Sometimes you just need a little time to get comfortable in a new environment. Tatsuya Imai’s stateside debut was a disaster, as he walked 11 batters across his first three starts and was clearly having trouble adjusting to his new life as a major-league baseball player in America. He went on the IL, put in the work and … didn’t look much better in his first few starts back, actually.
But that has changed pretty dramatically since the calendar turned to June and Imai has looked like the guy we were so excited for when he signed with the Astros this offseason over his past two starts especially. Imai struck out 11 last week against the Guardians and then followed that up with 10 more strikeouts Thursday against the Tigers. That’s 21 strikeouts in his past two starts and, perhaps even more notably, just one walk.
There hasn’t been much of a change in Imai’s approach during this stretch. There have maybe been a few more changeups in these two starts – it’s hard to tell because the movement profile of his slider is so weird that it often looks like a changeup or splitter, but Statcast has him throwing 96% four-seamers and sliders Thursday, for example. But he’s been a lot more effective with his two-pitch approach, generating 16 whiffs on 96 pitches Thursday, including a whopping 14 on the slider.
And this is what we hoped it would look like. Imai’s slider is a freaky outlier of a pitch – it moves significantly more to the arm side than the glove side, backing up in a way that defies logic and, seemingly, gravity. Because of that, it has proven to be an effective pitch against both righties and lefties, and that has been enough these past two starts.
Will it be enough moving forward? It’s hard to say, but I’m inclined to have some faith. It’s worth noting that he couldn’t even get out of the first inning three starts ago, so we’re still dealing with a pretty small sample size of success. It’s always hard when the biggest thing a pitcher has changed to find success is just, well, pitching better, but that’s the case with Imai. That might not prove sustainable, but I think we do have a pretty good explanation for why he was struggling so much early on, so it also follows that it might make sense that he could just sustain something like this moving forward.
I’m not at all convinced that Imai is a great pitcher based on these two starts. But it takes a lot less to reach the bar for competency, and how weird he is might be enough to elevate him beyond competency. At the very least, consecutive double-digit starts have to push him toward being 100% rostered now. Just in case this is real.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here’s what you might have missed from CBSSports.com’s MLB coverage in recent days:
Prospects Report! Kade Anderson’s massive first season as a professional has him knocking on the door to the majors even at Double-A. Scott White says he’s worth stashing even with the Mariners’ crowded rotation.
Buy-low Pitchers! Scott highlights six pitchers who still have plenty of room to live up to their potential. It’s time to make some trade offers.
Week 14 Trade Values! My rankings have been updated for both H2H points and Roto leagues for Week 14. Go check out the latest changes and get some guidelines for a deal as we near the halfway point of the season.
Yes, the Mets should be sellers. Dayn Perry makes the case for why the David Peterson trade should just be the start of the selloff for the disappointing Mets.
Deadline Preview. We’re more than a month away, but Perry looks at why the glut of teams in the Wild Card race could make this an unusually messy trade deadline.
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Thursday’s action:
Landen Roupp, SP, Giants (70%) – Roupp is a tough nut to crack. He has been, on the whole, pretty mediocre since a hot start to the season, but it’s clear there are still some solid skills here, and he’s tapping into them more lately. He tossed his second strong start in a row Thursday, limiting the A’s to just two runs over six innings while striking out six, giving him 13 strikeouts to just two walks in 12 innings over the past two starts. The control is key for Roupp, who relies so much on a big, slow, loopy curveball that can be devastatingly effective, but also tough to command in the strike zone. He has a lot in common with Framber Valdez in that way, and his 3.29 xERA suggests better days could be ahead. The matchup against the Diamondbacks next week isn’t the best one, but then he gets a two-start week to close out the first half the following week, so I think he’ll be worth keeping around to see if he can build on this little run.
Dylan Crews, OF, Nationals (42%) – Slowly but surely, it looks like he’s starting to figure it out. Crews went 3 for 4 Thursday against the Phillies, his third multi-hit game of the four-game series and his fourth in the past six. He’s still hitting just .235/.271/.420 in the month of June and his .286 wOBA is hardly better than his very disappointing career line so far. But his .329 xwOBA is a sign that he has deserved better than that. He’s hitting the ball harder than ever without sacrificing contact skills, and he’s elevating the ball and hitting it in the air to the pull side more than we’ve ever seen from him. If you’re skeptical, I understand. But Crews is starting to show signs of being worth at least some of the hype, and at just 24, I’m willing to buy in when all it costs is some FAB.
Ian Seymour, RP, Rays (14%) – One issue with many Rays pitchers is that the team tends to treat them with kid’s gloves, but that doesn’t actually seem to be a problem for Seymour. His pitch count has been allowed to steadily climb since his move to the rotation, and he got all the way up to 90 across 6.2 shutout innings against the Royals Thursday. And he looked like the guy we had so much hope for as a sleeper coming into the season, striking out seven and allowing zero hits and just one walk while generating 12 swinging strikes. Seymour looked really solid late last season and could be a viable SPaRP option in H2H points leagues when he gets to face the Royals again next week.
Cooper Ingle, C, Guardians (6%) – Over on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast, Frank Stampfl has been beating the drum for Ingle to be promoted for weeks, and it’s finally happening. The Guardians value the glove over the bat for their catchers, so it’s fair to wonder where Ingle will play, not to mention how much. But if he does, he’s got a pretty interesting skill set, hitting .284/.416/.551 in Triple-A this season. He doesn’t have as much raw power as his 12 homers in 51 games might make you think, but he has a terrific approach at the plate and could hit enough to play his way into the No. 2 catcher discussion, especially if he plays consistently at DH or in the outfield, where he’s starting to get reps this season.
