It's going to take a lot more than one good start to believe in Bubba Chandler. The undeniably talented young Pirates starter has been one of the biggest disappointments in Fantasy this season, missing shockingly few bats and racking up way too many walks en route to a 4.77 ERA entering Wednesday's start against the Yankees.
But it was a good start. Maybe even a great start. But it was definitely a promising start, if nothing else.
Chandler silenced Yankees bats for 6.1 innings, allowing just two batted balls and walking just one batter, just his fourth start of the season with one or fewer walks. He hasn't managed to turn any of his previous good starts into sustained success, so, again, it's going to take a lot more than just one good start. But this one was especially promising. Chandler got a strike on 68% of his pitches, an unusually high mark for him, and he did it in part thanks to a 50% zone rate overall – including a 70% mark on his slider.
And the slider wasn't the same one he typically throws. Wednesday's slider came in 1.7 mph harder than it usually does, while the rest of his arsenal was either stable (+0.4 mph on the four-seamer) or down (-1.1 mph on the changeup), while getting four inches less drop on the pitch. It's veering on cutter territory here, and while it might not be as well equipped to miss bats in this form, if it helps him throw strikes more consistently, that might be a tradeoff worth making.
At least in the short term. Ultimately in the long run, we'll want to see Chandler missing bats consistently. He did that with his four-seamer Wednesday, but he'll need more than that – whether it's splitting the slider off into this new cutter-ier variation while continuing to throw the older, slightly slower slider for whiffs, or continuing to develop the sweeper or curveball, neither of which he threw at all Wednesday. But the biggest issue for Chandler this season has been his inability to limit walks, so I'm all for him figuring out a way to solve that issue first.
And this very much feels like step one of a multi-step plan to fix Chandler. Let's set the baseline where he can throw strikes a bit more consistently and avoid the kind of control issues that have spoiled his season, and then develop the rest of the arsenal to the point where he can start racking up the strikeouts his stuff seems to suggest should already be there. It hasn't been, at least not consistently enough, as his 10.1% swinging strike rate is a shockingly poor mark for a guy whose stuff pops both by the eye test and by stuff models.
We'll need to see that before I can recommend Chandler as a usable Fantasy option, and I can't even really strongly recommend him as a high-priority add on the waiver wire coming off this start. If you're in a shallower league, I'd definitely be looking to make sure the likes of Cade Cavalli, Landen Roupp, Griffin Jax, or Logan Henderson aren't available before even looking in Chandler's direction. They're all more presently useful than Chandler, for sure.
But I'm not sure any of them have more upside than Chandler. I'm not sure more than 10 or 15 pitchers in baseball do, frankly. He hasn't come close to living up to it, but I remain convinced he can get there with the right tweaks. Hopefully Wednesday was the first sign of him figuring it out.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:
Prospects Report. Quinn Mathews is pitching his way back into the Fantasy-relevant conversation in Triple-A, and he looks like he could make an impact when the Cardinals finally decide to call him up.
IL Stash rankings. Scott White ranks the 50 players most likely to be stashed in Fantasy, starting with the must-stash players like Aaron Judge and Nick Kurtz.
Deadline bold predictions. Mike Axisa plants his flag with Tarik Skubal landing in the NL and more.
MLB trend report. The Yankees miss Aaron Judge. Here's where his absence hurts them the most.
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Wednesday's action:
Nasim Nunez, SS, Nationals (45%) – If you lost Bobby Witt to the IL Wednesday … well, you'd better pack it in; there's no replacing a player like that. I'm kidding. Well, no, not entirely: Of course, there is no replacing a player like Bobby Witt. You just have to muddle through and do the best you can until he's back, and unfortunately, shortstop is not a position with a ton of plug-and-play options available on the wire these days. Nunez is probably the best option you can hope for. He won't hit for any power, but he's managed to hit well for a pretty long time now, running a .345 batting average since the start of June, a stretch of 39 games. He has just one homer in that stretch, but he has at least continued to steal a lot of bases, swiping 15 in that stretch, and if you can even get a .280 average from him with his steal upside, Nunez can at least help you weather the storm without Witt.
