| | | | Thursday, June 26, 2025 | | Paul Skenes has been outpitched before. Not often, but it's happened. I'm not sure any pitcher has ever out-stuffed him until he squared off against Jacob Misiorowski Wednesday in Milwaukee. | | Misiorowski out-pitched Skenes on Wednesday, and he did so while looking like the genuinely more electric pitcher. That is, of course, not to say Misiorowski is better than Skenes – we're a long way from even beginning to have that conversation, and I doubt we'll ever get there. But what we can say is Misiorowski has stuff few pitchers in baseball can even touch, and that includes Skenes. He pumped a mind-boggling 12, 100-plus mph fastballs in just the first inning alone of Wednesday's start and finished with just two walks and two singles over five shutout innings before being pulled with eight strikeouts. | | It's too early to say Misiorowski is in Skenes' class, but we have to rank him somewhere. So, where should we start? Well, he's through his first three MLB starts with a 1.13 ERA and 33.3% strikeout rate, after he had a 2.13 ERA and 31.6% strikeout rate in 13 Triple-A games before his promotion. Expectations were high for Misiorowski, and he has done everything he can to live up to them. | | Is ranking him as a top-40 starting pitcher too aggressive? Given the iffy command we've seen flashes of and concerns about how many innings we're likely to see from Misiorowski the rest of the way – the Brewers have allowed him to pitch more than five innings just once in three starts and he was pulled after 74 pitches Wednesday, after all – I could make a case for top-40 being too aggressive at this stage. | | But I don't really want to make that case. Misiorowski's stuff is incredible – The Athletic's Eno Sarris compared him to Jacob deGrom, and yeah, I can see it – and he hasn't been held back by the iffy command yet. I do think there are limits to just how we can reasonably rank Misiorowski the rest of the way because of the command and potential workload limitations, but … wouldn't you rather have Misiorowski than Kevin Gausman at this point? Or Jack Flaherty? Or Luis Castillo? Don't those actually feel like pretty easy calls at this point? | | Those three are all consensus top-36 SPs in our rankings right now, so doesn't Misiorowski need to be, too? I think it's pretty tough to justify getting him much higher than, say, 30th, at this point, but I'm comfortable putting him that high. That is a handful of spots ahead of fellow fireballing rookie Chase Burns, who debuted Tuesday, but I think both could very well pitch their way into the top 24 before long. | | And, looking ahead to 2025, that isn't the ceiling for either. Not by a long shot. These could be two of the very best pitchers in baseball eventually. Right now? Just be happy you've got them on your roster if you do. | | Here's what else you need to know about from Wednesday's action around MLB: | | | | Thursday's waiver-wire targets | | Nick Kurtz, 1B, Athletics (83%) – We usually try to keep things limited to 70% rostered or below here, but I'll make an exception just to say this: Go add Nick Kurtz if you're in one of the leagues where he's still available. He was a top prospect who is now hitting .306 with 10 homers over his past 19 games after going 3 for 3 with a homer Wednesday. The batting average will come down because he still strikes out a lot, but Kurtz is hitting as advertised as a prospect right now, and I'm willing to fully buy in. He'll probably be a top-10 first baseman when I update my rankings this week, ahead of the likes of Spencer Torkelson and Tyler Soderstrom, who have kind of fizzled out of late. Kurtz may follow in their footsteps, but he's locked in right now, and they aren't, so it's an easy call, given his talent level. | | Jacob Lopez , SP, Athletics (39%) – Jacob Lopez is weird, and in this context, that's a compliment. Hitters tend to perform better the more they've seen of a pitcher, and they tend to perform better when pitchers throw like other pitchers. Lopez is relatively new to the majors and has an approach few pitchers possess. He doesn't throw hard from his near side-arm angle, but he gets a lot of extension with his delivery and a lot of arm-side movement on his four-seamer. His changeup gets more run than most, too, while his slider breaks further to the opposite side than most sliders. It all adds up to a funky approach that many hitters just don't see very often, and his extreme flyball approach also means he could continue to run unusually low batting averages. I think at some point the league will catch up to Lopez and the ball will start leaving the park at untenable rates, but that hasn't happened yet, as he has 38 strikeouts to eight walks in 27.1 innings in the month of June. For now, while he remains a novelty, Lopez should be rostered in pretty much all leagues. | | Jo Adell, OF, Angels (61%) – We've written about Adell a lot as a waiver-wire target in the past few weeks, and he just isn't showing any signs of slowing down. He's riding an eight-game hitting stretch with four homers in that stretch, and is now up to a .266/.356/.658 line in June with 10 homers in 91 plate appearances. And, despite how hot he has been, he is still underperforming his expected stats across the board for the season. I don't expect Adell to be a .266 hitter the rest of the way, but .245 with a 30-plus-homer pace seems within reach, and should make him a must-roster Fantasy option in most leagues. | | Kyle Teel, C, White Sox (27%) – For most of the season, it would have been hard to recommend Teel in a one-catcher league, even though he is a top prospect who has more or less held his own in his first taste of the majors. One-catcher leagues are shallower, after all, and it's too early to