Slow starts are painful. They can make it feel like you're losing your season before you even have a chance, and the longer a key piece of your team continues to struggle, the harder it becomes to believe they're going to turn it around.
And knowing how to handle that is one of the toughest things about playing Fantasy Baseball. Some players are way too impatient, but you can go too far the other direction, too, and that's something I definitely struggle with as a player. I can anchor to my preseason expectations for players too hard, letting my teams fall too far behind in the standings to have a chance to make up for it.
But here's the thing: Good players usually don't just lose it entirely forever, and when they do, there's usually a good reason for it. They're playing hurt, or they are old and hitting a wall, or … well, sometimes they're just a pitcher, and sometimes pitchers do just lose it – that's what makes evaluating pitchers in this game especially hard. But for hitters, especially ones in their prime who aren't dealing with injuries, a slow start is usually just a slow start.
Take Bo Bichette, for example. He was an active detriment to your team's chances of winning for the first two months of the season, sporting an OPS as low as .570 as late as June 2. With little power or speed, he was just killing you out there. But this is a player with a very long track record of being a very good hitter, and at 28, he just got a massive contract in free agency. Which is all to say, he was always a very good bet to turn things around.
And boy has he. He had four hits on June 3 and has been a multi-hit machine since. After a three-hit game Wednesday against the Reds, he has multiple hits in six straight games and has his numbers for the month of June all the way up to .387/.394/.645 with 14 RBI and 11 runs scored in 15 games. The overall numbers still look pretty bad, of course, and it'll take a while for that to get fixed. But his underlying numbers more or less look like we expected – .283 expected batting average, .433 expected slugging percentage, and a 90.9 mph average exit velocity. As frustrating as it's been along the way, Bichette still looks like himself, and you should expect him to remain a must-start Fantasy player moving forward.
It's less clear whether the same can be said for someone like Kyle Stowers or Jackson Merrill, though. Both are in their physical primes, but neither has nearly the track record Bichette does – Merrill was a star as a rookie in 2024, but has been underwhelming since and entered play Wednesday hitting .222/.285/.395 over the past year; Stowers was excellent last season, but only for about four months for the first time in his career, meaning his slow two months to open this season represent roughly half the sample size of when he was good. These are much less certain bets than Bichette.
But they're generally still bets I want to make. In Merrill's case, mostly because I just don't think it's likely his age-21 season was just a total fluke. He was disappointing in 2025, but he wasn't bad – certainly not this bad – and that was a situation where injuries seemed like a good explanation for why his season went so sideways. His plate discipline hasn't improved as much as you'd like since he was a rookie, but Merrill still has impressive physical gifts, including 87th percentile sprint speed and above-average quality of contact metrics pretty much across the board. So hopefully his three-hit game Wednesday, including a homer, can be what gets him going. There's no guarantee here, but it's a bet on a young player with tools who has played at a high level before, and despite the lows of this season, I still think it can work out.
Stowers is even less of a sure thing, but there have at least been more reasons to be optimistic of late. Not many, to be clear, though Wednesday's two-homer game sure makes it all look a lot better. He went 4 for 5 with five RBI to go along with the two homers, and now has four homers while hitting .241/.323/.537 in the month of June. His strikeout rate is a bit higher overall this season, but a lot of his batted ball metrics continue to look pretty impressive – he still ranks in the 91st percentile in hard-hit rate, still hits the ball in the air to the pull side frequently, and still shows at least plus power across the board. Given the lack of track record here, it's hard to call Stowers a good bet to turn things around, but it's not like he looks totally lost. If he's available in your league, I think he's an interesting buy-low target.
I won't say the same for Andrew Painter, of course, because he was sent back to Triple-A Wednesday after yet another disastrous start. This time, he lasted just two innings before giving up six runs, his third start in a row with at least five runs allowed. That pushed Painter's season-long ERA to 7.06, which is just too much for the Phillies to stomach as they continue to try to claw their way back into contention.
And Painter earned that demotion. Sure, his peripherals aren't quite as bad as his ERA, but nothing about Painter's first MLB season suggests he's been anywhere close to a viable MLB pitcher. And, after a 5.26 ERA in 118 innings across 26 starts in the minors a year ago, maybe this is just who he is.
It definitely is who he is right now, though you can still squint and make out the outlines of an effective pitcher. Painter's slider generated a 38% whiff rate as his second-most used pitch, and his splitter was right behind it with a 36% whiff rate; the sweeper and curveball weren't great swing-and-miss pitches, but both generally limited hard contact extremely well. There are absolutely tools here that at least resemble the pitcher Painter was supposed to be once upon a time.