Tommy Edman, 3B, Dodgers (50%) – If you have a viable shortstop but you're looking more for a middle infielder to replace Witt, Edman is looking like a fine option. He still seems to sit out about one in every five games as the team tries to limit his workload coming off ankle surgery, but the way he's hitting, they might need to take the training wheels off soon. Edman went 3 for 4 with three RBI Wednesday and is now hitting .360 with two homers, 16 runs, 17 RBI, and two steals in 28 games since his debut. He won't keep hitting .360, but his .320 expected batting average on the season suggests it isn't a total fluke either. Edman isn't a superstar player, but he looks more than solid right now if you need help in either a middle or corner infield spot.
Trevor Larnach, OF, Twins (24%) – Players like Larnach are always tough to value, because we know their upside is limited by their status as true platoon players. Larnach has started just four games against lefties this season, but he leads off against every right-handed pitcher, so the playing time is pretty straightforward here. However, he has been red hot lately, hitting .376 with five homers and 38 combined runs and RBI in his past 26 games (with the underlying data to back it up), and the Twins look set to play five of six games against righties next week. It seems like a good chance to get Larnach in your lineup.
Hunter Dobbins, SP, Cardinals (2%) – This might have just been a spot start, but Dobbins put himself back on our radars Wednesday. He took advantage of a good matchup against the Angels and limited them to just six hits over six shutout innings while striking out five, and his sweeper was absolutely brilliant in this one, generating eight of his 12 whiffs. The Angels lineup will help in that regard, but Dobbins now has a 3.18 ERA and 3.67 FIP with nearly a strikeout per inning in six appearances (four starts) this season. I don't think Dobbins is a difference maker, or anything, but I do think he could be useful if given some run in front of that elite Cardinals defense. Let's see if they give him the chance.
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
Max Fried looked brilliant in his return
Fried made his return from an elbow injury on the other side of Chandler in that game, and it genuinely looked like he had never been gone. Despite being limited to just 57 pitches (as expected), Fried still managed to get through five shutout innings with just one hit and one walk allowed while striking out seven, and his stuff arguably looked the best it has all season. His four-seamer velocity was up to 96.2 mph, 1.5 mph up over his season average and the highest he has managed in a start since last season. And, of course, he did that after missing more than two months due to a bone bruise in his elbow; that he only made one rehab start before returning to the rotation makes it even more impressive. That doesn't mean Fried will remain healthy moving forward, of course, but it does make me feel quite confident that he's going to be good for as long as he does remain healthy.
Chandler Simpson is red hot and running again
Batting average is a fickle, fickle skill, and players who rely almost entirely on batting average for their production at the plate are probably always going to be prone to big fluctuations in their value as a result. Simpson hit a wall in May and June, and combined with unusually poor baserunning efficiency from a player with his speed, it had many Fantasy players wondering if he was even worth the trouble. Well, the past 25 games have shown he still is, as he has hit .380 with 12 steals in that span after he went 1 for 2 with a couple of steals Wednesday. Simpson might always be a headache, because he really doesn't have many ways to impact the game if his slap hits aren't finding grass consistently. But when he's on, there are few players who can provide as much of a boost in average or stolen bases, and that upside will always make it tough to drop him -- at least in Roto leagues. He's pretty fringey even when things are good in a points league, hence why he isn't a waiver-wire target here despite a 69% roster rate. Most of the leagues where he is available are likely points leagues, where he really doesn't make much of an impact overall.
