It's too early to draw any conclusions about Kade Anderson's MLB future. Even his very immediate future. Two underwhelming starts are, from an analytical perspective, almost nothing, and it's not like the two starts Anderson has made so far have been identical. We're dealing with small sample sizes all the way down here!

For example: The fastball issues that looked so worrisome in Anderson's first start were largely fixed in start No. 2. His fastball shape wasn't exactly what it looked like down at Double-A, and pitching at a closed-roof stadium could have helped, but still: His velocity was up and he had a couple more inches of induced vertical break. That's good news! 

But it wasn't all good news, obviously, as he made it through just 4.1 innings while walking as many as he struck out (three, neither a good mark). If the stuff played better in Anderson's second start, it seemed to come at the expense of his command. He struggled to put hitters away (he threw 10 sliders in two-strike counts and didn't get a single strikeout that way), hence the ugly strikeout and walk numbers. Command is supposed to be the biggest strength of Anderson's game, so you could assume he'll improve moving forward, and that seems like a safe-ish assumption.

However, right now, Anderson looks like more of a work-in-progress than he looked like down at Double-A. Maybe that shouldn't come as a huge surprise given that he just turned 22 and skipped Triple-A, but nobody was stashing Anderson because they thought he needed more finishing; we were stashing him for the potential that he would be an immediate difference-maker as a big-leaguer.

And he still might be. The talent is there, and it might take just a few starts and a few weeks of big-league coaching to get him there. Anderson has the talent, and even if the raw stuff isn't quite on the level of some other big-name prospects, his polish and command should win out in the end. I suspect they will.

But there is one other trend worth taking note of here, and it's one we couldn't necessarily know before he got the call: He's been kept on a pretty strict workload so far. He has thrown just 81 and 85 pitches in his first two MLB starts and he was pulled in the middle of an inning in both. That suggests there is a pretty hard pitch count at the plate here, and when you look at his time in the minors, that's not an outlier, as the first two games where he threw more than 80 pitches came in his two MLB starts.

That might not be a problem for long – getting to 90-plus pitches from 85 isn't asking too much – but the early hook can't be ignored for a young pitcher. Any pitcher with an early hook has a slimmer margin for error than a similarly-talented pitcher with more leeway. Two runs in 5 innings is a worse ERA than two runs in six innings, obviously, but you're also going to lose opportunities for wins and quality starts with a pitch count in the 80s.

Nothing we've seen yet means Anderson can't thrive in the majors. Nothing we've seen in two starts could possibly tell us that. It's too small a sample size, and drawing any conclusions from a two-start sample size would also foreclose on the possibility of Anderson just getting better than what we've seen so far.

But we haven't seen the difference-making upside from Anderson yet. And there isn't a lot of time left for him to find it. I would lean toward starting Anderson in Week 24 with a beatable matchup against the Athletics in Seattle coming up – if he dominated that lineup at home, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised, frankly. But if he puts up another mediocre start in that one, it'll be fair to wonder if he's worth the spot in your lineup the rest of the way.

Pre-game Lineup Card

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

Week 24 sleeper hitters

Best hitter matchups for Week 24

1. Rockies BAL3, STL3
2. Orioles @COL3, BOS4
3. Dodgers STL3, WAS3
4. Astros CHW4, ARI3
5. Guardians TOR3, DET4  

Worst hitter matchups for Week 24

1. Angels NYY3, @PIT3
2. Red Sox SEA3, @BAL4
3. Nationals MIA1, ATL2, @LAD3
4. Reds SD3, MIL3
5. Athletics @TEX3, @SEA4  

Top sleeper hitters for Week 24

  1. Cole Carrigg, OF, Rockies (75%) BAL3, STL3
  2. Walker Jenkins, OF, Twins (58%) DET3, @CHW3
  3. Willi Castro, 2B, Rockies (58%) BAL3, STL3
  4. Tristan Peters, OF, White Sox (31%) @HOU4, MIN3
  5. Christian Encarnacion-Strand, 3B, Orioles (29%) @COL3, BOS4

Week 24 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 24

  1. Jacob Lopez, Athletics (53%) at TEX
  2. J.T. Ginn, Athletics (65%) at TEX, at SEA
  3. Peter Lambert, Astros (77%) vs. CHW, vs. ARI
  4. Aaron Nola, Phillies (77%) at ARI, vs. ATL
  5. Clay Holmes, Cubs (75%) vs. MIL, at MIA

Hitting the Wire

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

Week 24 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

The NL MVP looks like Pete Crow-Armstrong's now

In this newsletter last Monday, I made a point of noting in this newsletter that the NL MVP race isn't over yet. In the week since, Crow-Armstrong hit five homers (all between Saturday and Sunday), while Shohei Ohtani had his planned return to the mound delayed by ongoing knee and biceps issues. He just isn't bouncing back the way he needs to, and while the Dodgers would surely love to have a healthy Ohtani in their rotation for the playoffs, it's not like they need him, and certainly not at the risk of him suffering a setback that takes his bat out of the lineup. 