But he might have the worst pair of fastballs in baseball. He throws his four-seamer 96.5 mph on average and his sinker at 95.1, but neither pitch generates either whiffs or limits hard contact, and while there were periods where he tried to limit their exposure, he just never got comfortable throwing his secondaries as primaries. That's a hard thing for a young pitcher to have to learn how to do, but it's either that or completely retool the fastballs. Painter generally kept his four-seamer up in the zone, but he didn't have the movement profile to miss bats with it, despite the velocity; his command of his sinker was generally just terrible, leading to a 15-degree average launch angle, a disastrous number for a sinker.
Painter just never figured out how to overcome those two pillars being so shaky, and that'll certainly be the focus of his work down in Triple-A. He'll get in the lab and try to improve the shape of the four-seamer, or try to find a cue that helps keep the sinker down. Or maybe the fix will be trying to develop a cutter that he can use as a primary pitch; this is a guy with a clear feel for spin, so maybe leaning into that and ditching the fastballs almost entirely is the answer.
It won't be easy, but I suspect this isn't the last we've heard of Painter. He'll have to do a lot in the future to earn the trust of Fantasy players again, and it's possible he just never figures it out. But it's not the only possible outcome for Painter's future.
Now, here's what else you need to know about from Wednesday's action around MLB:
Thursday's top waiver-wire targets
Here's who we're looking to add coming out of Wednesday's action:
Francisco Alvarez, C, Mets (40%) – Jensen was better than Alvarez Wednesday, but I think there's more to like all around with the Met. Alvarez hasn't been as good as I'd hoped this season, but the underlying numbers suggest he still has that potential. He has cut his strikeout rate to 23.3%, the lowest of his career, and he has done it without sacrificing quality of contact – in fact, his .409 expected wOBA is the best of his career. He's hitting .320 since coming off the IL following knee surgery, a good sign that didn't derail his season. He's a rock-solid No. 2 catcher but still has top-12 potential.
Carter Jensen, C, Royals (67%) – Jensen has been a pretty big disappointment so far this season in what was supposed to be his big breakout. He isn't alone in that on the Royals lineup, but what was supposed to be his emergence as a must-start catcher has seen him completely left behind by many other players at the position. But he's still young and still extremely talented, and we're starting to see signs of that, as he went 4 for 4 with a walk and a homer Wednesday, his second multi-hit game in the past four. There isn't a ton else to point to besides that, but when we're talking about a player with the kind of power potential Jensen brings to the table, it doesn't take an especially long hot streak to get me interested again.
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, Yankees (45%) – Scott White declared Goldschmidt arguably the most under-rostered player in Fantasy on a recent episode of Fantasy Baseball Today, and it's hard to muster up a good argument against that even with Goldschmidt's roster rate jumping up another 10 or so points since he said that. Goldschmidt homered for the third time in four games and fifth time in June (and 10th time since the start of May), while pushing his season-long line to .301/.368/.560. He's overperforming with a .394 wOBA, but even if he just hit to his .366 expected wOBA, that would be an excellent mark and his best since 2022. Goldschmidt is playing pretty much every day and should continue to do so as long as the Yankees are beset by injuries … and if he keeps this up, they're going to have to have some awkward conversations about what to do with Giancarlo Stanton (if he's ever healthy enough to play). At this point, I just don't see much reason to be skeptical of Goldschmidt's success, even if he isn't likely to be quite this good moving forward.
Peter Lambert, SP, Astros (51%) – Lambert's velocity was down 1.2 to 2.8 mph across his entire arsenal, so of course, he had arguably the best start of his career. He made it work with his deep arsenal, though I'm not entirely sure how – he had just seven swinging strikes and his 25% called-plus-swinging-strike rate was pretty lousy. But it worked, and Lambert's ERA for the season is down to 3.23. He's doing a good job of missing barrels, and while I suspect that won't last forever, he's a decent streamer with upcoming matchups against the Blue Jays, Twins, Rays, and Rangers leading into the All-Star break.
