Kade Anderson isn't living up to the hype.
Now, in fairness, the hype got a bit ridiculous. He wasn't the most hyped pitching prospect of the past half-decade. Following Paul Skenes, he definitely had a case for the No. 2 pick. He was the No. 3 pick in last year's draft – a candidate to go No. 1 after a dominant career at LSU – and was historically good in his time in the minors. That consisted of 18 starts with a 1.06 ERA at Double-A, with an utterly absurd 135:13 K:BB ratio in 93.1 innings of work. In every way a pitcher could dominate, Anderson did, and the drumbeat for his promotion started in roughly May.
Fantasy players started stashing him in the late spring, and by the time he got to the bigs, the hype couldn't have been higher. And, as it turns out, maybe they should have been lower. A lot lower.
We're now three starts into Anderson's career after he gave up four runs to the Athletics Thursday in Seattle, and he's got a 5.40 ERA to show for it. And it's not like this is just a case of a bit of bad luck cropping up in a small sample size – Anderson has just 11 strikeouts to seven walks in 15 innings, and he has given up three homers to date. And it's not like he's faced exclusively tough matchups – the landing spot against the red-hot Cubs was a tough one for his MLB debut, but the Blue Jays are a bottom-five offense in the majors in the second half, while the A's rank 13th in runs scored.
And at this point, there really isn't even anything positive to really point to. The velocity on his fastball was down 1.1 mph Thursday to 92.9 mph (more on his slider) and he just didn't look especially effective against a pretty whiff-prone team. He generated eight swinging strikes on 79 pitches in line with his very average whiff marks so far, and he allowed an average exit velocity of 89.5 mph, his worst mark in three starts to date. The stuff merely looks okay, the command hasn't been as good as advertised, and he's struggling to keep the ball in the yard. It's pretty much been all bad.
The good news? Well, it's only three starts. His first three starts ever above Double-A! It's way too early to write Anderson off, and our view of him for 2027 and beyond probably shouldn't have changed much. He certainly wouldn't be the first pitcher ever to struggle in his first taste of the majors before going on to become an ace, of course.
But his dominance at Double-A convinced many that he wasn't just major-league ready months ago, but that he was ready to step onto an MLB mound and immediately start producing like one of the best pitchers in baseball. Think I'm overstating that? Well, in the first draft, looking ahead to 2027, which took place a few weeks ago between a bunch of high-stakes players and Fantasy analysts – i.e., very smart Fantasy players – Anderson was taken as the 22nd starting pitcher off the board. The expectation was that Anderson wasn't just a very good prospect, but the kind who could immediately be a difference maker.
I think that might have been unfair to Anderson, whose profile has always been more about elite command than world-beating stuff – though even pitchers with that kind of stuff can struggle early on, too, as Jacob Misiorowski often did last season. But whatever the expectations were, the reality is that he just doesn't look good enough right now to be a must-roster pitcher for Fantasy, let alone a must-start one. That he struggled in his first start in Seattle – the best environment for pitching in the whole league – only underscores the point.
Anderson actually has a pretty good upcoming schedule, with starts against the Rangers and Angels on the way in his next two. But based on what we've seen so far, I don't think you can view Anderson as being worth using for those two starts. He might end up pitching well, because he's talented and the Mariners have a good track record of figuring this stuff out. But the learning curve looks a lot steeper than we expected for Anderson, and I think you probably just have to stay away.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:
Bullpen report. Scott White looks around the majors for the latest ninth-inning trends.
Prospects report. Meet the September call-ups to watch.
Contender spotlight. Mike Axisa takes a look at the most important players for every contender in September.
MLB Trends. Has Cal Raleigh finally figured it out?
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Thursday's action:
Brandon Young, SP, Orioles (54%) – Young's improbable run of success continued Thursday with one of his better starts of the season. Okay, the three runs in 6.2 IP left the ERA a bit underwhelming, but he matched his season-high with seven strikeouts while pitching into the seventh inning for the second straight start. His ERA rose a tad, but still sits at 3.42 for the season. While the rest of the profile is a bit more mediocre – a 1.31 WHIP and 110 strikeouts in 137 innings leaves a lot to be desired – he's been effective enough for long enough to view him as a viable option for next week against the Guardians, who rank just 25th in wOBA against righties on the season.
Heriberto Hernandez, OF, Marlins (40%) – Hernandez cooled off a bit early in August, but he's red hot yet again. He homered Thursday against the Royals, his seventh in his past 20 games, to go along with a couple of steals, 17 RBI, and an OPS around 1.000. And the underlying numbers back it up, as he has a .462 expected wOBA over the past 50 plate appearances, a pretty ludicrous mark. Hernandez entered the season with very little hype, but he's sitting in the 86th percentile for xwOBA for the season now and probably just needed to be rostered in every five-outfielder league at this point. And plenty of three-outfielder leagues as a hot-hand play, too.
Luis Robert, OF, Orioles (66%) – Robert has hit either third or fourth in each of his first two games with the Orioles, so they're treating him like a key part of the team. I would guess there will be the occasional day off to try to keep him fresh. Still, the Orioles have very little margin for error in their chase for a playoff spot and don't have many good alternatives in center field, so there might not be many opportunities for him to sit. He had two RBI in his Orioles debut Wednesday and followed it up with his first homer Thursday, and he has hit .284 with seven homers and an OPS over .900 over his past 23 games, so this isn't a new thing.
Cal Quantrill, SP, Rangers (43%) – Quantrill has been around for a long time and has basically never been Fantasy relevant before, so I'm pretty skeptical that he's suddenly turned into a good pitcher overnight. But he lowered his season-long ERA to 2.79 with seven shutout innings against the Rays Thursday, and he's pitching in Seattle next week, the best place in baseball to pitch. He has four straight quality starts and feels like a decent (albeit extremely risky!) hot-hand streamer.