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
Bryce Miller looks like he has leveled up
It’s hard to call a guy with a top-10 season under his belt a “breakout,” but we’re getting there with Miller. His start Thursday saw him fall an out short of a quality start and he gave up three runs on two homers, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was another very promising outing. He matched his career high in strikeouts with 11 while generating 19 swinging strikes on 90 pitches. Miller continues to hold his velocity multiple ticks higher than ever before, and he had the splitter and curveball working incredibly well in this one, generating eight whiffs with the splitter and four with the curve. Both his ERA and xERA are right around 2.00; his strikeout rate is sitting at 33%, blowing away his previous career best. This is the best version of Miller we’ve ever seen, and the only question I have is whether he can stay on the mound long term after fighting through elbow injuries last season. If he can, he’s a top-24 SP.
Troy Melton keeps on rolling
Despite the strong results, I have been keeping Melton at arm’s length this season. He’s a fine pitcher, but not someone who has really looked like an impact arm for Fantasy, as shown by his 3.80 xERA entering Thursday’s start against the Astros. But he looked like someone who could make an impact in that one, adding 1.6 mph to his four-seamer to get it back to the level he was operating at last season. Melton has missed a ton of bats in the minors, so it was disappointing to see him enter this start with just a 15% strikeout rate; he struck out six in six innings in this one with 15 whiffs on 88 pitches, presumably as a result of the higher velocity he sported. It’s just one start, so who knows if the velocity sticks, but Melton did say he made a tweak in his delivery during his off days that could make this more sustainable. I’m a lot more willing to buy into it with that in mind, so let’s add him and see what he looks like next time out.
Junior Caminero can hit anywhere
Actually, what’s funny is that, for the second year in a row, Caminero has been significantly better at home. But last season was in a hitter’s paradise in Steinbrenner Field, the Rays’ one-season home, which led many to label him a bust candidate with the Rays moving back to Tropicana Field. Well, that hasn’t been an issue for him yet, as he’s hitting .326 with a 1.049 OPS after his three-homer game Thursday. For what it’s worth, I never bought the idea that Caminero was a product of Steinbrenner Field in any way – the biggest reason he was better at home in 2025 than on the road was because of a near-.140 point gap in BABIP, but he actually hit more homers on the road. He has been better at home this season, but I don’t think there’s anything more than noise to that, and his overall production, including an improved batting average and on-base percentage and a near-40-homer pace, still looks totally real to me. He’s simply one of the best power hitters in the game, and increasingly an improved hitter across the board. It’s not unreasonable at all to have him as a first-round pick for 2027.
Three Down
Cal Raleigh still doesn’t look right
If you were hoping his time on the IL with an oblique injury might serve as a reset for Raleigh, it doesn’t look like that’s working out. He went 1 for 4 Thursday with a double and a walk, but he also struck out three times, giving him a 29.8% strikeout rate since coming back from the IL. He has walked seven times in that stretch, which is nice, but he also has just one homer in nine games, and has just a .317 xwOBA since returning, a far cry from the .371 mark he posted last season (and it would be his worst in a season since 2021, when he debuted). Raleigh was never going to replicate last season’s historic performance, but he’s been a very good hitter for long enough that I think we have to assume he’ll pull out of it fairly soon … but he isn’t showing signs of it yet. I have stubbornly kept Raleigh ranked in the top 12 at catcher in deference to his track record, but he hasn’t looked worthy of that ranking at any point this season to date.
Kevin Gausman is going through one of his typical swoons
This happened nearly every year for Gausman. In fact, on this exact same date last season, Gausman was sitting on a 4.60 ERA, even worse than his 4.36 ERA after his third start of six or more runs Thursday. And I think that’s just part of life with Gausman, who depends so much on his splitter, a notoriously difficult pitch to throw. Early in his career, he would go through stretches where he couldn’t even throw the pitch without getting blisters, but he’s overcome that issue, at least. What he hasn’t overcome, and likely never will, is the inherent volatility that comes with relying on a pitch like a splitter. He’s a lot like Framber Valdez in that way, where you know there’s always going to be these stretches where he just loses the feel for his signature pitch and struggles as a result. But you can also be pretty confident that he’s going to get it back before long and the numbers should be excellent by the end of the year. If you’re frustrated and want to sit Gausman next week, I can’t blame you, but I’ll probably leave him in there for this juicy matchup against the Mets, who rank 29th in baseball in wOBA vs. RHP.
We’re getting no signs of life from Vladimir Guerrero
I mean, woof. He went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts Thursday and is down to a .203/.247/.284 line for the month of June. He has one homer in the month, which is actually only one homer shy of his high for a month during the 2026 season, believe it or not. Guerrero isn’t this bad, obviously, but he’s also genuinely slumping right now; his .348 expected wOBA for the season is his worst since 2020, and it’s down to .289 over his past 50 plate appearances. This is no fluke; Guerrero is earning his poor performance right now. But, as I wrote about Bo Bichette last week, when you have a player with the kind of track record like Guerrero, I think you can throw the underlying data out for the most part and just trust that they’ll figure it out eventually. Guerrero isn’t going to be able to justify the second-round price tag you probably paid to draft him this season, but I still have a lot of confidence you’ll be happy to have him in your lineup in the long run. But you definitely aren’t right now.
Extra Innings
Craig Kimbrel blew it
At one point, Kimbrel was one of the best closers of all time. Now he’s just playing out the string, having been on nine rosters in the past six seasons. Nonetheless, he was who the Rays turned to to finish off a combined no-hitter bid Thursday … which went about how you would expect it to go. Kimbrel walked the first hitter he faced and then gave up a no-doubter homer to Carter Jensen to end both the no-hitter and shutout bid. It’s a bummer, but that’s exactly what I expected to happen with Kimbrel on the mound, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up on a 10th roster pretty soon.
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