Wednesday's standouts
Kyle Bradish, Orioles @SEA: 7.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 12 K – Bradish was another player I never really felt comfortable giving up on, despite a very disappointing start to the season. And he reminded us of exactly why he's worth keeping the faith in Wednesday with his best start of the season. And the key was the slider, which he threw 1.9 mph harder in this start and generated seven whiffs on 10 swings with. His whiff rate for that pitch coming into this start was 31.5%, the lowest of his career, while he was allowing a .427 wOBA on the pitch despite an 84.8 mph average exit velocity. Was one start enough to get us to buy fully back in on Bradish? Given how frustrating things have been all season long – especially recently, as he had allowed 10 runs in eight innings across his previous two starts – skepticism is a reasonable response. But so is optimism, because before the first two months of this season, Bradish had been uniformly excellent across parts of three prior seasons. I always expected him to get back to that level at some point. Maybe he just did.
Nolan McLean, Mets @CIN: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 9 K – This is going to sound kind of stupid, but bear with me: what if McLean was just generating too much movement on his pitches? His control has betrayed him in recent starts, as hitters began stubbornly laying off his big breaking balls out of the zone, leading to a spike in walks and a drop in strikeouts. Well, on Wednesday's start, he came out throwing his secondaries harder while generating five fewer inches of drop on his curveball and sweeper (and four fewer inches of horizontal break on the sweeper); his four-seamer also got two inches less arm-side break. McLean ended up with a 21% called strike rate, more in line with last year's mark. It's just a hypothesis, and not one I'm totally comfortable planting my flag on, but it's something to monitor moving forward. Even with a little less movement, McLean still has nasty stuff, and if this allows him to command everything a bit better, maybe it's a tradeoff worth making?
Gavin Williams, Guardians @MIL: 5 IP, 7 H, 7 ER, 2 BB, 4 K – Williams remains sort of inscrutable, but I do think his current 3.83 ERA is probably closer to what we should be expecting from him moving forward than where he had been earlier in the season. He is generating significantly more strikeouts and fewer walks than last season, but the tradeoff here has been significantly more hard contact and worse results on balls in play. Add it up, and you've got a 4.02 FIP and 4.58 xERA, albeit from a guy who has pretty consistently outperformed those stats in his career. View him as a volatile mid-3.00s ERA pitcher, and I think you'll be happy.
Sandy Alcantara, Marlins @PHI: 6 IP, 8 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K – We saw Alcantara turn his season around on a dime late last summer, so maybe we're just seeing him do the same thing a little earlier this time around. He has a 2.89 ERA and 1.00 WHIP in four starts in June, and even when things haven't been so positive, he's still been pitching deep into games more consistently than just about anyone else – he has gone six or more innings in 13 of 16 starts. He's not an ace, but he's a really nice SP3, especially in points leagues.
Shane McClanahan, Rays @LAD: 3.2 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 5 BB, 3 K – McClanahan is a bit rusty lately, with a 7.11 ERA and 2.13 WHIP over his past three starts. But he had been extremely effective prior to that, so I don't think there's too much to worry about here. But I will say this: The Rays are still handling him with kid's gloves (three starts with more than 85 pitches in 14 tries), which leaves him with an inherently slim margin for error. The difference between a good start and a bad one over five innings might be the difference between two and three runs, and those starts like today, where he just doesn't have it early on, he's not going to have an especially long leash to pull out of it. I think he'll be pretty good moving forward, but if he puts together another few good starts in a row, I'd be looking to sell high.
Nick Lodolo, Reds vs. NYM: 4.2 IP, 11 H, 7 ER, 2 BB, 2 K – Lodolo's command is just terrible right now. The stuff looks fine otherwise, but he's dropped from around a 50% zone rate to below 45% this season, and his Location+ metric on FanGraphs.com has been a disaster. That gives me confidence that he'll lock in and figure it out at some point – you'd rather have location be the thing a pitcher needs to solve than poor stuff – but that doesn't mean he'll figure it out soon. So if you need the roster spot, he's certainly droppable, even if I'd rather not in the long run.
Casey Mize, Tigers @HOU: 4.2 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K – I'm mostly willing to give Mize the benefit of the doubt here in his first start back from the IL, given how good he's been this season. I'm not going to start worrying until we see multiple poor starts in a row.
Eduardo Rodriguez, Diamondbacks vs. LAA: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K – Look, there is always some pitcher who drastically outperforms their peripherals for a long time. It's been Rodriguez so far, and maybe he'll continue to do it. But here's the thing: Just because we know someone will be an outlier doesn't mean you should bet on any individual pitcher to be that outlier. Rodriguez has a couple of good matchups against the Cardinals and Rays in a two-start week, so if you want to keep rolling the dice on him, that's fine. But understand that with a 4.14 FIP and 4.82 xERA, you are rolling the dice here.
