Let's talk about the Pirates bullpen. It's bad. In a season where a lot has gone right for them, the bullpen's mediocrity has been a real issue in Pittsburgh.
Some teams don't have a closer because they don't want one: Think of the Nationals going with a seemingly different guy every single night, content to play the matchups with a series of replaceable options. Then you have teams like the Pirates that would love to have a closer.
They want a closer so bad they've had two already this season, in fact. They've both ultimately failed in that role, however. It took Gregory Soto longer to lose the job than Dennis Santana did, but after he entered Monday's game with the Pirates up 8-5 in the eighth inning and surrendered two runs, I think he's gotta be out of the high-leverage roles for the time being.
The problem is, I'm not sure who else is supposed to step up here. Mason Montgomery was in line for the save Monday before the Pirates tacked on three more in the top of the ninth, so it could be him, but he has a 4.83 ERA and nearly 4.5 walks per nine, so it would be a risk. Evan Sisk has been the best reliever in the bullpen, but he also primarily has pitched in the sixth and seventh innings; are they ready to trust him in the ninth? I'd guess Montgomery gets the next chance, and he'll have a chance to run with it, because the Pirates would love it if someone would. I'm just not sure I trust him, even if he has the talent to do the job.
The Pirates seem like one of the most obvious teams to trade for a closer before the deadline, and given how desperate they are to make the playoffs while they have Paul Skenes, I wouldn't be surprised if they opted to jump the market and add a closer before the end of July. They probably should. They want a closer, after all, don't they?
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:
Bullpen breakdown. Scott White goes through all 30 MLB teams' ninth-inning situations to try to figure out who is going to get the next save.
Prospects Report. Kade Anderson looks like one of the best pitchers in the minors. Is his call-up imminent? Scott White looks at him and nine other prospects to know.
Mid-season grades. The Dodgers get an 'A,' obviously. See how Dayn Perry grades out every other team in the league.
Yankees' Achilles' heel? The Yankees offense has disappeared without Aaron Judge. Matt Snyder says it might be something to be worried about.
Rumor roundup: The Orioles 'going for it. And what will the new A's GM do after they fired Perry Minasian?
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Monday's action:
Esmerlyn Valdez, OF, Pirates (12%) – It's not surprising that Valdez is hitting for power. He had 13 homers in 56 games down at Triple-A before he was promoted for good to the Pirates. It's also not especially surprising that he's striking out a ton – his 38% strikeout rate through his first 16 MLB games is a lot higher than where he was in the minors (usually around 25-30%), but he always felt like a guy who would run into contact issues against MLB pitching. These two facts about him are related, in fact. Valdez is a patient hitter, which will put him in two-strike counts, and he's a hard swinger who is looking to damage in the air, which can lead to swing-and-miss issues but also plenty of homers. He went deep again Monday, his sixth homer in 50 plate appearances to open his MLB career, and while I think there's some Rece Hinds, flash-in-the-pan potential here, I think he's worth taking a flier on in at least five-outfielder leagues with what he's showing right now, which includes a 95 mph average exit velocity and 67% hard-hit rate.
Endy Rodriguez, C, Pirates (18%) – Rodriguez had a couple of nightmare seasons ending in surgery for ulnar nerve transposition in August of 2025. The former top prospect played just 36 games across 2024 and 2025 and was largely left for dead, opening the season third on the Pirates depth chart behind the plate. But he's already forced the Pirates to move on from Joey Bart with his play this season and he isn't really showing any signs of slowing down. He went 2 for 3 with a homer, four RBI and two walks in Monday's win over the Phillies and is hitting .271/.404/.482 for the season with the underlying numbers to back it up. That includes manageable contact/strikeout rates and very good quality of contact metrics that have him in the 70th percentile or better in hard-hit rate, barrel rate, and average exit velocity. It's still a sample size of just 105 plate appearances, but maybe this is just what Endy Rodriguez looks like when he has two functioning elbows? He should be in the No. 2 catcher discussion.
Zebby Matthews, SP, Twins (54%) – He hasn't been consistently good, but Matthews continues to show flashes, and he did so again Monday, limiting the Astros to just one run over seven innings with seven strikeouts. He got 13 whiffs on 89 pitches and showed the Astros some different looks in this one. His curveball and changeup velocity were both up 1.2-1.5 mph, while his slider and cutter both had a couple of extra inches of horizontal break. We've had a bunch of interesting pitchers emerge on the waiver-wire in recent days, and I'm prioritizing names like Joey Cantillo, Sean Burke, Griffin Jax, Tatsuya Imai, Trevor Rogers, and Jake Bennett ahead of Matthews, but he's interesting enough to be worth a look heading into the final few weeks before the All-Star break if those guys aren't there.
Noah Schultz, SP, White Sox (40%) – Schultz struggled in his first taste of the majors, but he's still a young, gigantic lefty with big stuff, and he's going to be back in the rotation this week, likely Wednesday against the Orioles. His first taste of the majors saw him struggle to generate swings and misses, both because he didn't miss bats in the strike zone and because he struggled to generate swings on pitches out of the zone. Hey, a 22-year-old lefty has some work to do, more at 11. There's tremendous upside here if he does figure it out, and if you have the roster spot to play with, why not see if he has before he makes his return from the IL? You won't have much competition for his services right now.