declare Teel as a top-12 option at the position, especially with how many breakouts we've seen. But with a few guys hitting the IL lately and a few more struggling, Teel is worth a look in the shallower formats, especially with his high walk rate lending itself well to the H2H points format. He's also striking out a lot in the early going, which is probably tied to his high walk rate, as he's swinging at a relatively low 44.9% of pitches seen so far, while swinging and missing in the strike zone a bit too much. That's not too concerning for a player with his pedigree, and he's still finding ways to contribute – and his .346 expected wOBA compared to his actual .314 mark suggests better days are still to come. | | | | Wednesday's standouts | | Paul Skenes, Pirates @MIL: 4 IP, 4 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 4 K – Skenes was a lot better than his line here. He was uncharacteristically off in the second inning and didn't get a lot of help from the defense behind him either, with a couple of bloop hits falling in that hardly represented the Brewers absolutely dominating him. It was a disappointing performance, but there's absolutely no reason to be concerned here. | | Jacob deGrom, Rangers @BAL: 7 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 7 K – He's been back for a while, and the velocity is basically all the way back at this point. It does raise some questions about how sustainable it all is, given his history – remember when deGrom was going to intentionally dial it back so he could stay healthy ? But unless you're going to actively try to trade one of the five or so best pitchers in baseball right now, I don't think there's much point in worrying about it. Pitchers get hurt. As a rule, you should expect all pitchers to get hurt at some point. deGrom's chances of getting hurt while throwing 98-100 mph consistently are probably higher than most pitchers', but they aren't guaranteed. Trading him might not help you avoid injury, but it also might cost you a Cy Young caliber season. | | Nick Pivetta, Padres vs. WAS: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 K – I'll never be fully able to trust Pivetta. I admit that. As much as I try to counsel my readers/listeners to avoid holding players' histories against them and just take their skill sets for what they are, Pivetta is one guy I'll always have trouble getting all the way there on when things are going well. But I will say this: Seeing him bounce back from his worst stretch of the season with a start like this is very encouraging. In the past, Pivetta's struggles have tended to build on each other, but he put a stop to a four-start slide where he had a 6.23 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 21.2 innings with arguably his best start of the season Wednesday. That doesn't mean there's no reason to be skeptical about Pivetta, but it does make it a little easier to have faith in him. | | | | Jack Flaherty, Tigers vs. ATH: 6 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 4 BB, 7 K – I want to have faith that Flaherty is going to figure it out, because the stuff mostly seems to be intact. He just isn't executing as well as he did last season, and that's the kind of thing that can just turn on a dime. But Flaherty has gotten worse as the season has gone on, and his command has completely abandoned him over the past four starts, with 15 walks in 19 innings of work. Trends are not destiny, and I generally have a lot of faith in Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter to figure these things out. But it's not getting better, and at some point, he has to show us something positive. I'm not dropping Flaherty, and it'll be hard to outright bench him in a two-start week next week against the Nationals and Guardians. But I wish I felt better about starting him. | | Yusei Kikuchi , Angels vs. BOS: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 12 K – I'm gonna be honest, I was pretty out on Kikuchi earlier in the season, but he's starting to draw me back in. It comes down to the strikeouts. Through his first 14 starts, Kikuchi had just one start with more than six strikeouts, and even that was only a seven-strikeout showing, with an 8.1% K-BB% rate that was the ninth-worst mark in baseball. Given how hard Kikuchi tends to get hit even when things are going well for him, it felt like a disaster waiting to happen. But ever the tinkerer, Kikuchi got back in the lab and started throwing his fastball significantly less three starts ago, emphasizing his curveball and dropping his slider usage from nearly 40% to more like 30%, and he's looked like a completely different pitcher, striking out 31 batters in his past 19.2 innings of work. It's an interesting trend in light of last year's slider-fueled breakout, but the curveball and changeup have been better pitches for Kikuchi this season, so it's not a bad idea. I don't necessarily think he's just an ace again, but if I was worried this was going to be a disaster of a season for him earlier, it's certainly easier to see him being useful moving forward. I'll be moving him up in my rankings this week. | | Drew Rasmussen, Rays @KC: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – Unless there was some unreported injury, the early hook on Rasmussen was ridiculous here. He absolutely cruised through this one, needing just 62 pitches to get through his five innings – and his final inning was just 14 pitches, so it's not like he laboured there. The Rays just have an absurdly quick hook with Rasmusen, and while there have been starts where they have given him the chance to finish six innings if he's efficient, they didn't even do that one in this one. He's a very good pitcher, and I'm not even questioning the wisdom of how the Rays