I don't know if there's been a more hyped pitching prospect debut in Fantasy than Kade Anderson's since Paul Skenes'. Bubba Chandler a year ago came pretty close, though by the time he actually debuted with the Pirates, it was in a quasi-relief role following months of struggles at Triple-A, so I'm not sure he quite got there. Either way, to say expectations for Anderson have gotten outrageously high over the past month or so would not be an overstatement. 

And he didn't live up to those expectations in his first MLB start. That's not to say Anderson was bad, because he wasn't – making the leap straight from Double-A and coming up an out short of a quality start against a lineup like the Cubs is pretty impressive, even! But he wasn't transcendent, and that's where the bar was set for many.

To start with, Anderson came as advertised in a lot of ways. He showed a deep arsenal and commanded all of it well, throwing all four of his pitches at least 20% of the time and dishing out just two walks despite throwing only 40% of his pitches in the strike zone. That ability to generate chases is a big deal, a sign that he was throwing the ball close enough to the zone to induce swings, but not close enough to risk much damage. For someone who will have to get by more on pitchability and command than pure stuff, already being able to showcase that skill is big.

But the stuff is at a relative deficit compared to other high-end pitching prospects. It isn't bad, but it isn't, again, transcendent. Anderson isn't going to come up and blow opposing hitters away, and that is especially true of his four-seamer.

The fastball for Anderson doesn't have bad velocity, but even for a left-handed starter, 93.6 mph isn't exactly special these days. And the jump to the majors seems to have impacted the quality of the pitch – a known issue for any pitcher making the leap from Double-A to the majors at this point. As Lance Brozdowski pointed out in his newsletter Sunday, the ball used at Double-A and lower levels of the minors is different from the one used at MLB and in Triple-A, in a way that often impacts the movement profile and spin rates of fastballs. 

Anderson's fastball went from having 18.8 inches of induced vertical break (think "rise") in Double-A to just 15.4 inches in his MLB debut. That can be the difference between missing the bat entirely and finding the barrel, and it might mean his mere two whiffs on 27 fastballs weren't just a fluke. That just might not be a great pitch against MLB hitters, especially when Anderson faded down to the 92-ish mph range over his final couple of innings (when he ran into trouble). 

I don't want to make it seem like I'm too negative about Anderson, because I'm still very excited about what we're going to get from him. He's a lefty with terrific control in an organization (and ballpark!) that so often wrings the most out of its pitchers. He doesn't have an elite fastball, but everything else here looks like it could be at least pretty good, and as we've seen in recent years, lefties can often perform better than you might expect by dint of being, for lack of a better word, funky. 

But Anderson has been talked about as a potential immediate impact arm for Fantasy for months. I've seen commenters on FBT, for example, talk about him as a top-10 pitcher in baseball before he even made his MLB debut. People were complaining that Scott White and Frank Stampfl only talked about him as a top-40 starting pitcher when he got the call this week. When that's how high the expectations are, you do have to nitpick. And Anderson may not quite have the stuff to match up with some of the other most exciting young pitchers in baseball.

That doesn't mean he can't be good. Heck, it doesn't mean he can't live up to those lofty expectations, even – Parker Messick is a top-10 pitcher in Fantasy this season with a pretty similar profile, in fact. It's just one start, after all, and we shouldn't draw any strong conclusions on the basis of just one start, especially for someone who was pretty historically dominant at Double-A.

But if you assumed Anderson was simply going to step onto an MLB mound and immediately pitch like an ace, that might not be in the cards for him based on what we saw in his MLB debut. 

Pre-game Lineup Card

Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days: 

Week 23 sleeper hitters

Best hitter matchups for Week 23

1. Nationals COL4, MIA3
2. Orioles @STL3, @ATH3
3. Athletics MIN3, BAL3
4. Giants CIN3, ARI4
5. Yankees HOU3, BOS4  

Worst hitter matchups for Week 23

1. Angels CLE3, PHI3
2. Tigers TB3, LAD3
3. Rangers @CHW3, @MIL3
4. Mariners PHI3, @TOR3
5. Padres PIT3, @TB3  

Top sleeper hitters for Week 23

  1. Zack Gelof, 3B, Athletics (77%) MIN3, BAL3
  2. Trent Grisham, OF, Yankees (71%) HOU3, BOS4
  3. George Lombard Jr., SS, Yankees (71%) HOU3, BOS4
  4. Nolan Arenado, 3B, Diamondbacks (70%) CHC3, @SF4
  5. Henry Bolte, OF, Athletics (36%) MIN3, BAL3

Week 23 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 pitchers for Week 23

  1. Tyler Mahle, Braves (68%) vs. COL
  2. Walbert Urena, Angels (73%) vs. CLE, vs. PHI
  3. Aaron Nola, Phillies (58%) at SEA
  4. Dustin May, Brewers (73%) at NYM
  5. Shane Drohan, Brewers (52%) vs. TEX

Hitting the Wire

The top waiver-wire targets from this weekend's action: 

Week 23 waiver targets

For more deep-league targets, plus my thoughts on each of those players and more, head here. 