That's more about Ohtani than it is about Crow-Armstrong, but after this week I think we have to acknowledge that the Cubs outfielder is the clear favorite for the MVP at this point. Ohtani's biggest chance to make up ground would have come through his unparalleled skills on the mound, and at the very least, that will be delayed, with a chance he just doesn't pitch again. Meanwhile, Crow-Armstrong is showing no signs whatsoever of slowing down, with August going down as arguably his best month of the season, with 14 homers and 16 walks entering the final game of the month. That makes it three straight months with 16 or more walks for PCA, by the way; he had never had more than eight in a month before this season. He has improved his game in every way possible, and we have to have a serious discussion about him being a potential No. 1 pick next season in Fantasy. 

Gunnar Henderson finally had a huge game

Of course, there was a time when we were supposed to have discussions about whether Henderson should be the No. 1 pick in Fantasy, and he hasn't looked anything like that kind of player in a long time. Young players don't always sustain their breakouts, let alone keep building on them, and in Henderson's case, it's basically been all downhill since that incredible first half of the 2024 season when he nearly matched Aaron Judge homer for homer. He's been struggling through the worst season of his career in 2026 and at this point the only hope is that he can salvage something out of this rotten season. To that end, he put together his best game of the season Sunday against the Athletics, clubbing his first two homers in more than two weeks while adding a triple and a single as part of a four-for-four game where he drove in five runs and scored three more. August has been by far the best month of Henderson's season by far, which is kind of damning with faint praise at this point: An .838 OPS is supposed to be the floor for a player of Henderson's caliber. Maybe he isn't a player of that caliber anymore. He isn't even chipping in as a basestealer like he did last season while also having the worst season of his career as a hitter. I'm not saying all this to say Henderson can't be a good Fantasy player again, but it's going to be incredibly hard to justify an early-round pick on him in 2027 without him going absolutely off in September. 

Zack Wheeler mostly turned it around

I'd say this was a "two steps forward, one baby step back" start for Wheeler over the weekend. He limited the Angels to just one run over six innings of work, and hey, we'll take that every time. However, he also had three walks, his fourth start with three or more walks in his past five, with 18 total in 25.1 innings of work. That's not vintage Wheeler, even if this start was a marked improvement over his previous six, where he had an 8.51 ERA and 1.93 WHIP. I'm not going to turn my nose up at a start like this, but I'm not 100% comfortable with what I'm going to get from Wheeler moving forward, either. 

Three Down

Ranger Suarez is off the rails 

Some pitchers are random number generators. Think of a guy like Gavin Williams, who can look blindingly brilliant one start and then follow it up with an absolutely miserable performance, and he might spend most of the season trading off like that. 

Ranger Suarez isn't like that. He's a feel pitcher. A groove pitcher. A momentum pitcher. When things are going right, he tends to lock in and remain as consistent as a metronome. The problem is, the opposite is true when things go wrong, and he's in one of those stretches right now. The Yankees jumped on him for six runs in 5.1 innings and he now has a 5.01 ERA and 1.45 WHIP since coming off the IL.

I think it mostly comes down to this: Suarez doesn't have the stuff to overcome iffy command or execution. So, when he suffers seemingly minor injuries, he tends to go through these stretches where he just isn't on top of his game. The good news in the big picture is that he's on top of his game often enough that he's still a very good pitcher. But the downside is you do probably need to avoid him when things are going sideways like this. 

Luis Castillo is done

There was a start after Castillo got to the White Sox where he emphasized his sinker and changeup and dominated, limiting the Reds to one hit over seven innings with 10 strikeouts. It was by far the best start of his season and … he hasn't even come close to replicating it since. In three starts since, Castillo has just five strikeouts total while giving up 11 runs in 11.1 innings of work. Whatever optimism there might have been coming out of that turn-back-the-clock outing is gone, and Castillo simply doesn't need to be rostered in most leagues now. 

Seth Lugo might be even more done

We're also well past the point where Lugo still needs to be widely rostered, despite the fact that he is still rostered in 61% of CBS Fantasy leagues. He got blown up for nine runs on nine hits against the Guardians Sunday, his fourth start in his past six with at least five earned runs allowed. I know Lugo has had his stretches of being useful in the past, but he hasn't had an xERA below 5.00 since 2024, and now his actual ERA is over 5.00 in 2026. Whatever ability he might have once had to outrun his mediocre peripherals is gone. 

Extra Innings

Shutdown concerns for Chase Burns and Kyle Leahy

We're at the point where Kyle Leahy's Fantasy relevance has dried up, but not because he can't pitch effectively – he allowed just one run in his start Saturday against the Pirates and still has an ERA below 2.00 since the start of July. No, the problem here is that the Cardinals are limiting his workload too much for him to matter for Fantasy, as he has tossed just seven innings in his past two starts. It's been a really solid season for Leahy, but it's time to drop him.

And, sadly, we might be close to that for Chase Burns. The Reds' young ace has lived up to expectations in his first full season in the majors, and he was very good yet again Sunday against the Cubs, striking out seven and allowing just two runs in 5.2 innings. However, on the broadcast, the Reds color commentator mentioned that the team is likely to limit Burns to around three innings in his remaining starts as he continues to push well past his career-high in innings. I'm not ready to drop Burns just yet, but if we get direct confirmation from the team or see the early hook in his next outing, it'll be time to let him go. It's a frustrating way for a breakout season to come to an end. 

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