowhere as you might think. I’m leaving him for deeper leagues, but I don’t hate the idea of streaming him against the Rockies next week (even if a looming second matchup against the Braves isn’t nearly as appetizing).
Cody Bradford, SP, Rangers (8%) – Bradford was never a dominant pitcher, but he was a pretty effective one back in 2024 before undergoing Tommy John surgery. And he mostly looked like himself in a brief return to the mound Wednesday. He scattered five hits and two walks over 4.1 innings of work while striking out five, and his stuff continued to play up despite sitting below 90 mph with his four-seamer. It’s not enough to make Bradford more than a flier in deep leagues, but he’s a name to watch as he gets stretched out over his next few outings.
Three Up, Three Down
Three big performances that have players trending up, and three that have the arrow pointing in the opposite direction.
Three Up
Hunter Brown is starting to look like himself
In his first six starts back from his shoulder, Brown had just two starts with two or fewer walks, and he struck out just four hitters in both. In his past three starts, he has walked two or fewer, with at least five strikeouts in each, including eight strikeouts across six innings in a quality start Wednesday. He still isn’t all the way back to where he was at his pre-injury best – he really struggled with his four-seamer feel Wednesday, throwing just 33% of them in the strike zone and still giving up two batted balls with an average exit velocity of 100.5 mph – but he’s getting there. And when you have the track record Brown does, it doesn’t take much to get me bought back in. I’m not ready to declare him a top-12 starter again, but I’m back to comfortably starting Brown every week.
Trevor Rogers keeps getting it done
For a while, Ranger Suarez was our best example of a specific archetype: The lefty with middling stuff whose success is mostly dependent on how good his command happens to be at any point. When Rogers is commanding everything well, he can be a very successful pitcher, and he’s commanding everything extremely well right now, leading to a 2.28 ERA, 1.00 WHIP and 60 strikeouts to just 14 walks over his past 11 starts, a stretch spanning 67 innings. What’s frustrating is that his pitch mix velocity and movement profile are basically identical these days to when he was struggling so badly early in the season, which means his success mostly comes down to execution. Of course, like we saw last season, Rogers can get on a roll that can last through the end of the season, so I’m not betting against him right now. Even if I don’t necessarily have a lot of faith in him in the long run.
Jose Altuve has a “turn the clocks back” week
I think it’s more likely than not that Altuve’s days as a Fantasy stalwart are probably finished, but it’s still nice to see signs of the old Altuve. He homered Wednesday as part of a two-hit game, his fourth straight game with multiple hits. Of course, this is still a very small sample of success for Altuve, who had an OPS below .700 in both June and July and is hitting just .244/.305./.398 for the season. The underlying numbers are pretty close to the worst of his career and he’s no longer outperforming them the way he used to, a sign that, at 36, he’s lost a lot of what made him special. But he reminded us Thursday he isn’t totally finished yet.
Three Down
Paul Skenes just doesn’t look like himself
It’s impossible to ignore Skenes’ slide at this point. He gave up three runs over five innings Wednesday against the Brewers, striking out six but also walking four, his second start in a row with four walks. Before those two starts, he hadn’t walked four in an outing since last June, and he now has a 6.26 ERA, 1.51 WHIP and 3.9 BB/9 over his past eight starts, way out of line with his career norms. There really isn’t any precedent for Skenes struggling like this, and while his track record makes me want to believe he’ll turn it around, the fact that this stretch has also coincided with the lowest velocity of his career makes it a lot harder to have that faith. Maybe there is some kind of small mechanical tweak that Skenes can make to turn this all around, but for the first time in his career, it doesn’t feel like starting Skenes is helping your team.
Casey Mize hit the wall
Mize has earned the benefit of the doubt to overlook a bad start, but man, Wednesday’s was a really bad start. In his first outing with the Padres, Mize was tagged for eight runs on nine hits and three walks in 3.1 innings, with just one strikeout. He just didn’t have it in this one, generating just two swinging strikes on 77 pitches, despite his velocity mostly bouncing back from his previous outing. Like I stated, it’s way too early to worry about what this means for Mize, especially since it’s his first time getting traded and the last few days have probably been pretty strange for him. But this was a truly awful start, so let’s hope it is not the start of a tailspin he can’t pull out of.
Sean Burke finally stumbled
Burke doesn’t have the same track record as Mize, but he’s arguably been more impressive this season than Mize has ever been in the majors, so it’s even tougher to know what to expect from him moving forward. He dominated around the end of June with a spike in velocity, and has kept on dominating even when the velocity dipped back down. That wasn’t the case Wednesday, as he ran into the red-hot Red Sox and made it through just 4.1 innings, allowing two runs on five hits and a pair of walks with four strikeouts. It wasn’t a bad start, but it was his first pedestrian one in a while, and the Red Sox hit him very hard, with only his four-seamer consistently missing bats. I’m going to give Burke the benefit of the doubt that this was just a stumble, but he doesn’t have such a long track record that we can totally ignore another one, so we’ll keep a close eye on how the next start goes.
Extra Innings
The Orioles don’t have a closer yet
In their first game after trading Tyler Wells, the Orioles went with Yennier Cano for the ninth inning, with Andrew Kittredge working the eighth. In their second game, they went with Cano in the eighth and Kittredge in the ninth, despite the fact that Kittredge allowed a run the previous night. What will the third save opportunity bring? Given the way they approached the first two, I don’t know how you could have a sense of what the third will bring, making it tough to justify any kind of investment in this bullpen until we see more.