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

Blake Snell is rolling 

You never quite know what you're going to get from Snell. He'll routinely have stretches where he looks like the best pitcher in baseball, but he'll just as often look like an absolute mess. Toss in the year IL stint (or two) and a lot of Fantasy players have rightly decided he isn't worth the trouble. Buy boy, when he's right, it sure is exciting, isn't it? And Snell looks really right since his return from elbow surgery, as he tossed his third excellent start in a row Sunday against the Pirates, limiting them to just two hits and three walks across six shutout innings. Across his three starts, Snell has 21 strikeouts to just seven hits and seven walks in 18 innings, while allowing a 1.00 ERA in that span. And the thing about Snell is that while the overall experience of having him on your roster can be exhausting, once he gets rolling, it tends to take an injury to stop him. He looks poised to help carry some folks to a Fantasy championship down the stretch, and while I don't think I'll ever be able to justify drafting him as a top-30 SP – especially not on a Dodgers team whose only goal is being healthy in October – he's in the midst of reminding us of exactly why someone will be willing to justify that price every spring. 

Fernando Tatis is himself again

It seems pretty clear at this point that Tatis just screwed up his swing early in the season. Every player tinkers to try to find an edge, and the early part of this season isn't the only time we've ever seen Tatis tinker with his swing, but the results this time were simply catastrophic. He was still generating huge exit velocities, but he just couldn't drive the ball in the air to the right parts of the field, which is how he went over two months at the start of the season without homering. Maybe it isn't all about his swing setup, but when you compare Tatis' setup in 2025, then the first two months of 2026, and then ever since, it's not hard to draw a pretty strong conclusion here. Whatever caused it, Tatis has looked like his usual self since the beginning of June, and he was absurdly locked in this weekend, going 9 for 14 with two homers in a three-game series with the Twins, and he's now hitting .316/.391/.737 in August with nine homers. It's not impossible that Tatis could finish the season with 25 homers and 40 steals, pretty much exactly what you drafted him to be. That seems inconceivable after his awful first two months, but it's a good reminder to not give up on elite talents, no matter how poorly they are playing. 

Spencer Jones is starting to show flashes

Credit where it's due to Jones, who is managing to make an impact in spite of his limitations. He only went 3 for 9 this weekend, but he had five hits in his previous three games and has two homers and two steals in his past six games, while striking out a pretty reasonable eight times in 27 at-bats. Overall, there is still too much swing-and-miss in Jones' game, though even if you zoom out, he's at least approaching respectability there, with a 32.6% strikeout rate so far in August. With his power and athleticism, a 33% strikeout rate might be workable for Jones. He isn't a star and likely won't develop into one, and there is still some very real bottom-out potential, but he's looking a lot more viable than I expected. 

Three Down

Nick Lodolo is finished

There's no question that Lodolo is a talented pitcher, but I think we've gotta admit at this point that it just isn't going to happen for him this season. His recurring blister issues have completely derailed his season, to the point where he has had to completely alter how he throws his breaking ball just to stay on the mound. Unfortunately, nothing he has tried has worked out, as he got tagged for six earned runs in 3.1 innings in his start this weekend to push his ERA to 7.30 since his latest return from the IL. He just hasn't been right at all this season and I see no reason to think he's going to suddenly turn it around. He's 66% rostered right now, and that makes him one of the most over-rostered players in Fantasy. He's gotta find another way to overcome these blister issues this offseason. 

Bryce Miller is droppable 

Miller is probably Lodolo's main competition for "most over-rostered player in Fantasy right now," and the only thing keeping Miller from running away with it is the fact that he was actually very good at one point this season. But that was a pretty long time ago at this point, as Miller has a 7.19 ERA and 1.62 WHIP over his past eight starts, with 30 strikeouts and 20 walks in 41.1 innings in that span. That earlier stretch of dominance did happen, so we can't totally foreclose on the possibility that he could flip a switch and get back to it. But we're at the point in the season where you can't really afford to wait it out with a player struggling this badly, so I'm inclined to view Miller as a drop in nearly all leagues. Especially leagues where Andrew Painter or Jacob Lopez are available. 

Joshua Baez is looking overmatched

Baez's MLB debut couldn't have gone much better, as he slugged three homers in his first game against the Cubs last week. Things couldn't have gone much worse since, however. He went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts Sunday and is now hitting just .063 with one homer and 14 strikeouts in nine games since that debut. Even with the three-homer game, he has just an 83 wRC+, and while that doesn't necessarily mean he's going to struggle forever – his underlying numbers are still quite good thanks to his plus power – it does suggest there is going to be a steeper learning curve here than you might have hoped. I still think Baez is worth rostering in basically all formats for what it might look like when everything clicks, but he's definitely not someone you need to be starting just yet. 

Extra Innings

The National League MVP race isn't over yet

If the season ended today, Pete Crow-Armstrong would have to be the NL MVP. He's putting together an all-time great defensive season while leaping from being a pretty good hitter to one of the best in baseball, and he's showing no signs of slowing down – he homered Friday and Sunday this weekend and has six in his past seven and nine in the month of August already. This isn't a case of voter fatigue or whatever bad-faith nonsense people want to throw out about why Shohei Ohtani actually deserves it over PCA; PCA is just having that good of a season. 

But here's the thing: The season doesn't end today! It doesn't end for another 35 days, in fact! There is still about 20% of the schedule left to be played, which is a lot of time! Nobody has to decide who the MVP is right now, especially when Ohtani is about to get back on the mound. There probably isn't much Ohtani can do as a DH alone to overcome Crow-Armstrong's all-around dominance, especially when he is now a net-neutral contributor on the bases. But if he throws another 20 innings of sub-2.00-ERA ball? He could absolutely close the gap. 

He's the underdog right now, to be sure, and that's a weird spot to see Shohei Ohtani in. But just ask those anonymous scouts who said he was a "high-school hitter" how betting against him tends to work out. 

Add CBS Sports on Google