Esmerlyn Valdez did it again. After he homered Sunday, he became the fourth player in MLB history with at least 12 homers and 31 RBI in their first 31 games, and he made it 12 and 33 in his first 32 games with another long ball Monday. He is now tied for fourth in the majors in homers since his return from Triple-A on June 11, and his .485 wOBA entering Tuesday led all players.
Valdez is already pretty much 100% rostered in all Fantasy leagues at this point, and of course he is. He should have been 100% rostered weeks ago at this pace. Of course, just adding a player on waivers is a relatively low lift, so the question at this point is what he’s likely to do moving forward. And to get some help answering that question, I figured I would take a look at the previous three players who accomplished that earlier feat to see how they fared – and hopefully get a sense of how likely Valdez is to keep this up.
The most obvious comp here is to Aristides Aquino, another electric young NL Central power hitter. He had 15 homers in his first 32 games in 2019 with a 23.3% strikeout rate.
He would homer just four more times in his next 24 games while striking out 31% of the time, and he would ultimately never manage to be an everyday player again. Rhys Hoskins had 16 homers in his first 32 games, and he did that while striking out just 19% of the time.
He would homer in his 33rd and 34th game … and that’s it, as he would finish the season hitting .179/.342/.339 with a 27% strikeout rate. Hoskins did eventually become a very good hitter for a while, but contact issues eventually left him with a slim enough margin for error. The best-case scenario is probably Will Smith, who had 12 homers in his first 32 games despite striking out 29% of the time; he would eventually emerge as a legitimate star, but even he couldn’t sustain his hot start and closed out the season hitting .200/.296/.343 over his next (and final) 22 games.
It’s … not great!
All three players with previous stretches to open their careers crashed hard the rest of the season. And Valdez’s skill set looks even more precarious, as he is striking out in 38% of his plate appearances after going down two more times Monday. He doesn’t have a totally hopeless approach at the plate – as a matter of fact, his swing decisions have generally been pretty good!
– but there’s just so much swing and miss here. His 66.5% zone contact rate is an absolute disaster; the only player close is Munetaka Murakami, who hits the ball even harder and has an even better approach at the plate than Valdez to help overcome it. And even Murakami has looked pretty lost since coming back from a hamstring injury a few weeks back. I’m not saying Valdez is just another Aristides Aquino. He might be Rhys Hoskins, and that would be a pretty good outcome. But Hoskins’ career was defined by actively harmful batting averages and pretty inconsistent play at the plate, and he also struck out more than half as often as Valdez in his career-opening stretch.
Obviously, Valdez isn’t this good. He has legitimate MLB skills, but he pairs them with massive limitations that haven’t been exposed yet.
And while he was a good prospect before his debut, he wasn’t viewed as a top-100 one in the game, generally. The likeliest outcome moving forward is the bottom starts to fall out of his batting average and you just hope he can keep it in the .240 range while remaining a 35-plus homer threat.
But despite how good he has been, there are some real downside outcomes here, and if you have the good fortune to have Valdez on your roster, my best advice right now is to try to trade him as soon as possible. Because the likeliest outcome here is that he’s probably just an all-or-nothing power hitter the rest of the way, one who pretty much needs to hit 30-plus homers to have much appeal for Fantasy. And the downside? Well, Aquino was never really a big-league caliber hitter again after that first month.
Pre-game Lineup Card Here’s what you might have missed from CBSSports.com’s MLB coverage in recent days:
Bold Predictions . 10 bold predictions for the second half, from yours truly.
Second half re-draft . Scott White gives you his top-24 players for the second half.
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Power Rankings . Matt Snyder ranks all 30 teams, focusing this time on the suddenly red-hot AL East race.
Skubal landing spots .
Tarik Skubal could be on the move, and Dayn Perry breaks down his eight most-likely landing spots.
Player rankings . What do the top 50 players in MLB look like at the All-Star break?
Hitting the Wire The top waiver-wire targets from Monday’s action:
Ty France, 1B, Padres (9%) – France has been around for a long time, and he hasn’t been a particularly interesting hitter for Fantasy since 2022, so it takes a lot to get our attention.