are using him – he's had Tommy John surgery twice and an internal brace procedure another time. I'm just frustrated. He's good, but there's a clear limit on how useful Rasmussen can actually be because of his usage. | | Matthew Boyd, Cubs @STL: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K – Okay, so we're back to the "good results, bad process" version of Boyd. He struck out 34 and walked just two in May, and somehow lowered his ERA to 1.78 in June despite only 18 strikeouts in 30.1 innings of work. I know, I know, strikeouts aren't everything. But pitching well without many strikeouts requires exceptional quality of contact suppression skills, and Boyd has rated as more like average there. Combine it with strong control, and I think Boyd can be useful, but I'd also bet on his ERA being at least a run higher than his current 2.65 mark moving forward. | | Zac Gallen, Diamondbacks @CHW: 5.1 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 2 K – I've tried to keep the faith, but I just don't know if I can do it anymore. I mean … the White Sox, Zac? C'mon, man! Gallen didn't elevate his fastball well and left way too many curveballs and changeups in the middle of the zone in this one, and even the White Sox were able to take advantage. His stuff has been in a multi-year decline, and the command just hasn't been good enough to overcome that. I'm not writing him off forever, but it's been a full year since Gallen was useful, so if you need to drop him, I think that's fine. | | Edward Cabrera, Marlins @SF: 5.1 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 6 K – It's been a nice little run for Cabrera of late, with a 2.36 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, and 49 strikeouts in 45.2 innings over his past nine starts. Of course, if you're a math whiz, you can probably tell that he's only averaging just over five innings per start in this stretch, as the Marlins have remained remarkably cautious about overextending him. Which limits the upside and win potential for Cabrera, but still makes him pretty useful heading into a two-start week against middling Twins and Brewers lineups. | | Max Scherzer, Blue Jays @CLE: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 4 K – This was a bad start, but it wasn't necessarily a discouraging one from Scherzer. Given his lengthy layoff, the three walks aren't surprising, and while the seven whiffs on 83 pitches are disappointing, there were some bright spots to point to. Scherzer's average fastball velocity was up to 93.2 mph in this one, higher than his average in either his lone start earlier this season or last season's rocky stretch with the Rangers. I'm skeptical Scherzer will be able to stay healthy, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect him to be a difference maker, so I'm not going to call him a must-add pitcher or anything. But let's keep an eye on how the next couple of starts go to see if he can build on the positive signs from this one. | | News and notes | | An MRI on Zach Neto's right shoulder came back negative, which is a good sign after he left Tuesday's game with the injury. He underwent surgery on that shoulder in the offseason, so hopefully he takes as much time off as he needs to let it get to 100% before trying to play through it. We really don't want a setback, as Neto has largely proved his 2024 breakout was for real. | | Wyatt Langford was out of the lineup Wednesday due to left side tightness. He'll undergo testing when the Rangers return home, but this is a concern as he dealt with a left oblique strain during the spring. | | As expected, Eugenio Suarez was out again Wednesday with that hand injury, but he did take light batting practice on Wednesday. He expressed hope he'll be able to return Friday, but the Diamondbacks will likely still have an MRI taken just to be sure. | | Hunter Greene is scheduled to throw a bullpen early next week. He's working his way back from a groin strain and back soreness. | | Shane McClanahan threw off a mound Wednesday, his first time doing so since being shut down earlier this month. I still think he's a long shot to contribute this season, but he has a chance, at least. | | Oneil Cruz was moved down to the fifth in the Pirates' lineup. He's struggling mightily in June and remains a very up-and-down player these days. | | Bob Melvin said there's a chance Rafael Devers will start some games at first base during their upcoming road trip. We'd love to get him enough appearances there to be eligible for 2025, though that would require Devers playing around one-fourth of their games at first base the rest of the way, which might be asking too much. | | Alex Cora said it looks like Alex Bregman won't return from his quad injury until after the All-Star break. That's disappointing, as there had previously been some optimism about an earlier return. | | Xander Bogaerts was scratched from the lineup due to left shoulder soreness. He missed a game earlier this month with the same issue, so maybe that explains some of the lackluster production to date. | | Jordan Westburg returned to the lineup after missing three straight games with a sprained left index finger. | | Michael Harris was back in the lineup after leaving Tuesday following a hit by pitch on his right elbow. | | Luis Robert left Wednesday due to left hamstring tightness. | | Mark Vientos could be activated from the IL on Thursday. He's been out with a hamstring strain. | | | | | | | | NBA Draft Coverage | | Rocket Classic | Get On the Clock coverage of the 2025 NBA Draft with CBS Sports HQ, your free, 24/7 sports streaming network. Watch live for pick-by-pick analysis, player comps and instant reactions all night long starting at 7:30 ET tonight!
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