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USATSI

We've spent a lot of time this season talking about the need to be patient with even the most hyped young prospect call ups, and we're seeing that bear fruits with James Wood of the Nationals, who had one of his best games as a major-leaguer Tuesday.

Wood went 4 for 5 with a double, an RBI, and three runs scored in the Nationals' 9-3 win over the Orioles, and he's now up to a .283 average and .818 OPS for the season. Wood's performance Tuesday came with three batted balls hit at least 99.5 mph, and most importantly, three line drives among his three hits. And that's been the biggest thing holding him back so far.

Wood has been hitting the ball hard consistently in the majors, sporting a massive 94.8 mph average exit velocity that only Shohei Ohtani, Oneil Cruz, and Aaron Judge can best among qualifiers; only Ohtani and Judge can top his hard-hit rate. That's as expected from the 6-foot-7 Wood, who is probably the player who comes closest to matching Judge's physicality among active major-leaguers.

But, while Wood has been impressive in many ways, he has also looked a bit overwhelmed in a few others. The 30.6% strikeout rate is part of that, certainly, but so is the massive 58.8 groundball rate he has; that's a big part of why he has just four homers and a .165 ISO for the season despite his Judge-ian underlying power. That, combined with his 25.9% pull rate, which would be one of the lowest marks in baseball, has been dragging Wood's power down all season. 

He's still a bit late on too many of his batted balls, but Wood has at least lowered his ground ball rate to 45.8% since the start of August. It's a small sample size, but it's the kind of improvement we want to see from Wood, and that's what we're getting. He's still a long way from being fully actualized – he has just two batted balls in the air to the pull side all season – but it's pretty impressive what Wood has proven capable of with so many holes in his game. 

It's scary to think what he's going to be capable of when he figures things out, and that upside is something Fantasy players are going to be crawling over themselves to chase in the coming years. Don't be surprised if he's a top-36 pick next season, even if he doesn't get much better than this the rest of the way. 

Wednesday's waiver targets

Kerry Carpenter, OF, Tigers (56%) – Carpenter's injury back in May came at the worst possible time, as he had homered in three of his last seven games before he went on the IL with a back injury that would ultimately cost him nearly three months of action. But he returned to the lineup Tuesday against the Mariners and it was like he didn't miss any time at all, as he went deep twice in a massive 3 for 5 performance that pushed his OPS for the season to .962. I'm not sure how sustainable that exact number is, but it's worth noting that, in an admittedly pretty small sample size, Carpenter has basically earned that kind of production so far – he has a .380 xwOBA for the season compared to an actual .382 mark. He's been protected from a lot of lefties in his time in the majors, which helps make those rate stats look better, but still, what he's done has been very impressive so far, and he looks like a solid starting outfielder in five-outfielder leagues, at least.  

Shane Baz, SP, Rays (68%) – It's been an up-and-down return to the majors for Baz, but I'm going to keep giving him a pretty long leash because I know the upside here is incredibly high if he figures it out. Tuesday was a sign that he might be starting to, as he generated 12 swings and misses on 97 pitches while striking out six over seven innings. It wasn't a perfect start – three runs on a couple of homers – but he's finding ways to get it done against good lineups without his secondaries playing to their full potential. He garnered seven of those 12 whiffs on his four-seamer, while his curveball was the only other pitch to generate more than one whiff). You'd sure look to see more from the slider and changeup, but if he gets even one of those pitchers to his pre-injury level, Baz could take off like a rocket, and I want him on my team if and when it happens. 

Matthew Boyd, SP, Guardians (12%) – Boyd made his first start in the majors since June of 2023 Tuesday, and he looked pretty good. He limited the Cubs to just one run on three hits over 5.1 innings, and he did it on just 80 pitches. His four-seam fastball velocity was up a bit from his 2023 levels, and he generated multiple swings and misses with four different pitches, good for 12 in all on 42 swings, a very solid 29% whiff rate. There was some loud contact along the way, leading to six hard-hit balls on 13 balls in play, but most of them were relatively harmless grounders or popups, with just two balls in play sporting an expected batting average better than .500. It's just one start from a guy who has disappointed a lot of Fantasy players, but I'm pretty interested to see what he can do moving forward after an exceptional minor-league rehab stint. 

Zebby Matthews, SP, Twins (24%) – The "elite control, mediocre stuff" profile is one I'm always inherently skeptical of for pitching prospects, but Matthews showed how to make it work for him in his MLB debut Tuesday. He generated just six whiffs on his 77 pitches, but he lived on the corners and just off the plate and ended up with five strikeouts and no walks over five innings, allowing two runs on five hits. He'll need to figure out how to generate a few more whiffs, or else the margin for error is going to be awfully thin here, but it's hard to argue with the results, either in the minors (2.60 ERA in 97 innings this season) or in this debut. He's worth adding in deeper leagues, at least. 

Andres Chaparro, 3B, Nationals (3%) – Chaparro didn't garner much hype when he was traded to the Nationals, nor when he got called up this week, but he's not here for your accolades. He's just here to hit. Chaparro doubled three times in his MLB debut Tuesday, continuing his season-long breakout. The 25-year-old has hit .328/.405/.572 at Triple-A, with 23 homers and a very manageable 18% strikeout rate. The reason he didn't garner much hype is that he's an older prospect playing in his second stint at Triple-A, and skepticism is obviously warranted for those reasons. But the Nationals have found success with exactly this type of overlooked archetype in recent years, getting decent production from the likes of Joey Meneses, Juan Yepez, Lane Thomas, and others, and Chaparro could be the next in line. He's not a must-add player right now, but he's worth a look in NL-only and deeper mixed leagues.