Well, I think at this point he has it. He went 2 for 4 with another homer Monday, his 15th of the season and fifth in his past seven games. Those past seven games are obviously carrying a lot of weight here, but the under-the-hood numbers tell the story of a hitter who is having more than just a good week. He has bumped his average exit velocity up from 89.5 to 92.1 mph, leading to a .248 expected batting average and .452 expected slugging percentage. I don’t think France is suddenly a superstar, or anything, but he deserves to be rostered a lot more widely than his current rate; that’s for sure, even at the very deep 1B position.
Joshua Kuroda-Grauer, SS, Athletics (22%) – Kuroda-Grauer’s limitations are clear, but I think he might just be a good hitter.
He’s not a .400 hitter, obviously, but he was a .309/.370/.407 hitter in the minors with just an 8.4% strikeout rate. And he has struck out just 11.5% of the time in his first 16 MLB games and hit his first homer Monday.
There won’t be much power, and he doesn’t steal a ton of bases, butI’m not sure there’s much difference between him and Jacob Wilson, who has been a lot more widely rostered and much more hyped than Kuroda-Grauer during his MLB career. Let’s hope the lower body injury that forced him from Monday’s game isn’t anything too serious.
Victor Mesa Jr., OF, Rays (3%) – We’re starting to see something from the former prospect. He homered for the third straight game Monday (one was an inside-the-parker) and he now has seven homers and three steals while hitting .259 over the past 18 games. In his 140 career Triple-A games, Mesa hit .279/.347/.467 with 22 homers and 10 steals, so it’s not like there’s no track record here with the 24-year-old. In deeper five outfielder leagues, he could be worth a look.
Braxton Garrett, SP, Marlins (4%) – Given how poorly his previous two chances with the big-league club have gone, the Marlins seem pretty understandably hesitant about relying on Garrett. I also just don’t think they have a choice at this point. They lost another starter to the IL Monday when Max Meyer was sidelined with a neck strain, and meanwhile Garrett just keeps dominating down at Triple-A.
In 71 innings, he has a 1.52 ERA with 77 strikeouts and 26 walks – and the walks are the key here, as he has walked eight in 4.1 innings across his previous two spot starts with the big-league team. Garrett has had success in the majors in the past, including with a 3.66 ERA and 1.15 WHIP in 159.2 innings in 2023, and I think they’re going to have to give him another chance at some point soon. He could surprise you.
Petey Halpin, OF, Guardians (2%) – Cards on the table: I don’t think Halpin is likely to matter for Fantasy. He’s a good defender in the outfield, but he was hitting just .194/.217/.254 in 33 games before his two-homer game Monday. There isn’t much of a major-league track record to speak of here and the underlying numbers don’t provide much reason for encouragement. But he hit two homers Monday, so maybe there’s something here. I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong before!
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 Jazz Chisholm is looking like himself
It’s been a frustrating season for Chisholm, and I don’t think he’s likely to hit that 50-homer goal he was aiming for.
But after his two-homer game Monday against Braxton Ashcraft, Chisholm is now up to 16 homers and 26 steals in 95 games, putting him on pace for basically identical numbers to what he managed in 2024. The biggest issue has been the batting average, as his strikeout rate has crept up to a career-high 29.9% and his .287 BABIP is about 15 points lower than his career norm.
If he was hitting .245, Chisholm would basically be having the season you expected, and I’d bet he gets there in the end. Chisholm will probably always be an inherently frustrating player, but you’ll be happy he was on your side by the end of the season.
Chase DeLauter looks rested and ready for the stretch run
DeLauter talked about how his IL stint was a blessing in disguise, and I think it makes sense. Prior to this season, he had never played more than 57 games in a season, so it’s fair to say that the 66 games he played before suffering a rib injury were the most he’s ever played in that short a period of time. Yeah, it makes sense that he might have needed a break!
He went 4 for 5 with a couple of doubles and three RBI Monday and is now hitting .360 with four homers, 15 RBI, an OPS over .900, and even a couple of steals in 18 games since coming off the IL. We can’t say how he’ll hold up the rest of the way, but I think a healthy DeLauter is a really good hitter, and probably a top-30 outfielder in any format the rest of the way.
Mookie Betts got the big game he needed
It’s funny, earlier Monday, I got a text from a friend who is a more casual baseball fan saying, “Seems like Mookie Betts fell off hard.” Betts is apparently monitoring my messages, because he went out and went 4 for 5 with two homers Monday. It was his first multi-hit game since July 2 and his first homer since June 27, so yeah, Betts sure looked like he has fallen off.