Jeremy Pena has permanently leveled up
Injuries have hidden it, but Pena has basically managed to prove last season was no fluke. He homered for the third straight game Wednesday as part of a 3-for-4 game, and he's now hitting .302 with nine homers and eight steals in 56 games – basically a 25-25 pace, after he went 17-20 in 125 games last season while hitting .304. Pena leveled up in 2025 and he's managed to back it up in 2026, with the underlying numbers to match it. He's an excellent Fantasy shortstop in Roto and points, and probably just needs to be treated as a top-12 guy until further notice.
Three Down
Munetaka Murakami has hit the wall
Murakami was never going to keep his outrageous early pace up, but the hamstring that ended up costing him all of June and part of July was especially frustratingly timed because he's the kind of high-variance player we want as big a sample size from as possible. And when we're evaluating Murakami moving forward, his slow July raises an unanswerable question: How would Murakami have fared without the injury disrupting his season? Murakami came back on July 10 and in nine games he is hitting just .167/.359/.267 with one homer and a 38% strikeout rate after he went 0 for 3 with three strikeouts Wednesday. Murakami is always going to have a lot of swing-and-miss in his game, but that's a wholly untenable mark, and it's going to be basically impossible for him or anyone to thrive with a 38% strikeout rate. We have seen Murakami succeed with a strikeout rate in the 35% range, though, and he was even potentially showing some signs of improvement in May, when he had a 31% strikeout rate before the injury. I'm certainly not going to give up on Murakami because of less than 10 games, but if you're not worried about how he's looked since his return, you have a higher tolerance for risk than I do, I guess.
It's time to drop Gage Jump
I was willing to give Jump some latitude with his recent struggles, concentrated as they were on his starts in Sacramento's very tough environment for pitchers. But he struggled yet again Wednesday in Arizona, giving up six runs over 4.2 innings with three more homers allowed – his third start with multiple homers allowed in his past five. He didn't even allow a single homer in his first six starts, so this has been an especially tough stretch. I still think Jump has plenty of upside in the long run, but he has to miss more bats to overcome his struggles with hard contact and walks, and just seven whiffs on 83 pitches Wednesday (including just two on non-fastballs) just didn't get the job done, obviously. I won't write Jump off forever, but I also can't tell you with a straight face that he needs to be rostered in all leagues. Right now, he definitely doesn't.
Bailey Ober isn't worth the time
I know there are some Fantasy analysts and players who want to believe Ober can get back to being a viable Fantasy option, but I just don't see it. Even when he was getting pretty good results of late, it never seemed sustainable, what with Ober's velocity still sitting multiple mph down from where he was in previous years. He's a veteran pitcher who knows how to pitch and still generates huge extension thanks to his 6-foot-9 frame, so I'm not saying Ober isn't an MLB-caliber pitcher or something. But it's been a long time since we've seen Ober be an impact pitcher for Fantasy, and I don't see any reason to think he'll get back there. His four runs-in-four-innings performance Wednesday undid a lot of the good he had done over his previous couple of starts, and it's a reminder that in most leagues, he probably just isn't worth the trouble. He does not need to be rostered in 64% of CBS Fantasy leagues.
Extra Innings
Gerrit Cole is almost all the way back
A couple of late homers left Cole with a crooked number in the box score, as he gave up three runs in seven innings against the Pirates Thursday, but this was still another very promising start – arguably his most promising of the season. Cole had his fastball working like it was a vintage start, as he generated 13 swinging strikes on 29 swings, a massive 45% mark, and it wasn't alone – he had multiple swinging strikes on his changeup, slider, and curveball and ended up with 21 overall. That led to 11 strikeouts, a season high and his most in a start since Aug. 25, 2023. Cole has been generating pretty good results since his return from Tommy John surgery, but he wasn't really missing enough bats to fully buy in until recently; he has 32 strikeouts in 23.1 innings since the start of July and has seen his overall swinging strike rate tick up at the same time. It's too early to say he'll just be an ace moving forward, but he's finally starting to look like one again, and when you have the track record Cole does, it doesn't take much to make me buy back in. I just want to see him keep the ball in the yard a little better and then it'll be easy to buy in. But he isn't far.