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
Logan Henderson continues to look like an ace
I think we're at the point where we just have to take Henderson at face value. He made his 20th MLB start Thursday, and as he so often was in the first 19, he was excellent. And he was excellent against a Cubs team that has been the best offense in baseball in the second half, limiting them to two runs on just three hits over seven innings with seven strikeouts and zero walks. In his first 20 MLB starts, he now has a 2.33 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, and 126 strikeouts in 108.2 innings, and his 25.4% K-BB% would be tied with Gavin Williams for the third-best among starters this season if he qualified. There have been some injury issues that make it tough to fully embrace him in the long run, but Henderson is pitching his way into top-15 discussions for 2027 at this point.
Kevin Gausman dominated on the other side
The move to Chicago hasn't ironed out the rough edges in Gausman's game. In seven starts since joining the Cubs at the deadline, he has three different starts with a 5.50 ERA or worse for that start, so it's been a frustrating ride. Especially because he's still capable of absolutely brilliant performances like Thursday's, where he limited the Brewers to just one run over nine strikeouts. Gausman actually threw his fastball a bit more in this one, which was an interesting wrinkle. He picked up a bunch of called strikes, which put him in position to finish off a bunch of batters with his still-killer splitter, which generated 12 swinging strikes. He also gave up nine hard-hit balls on his four-seamer, and while there's probably a bit of luck that he didn't give up more hits as a result, the Cubs do have a very good defense behind him, so it worked out. It's still very hard to trust Gausman; I think you probably have to ride with him, even against the same Brewers lineup next week.
Adley Rutschman returned with a bang -- or two
Rutschman has been quite beat up, lately dealing with a hyperextended elbow just a few weeks after he returned from a wrist injury. Well, he made up for some lost time Thursday against his former Orioles teammates, returning from a three-game absence to go 2 for 4 with a couple of solo home runs and three runs scored. Unfortunately, it probably came on your bench, seeing as Rutschman was hitting .170/.254/.245 since coming off the IL entering Thursday. He's just such a tough player to figure out for Fantasy, because his elite plate discipline remains intact and his underlying numbers are better than they have been since 2023, but he's also been a sub-.700 OPS hitter since the end of April. At this point, he's probably more like a No. 2 catcher, though still one who is worth keeping in the lineup, especially in points leagues. Expect to pay a premium for Caglianone in 2027 drafts, but he's showing he could be worth it.
Three Down
Shane McClanahan might be running out of gas
Given all he's been through, McClanahan is having an extremely successful season. He's going to end up throwing around 140 pretty good innings, something he's only done once since his MLB debut in 2021. If you took the chance on McClanahan, you've gotten a mostly very useful Fantasy option. But I think it's all catching up to him. He was tagged for four runs in five innings Thursday against the Rangers and hasn't thrown a quality start since his last start before the All-Star break. In seven starts since, he has a 4.78 ERA with just 24 strikeouts in 32 innings – less than five innings per start. There was a back injury that landed him on the IL for a few weeks there, but while that's a useful excuse, it doesn't make me feel much more confident in using him the rest of the way. Given McClanahan's limitations, it's tough to trust him even against a cold Braves lineup next week.
It just keeps getting worse for Kyle Tucker somehow
Tucker went hitless yet again Thursday against the Cardinals, finishing the three-game series with just one hit in 14 trips to the plate. He hasn't had multiple hits in a game since Aug. 19 and hasn't homered since Aug. 8. In fact, his OPS has gone down every single month since he posted a pretty pedestrian .764 mark in May, with his .603 OPS in August representing the low point – so far. And the underlying data doesn't give much reason to be optimistic, since his expected wOBA over his past 100 plate appearances is just .273. With just about three weeks left in the season, Tucker has just 11 homers and 10 steals, and if he didn't have the pre-2026 track record to fall back on, it's hard to see a case for even drafting him in 2027. Somebody will, and there will still be plenty of upside in doing so, given his place in the Dodgers lineup. But I think I'm going to have to see him fall outside of the top-100 picks before I'm willing to make that pick, myself.
Brice Turang just doesn't look right
Turang backed up his 2025 breakout with a red-hot start to this season, but things have gotten pretty ugly lately. He struck out multiple times for the second straight game Thursday and the fourth time in his past six games. In fact, that is becoming an increasingly common sight for Turang, who has struck out 27% of the time in the second half of the season, compared to just 22.8% last season. There had been a tradeoff of more damage on contact and more walks to make up for it, but his average exit velocity has been trending down all season, to just 86.9 mph in August. At this point, you have to wonder if the knee injury that forced Turang to miss a series in mid-August is bothering him more than the team is letting on, but if they aren't going to give him time off, it might be time to take him out of your Fantasy lineup.
Extra Innings
Tarik Skubal worked his way out of trouble
That was a weird start. Skubal was weirdly hittable Thursday, as the Cardinals put up 10 hits on him, the most he has allowed in a start since July of 2024, and it looked like it might be a rare misstep when Skubal was tagged for two runs in the first three innings. But this is Tarik Skubal we're talking about, so that was all the Cardinals would end up putting on the board against him. He made it through 5.2 innings with the two runs allowed, and while the lack of a quality start is disappointing for the leagues where that matters, we'll take the final line here, which also included six strikeouts. Skubal has been surpassed by Jacob Misiorowski as the best pitcher in baseball, but still heads into free agency with a 2.86 ERA and 159 strikeouts in 132.1 innings, which would be a phenomenal season for any other pitcher, let alone one who had elbow surgery mid-season.