He was better in June, but I think on the whole it’s fair to say he isn’t the guy he once was and likely never will be. It’s been a couple of years since Betts was a true difference maker for Fantasy, and with the stolen bases completely evaporating this season, it puts even more pressure on a bat that probably can’t carry the profile anymore. That being said: He’s better than this.
He entered play Monday with a .300 wOBA and a .326 xwOBA, and while the latter is clearly a far cry from his .365 career mark, it’s still a lot better than his actual production. We have to recalibrate expectations for Betts, because he isn’t a superstar anymore. But he can still very much be a starting-caliber shortstop, and hopefully Monday is the start of him getting back there.
Three Down Braxton Ashcraft continues to slide
Ashcraft was never going to sustain a start as hot as the one he was on, not unless he was suddenly emerging as a top-15 starter in all of baseball. But he’s fallen on especially hard times of late, giving up 18 runs over 19.2 innings in his past four starts after he was tagged for seven earned runs over just three innings against the Yankees Monday.
He continues to struggle to keep the ball out of the air and in the yard, allowing two more homers Monday, and with his sinker usage continuing to drop, it’s not hard to see why. He tried to throw his splitter more in this one to counteract the platoon issues that have cropped up too, and it didn’t really work out for him – the splitter has just an 8% whiff rate on the season, so it’s not hard to see why it didn’t work out. It’s fair to wonder if Ashcraft is hitting a wall here, but his ERA estimators are all still in the mid-3.00s range, so I’ll remain cautiously optimistic he can turn this around. But the warning signs are real here.
Joe Ryan got historically roughed up
I’m not sure there’s actually much to be worried about here. Sure, Ryan matched an MLB record by allowing six homers Monday, and he did it against a Guardians team missing Jose Ramirez, which is pretty embarrassing. But also: This is just something that happens to Joe Ryan sometimes.
He has at least one start with four homers allowed in three straight seasons, and he also had a five-homer game back in 2023 against him. He’s an extreme flyball pitcher, and homers just come with the territory; if anything, he was probably getting away with something by entering this start with just 0.8 HR/9, compared to his 1.33 career rate. His numbers for the season suddenly look a lot more like his career numbers, and sometimes the regression just comes all at once. Ryan is still a low-to-mid-3.00s ERA pitcher with elite WHIP skills, and yeah, he’s occasionally going to get hit really hard like this.
It might be time to drop Emmett Sheehan
Sheehan’s fastball is a problem. And not for hitters. He’ll miss some bats with it – five whiffs on the four-seamer Monday against the Phillies – but when he doesn’t, bad things tend to happen. He gave up five batted balls with a 97 mph average exit velocity in this one, and that’s in keeping with how his season has gone, as he had the fourth-worst wOBA against for all four-seamers with a .404 mark coming into the start. The breaking balls all miss bats and generally limit damage on contact, but he doesn’t command them well enough to limit his four-seamer exposure the way he needs to – and he continues to bleed velocity, especially as he gets deeper into his starts, which only exacerbates the issue. If the Dodgers rotation were healthy, I have to imagine they would at least be considering taking Sheehan out of the rotation, and with a 5.13 ERA and estimators north of 4.00, it would be deserved.
I think in shallower leagues, Sheehan hasn’t been a must-roster pitcher in a while.
Extra Innings Jacob Misiorowski wasn’t as worrisome as you think
Seeing Misiorowski only throw 65 pitches after being skipped in his final pre-All-Star break start due to arm fatigue sent up red flags. But I’m not sure there’s as much to worry about as you think.
The Brewers didn’t seem to go into the start with the plan to limit Misiorowski, and manager Pat Murphy noted after the game that the early hook was mostly because they were “being mindful of when a guy’s not right.” You might have some alarm bells going off at that, but Murphy added that the concern was more about Misiorowski’s legs than his arm: “We would have probably let him go further if his delivery and his legs felt great. I think he was a little bit out of it. The long layoff kind of affected his delivery and everything else.” Look, it’s not exactly ideal that Misiorowski’s breakout season has hit some speed bumps here, but it sounds like this was more about Misiorowski’s lower body not being quite where it needed to be after a long layoff.
That’s not nothing, but it’s a lot less worrisome than finding out his elbow was barking, or something. I’m not free from worry about Misiorowski right now, but I’m far from panicking, too.