Luis Robert, OF, Mets (59%) – The case for Robert is very similar to the case for Schultz: We know he's talented, and we know he's nearing a return from injury, so why not add him now and see if he can hit the ground running and make an impact? Robert has been out since April with a back injury, but he's set to start a rehab assignment Tuesday at Triple-A and should be back sometime in the next week, I would guess. It's been a long time since Robert was a legitimate difference maker for Fantasy, but even if all he does is what he did in 2025, that's a must-roster player in any five-outfielder or category-based league – remember, he had 14 homers and 33 steals in 110 games.
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
Casey Mize is better than ever
Monday might have been the best start of Casey Mize's career. Facing an admittedly scuffling Yankees team, Mize just dominated them, striking out 10, walking none and allowing just one hit in seven shutout innings. He wasn't quite as dominant under the hood, with a pretty good 13 whiffs on 88 pitches, so the state of the Aaron Judge-less Yankees should certainly be taken into consideration here. On the other hand, he's down to a 2.63 ERA for the season with a 2.50 FIP to back it up. Increased reliance on an improved slider has helped push his strikeout rate to 9.4 per nine and he's combined that with the best control of his career. I don't think Mize is quite this good, but if he can sustain the strikeout rate, even a 3.50 ERA would make him more or less a must-start pitcher moving forward. I think he can do it.
Eduardo Rodriguez keeps getting away with it
Seven innings, one earned run, one strikeout. That's just an absurd stat line in what continues to be an absolutely absurd season for Rodriguez. He's down to a 2.21 ERA for the season, nearly three full runs lower than last season, and then when you check under the hood, very little actually looks improved for him. His xERA is 4.79, actually worse than last season's; his 3.97 FIP is improved, but that's mostly due to his unusually low 8.1% HR/FB rate, and his 4.45 xFIP accounts for that luck and suggests he's the same guy as ever. Rodriguez doesn't get many strikeouts, he has pretty bad control, and he doesn't keep the ball on the ground well or limit damage on contact, and at some point, that's all going to catch up to him. Good start, bad pitcher. I remain convinced of that.
Brandon Marsh is not slowing down
With one game left, I think we can safely say this is the best month of Marsh's career. He heads into play Tuesday hitting .330 with a .992 OPS and nine homers since the calendar turned to June, after he went deep twice Monday – seeing as his career-high in homers for a season is 16, I don't even need to check to confirm that this is a career-high for a month for Marsh. It should go without saying that Marsh is playing completely over his head right now, and his increasing strikeout rate in June (34.2%) is a sign that, at some point, this is probably going to slow down for him. That being said, unless someone is looking at Marsh's run for a batting title and thinking he's a top-20 outfielder the rest of the season, I don't think there's actually much actionable to say – Marsh is a pretty good hitter who is on an outrageous heater right now, and I think you just have to ride it out until he slows down.
Three Down
Christian Yelich is starting to sit
The end comes for everyone eventually, and Yelich looks nearer to it than ever before. The 34-year-old has been a big disappointment following a big bounce-back season in 2025, and the Brewers might be starting to realize that their best lineups might not feature him every day anymore. He's hitting .262/.338/.400 for the season, and his .295 xwOBA (compared to a .325 actual wOBA) suggests he's actually been lucky to put together even that meager line. And now Yelich has sat out four of the past five games against left-handed starting pitchers after he was out of the lineup Monday against Nick Lodolo. With Andrew Vaughn demanding more playing time with his hitting this season, this might just be the best configuration for the Brewers lineup moving forward, and it makes it tough to trust Yelich, especially in points leagues.
Ryan Weathers is a headache
I'm not even sure Weathers is bad. His 4.08 ERA isn't great, but it's good enough to be useful when combined with all the strikeouts and generally useful WHIP you get from Weathers. But I'm also not sure he's worth the trouble at this point. He got off to a phenomenal start to the season. Still, he's been dodging homer-fueled blowups as well as he can for the past couple of months, and he's had four pretty disastrous outings in his past six, with a 5.81 ERA in that stretch after he was chased with two outs in the second inning Monday. Weathers' bat-missing ability is going to allow him to go on some big runs, but between the inconsistency and the lingering questions about how long he'll stay in the Yankees rotation – he's already thrown more than 30 more innings than he did in 2025 and he has nearly matched 2024's total – I'm not sure how much long-term appeal Weathers actually has. And you missed your sell-high window in trades, so you're in a tough spot right now.
Gage Jump ran into the Dodgers buzzsaw
Succeeding consistently in the majors is tough. Jump looked like he had figured it out in his past few starts, but the Dodgers loomed on the schedule as a big test. And while I think saying he failed that test would be harsh, it's not necessarily unfair – Shohei Ohtani jumped on him for an early homer en route to five earned runs allowed in 4.2 innings. Jump still showed decent bat-missing ability, but the Dodgers hit him hard, with a 94.3 mph average exit velocity allowed in the game, so he earned this one. Still, we're talking about a top pitching prospect with a 2.93 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 9.0 K/9 through his first six MLB starts, so I'm hardly deterred by this outing. Jump is going to be good, even if getting the job done against the Dodgers might be asking a bit too much right now.
Extra Innings
A league-leader added to his lead
Aaron Ashby got his 11th win Monday night. He was already the first big-leaguer to reach 10 wins, and he's on pace for, incredibly, a 20-win season primarily as a single-inning reliever. This is one of those things that doesn't really matter for Fantasy – reliever wins are completely unpredictable, so it's not like you can expect him to keep getting wins at this rate. On the other hand, it keeps happening, and the Brewers do love using him specifically in high-leverage, non-save situations, which can certainly lead to wins. Nine more? Five more? 11 more? No total would really surprise me, but I'll say this: I've been happy to just leave him in the lineup in multiple Roto leagues.
