Fantasy baseball today: New waiver targets emerge as injuries shake up pitching landscape

Mick Abel's injury opens the door for new arms and reshapes early-season pitching outlooks

The state of pitching is … cruel.

It always is. We're always talking about how the strongest force on the starting pitcher position is attrition, and maybe it's something you get tired of hearing about. I'm tired of saying it. But we say it over and over because it's true, and sometimes that manifests itself at the absolute worst time possible.

That happened with Mick Abel Monday. Both for him, because he was sent to the IL with an elbow injury right in the midst of what looked like a breakout stretch for the talented young pitcher. But also for Fantasy players, who had Abel in their lineups ahead of a two-start week – with runway to become a potential rotation stalwart moving forward.

Instead, Abel is on the shelf with inflammation in his elbow, which puts him in limbo for the foreseeable future. Inflammation in and of itself isn't a diagnosis of an injury; it's a symptom of some kind of underlying issue. It might be relatively minor, some mild irritation that comes as a normal occupational hazard when being asked to commit the highly unnatural motion of throwing a baseball as hard as you can 90-100 times in rapid succession every 5-6 days. 

Or he might be injured, rather than merely hurting. There might be something seriously wrong with his elbow that further testing will unveil. As of Monday afternoon, we don't know that, hence limbo. But our expectations shouldn't be terribly high for Abel's return – as Matthew Trueblood wrote for TwinsDaily.com, pitchers who go on the IL with "elbow inflammation" during March, April, or May miss 72 days on average, with the median slightly lower. Roughly half of players will be on the shorter side of that median, but surely half will be above it, too, so there's a chance we're looking at a long-term absence here for Abel, and a pretty good one at that.

That's life. It reminds me a bit of Kris Bubic's breakout in 2023, which saw him stall out at a similar point in his breakout. That injury ultimately required Tommy John surgery, but it only delayed Bubic's breakout, so there is still hope, even amid the worst-case scenarios -- which, to be clear, have not come to fruition just yet, and hopefully won't.

But we can hope for the best-case scenario here, that Abel is truly just dealing with a mild issue that will pass and serve as just a speed bump on his way to Fantasy relevance, and ultimately, success. But for now, I just hope you got him out of your lineup and into an IL spot in time. I would try as hard as I can to stash Abel in the event it ends up being on the minor end of the range of outcomes, but there are ultimately a lot of ways for this to go wrong, even if he does pitch again sometime soon. 

The good news, for your Fantasy team, at least, is that you've only lost theoretical value. Abel was a talented young pitcher, seemingly on the verge of a breakout, but he wasn't actually carrying your pitching staff or anything. And the one thing there typically is no shortage of, it's interesting young pitchers with theoretical upside. Go see if Spencer Arrighetti is still available in your league; failing that, check on Kyle Harrison. Mike Burrows has been pretty bad so far, but his underlying metrics still suggest someone who can be very useful if he gets better defense backing him. 

There are others, too. We'll try to help you find some in the rest of today's newsletter, along with the rest of what you need to know from Monday's action around MLB.

But first, let's try to figure out who will step up in the ninth inning for the Dodgers after we learned Monday that Edwin Diaz will require elbow surgery to remove loose bodies and will miss at least three months of action: 

Tuesday's top waiver-wire targets

Here's who we're looking to add coming out of Monday's action: 

Tanner Scott, RP, Dodgers (28%) – The Dodgers didn't name a replacement for Diaz, and they blew the Rockies out Monday, so we didn't get a sign from them. But my money is on Scott, at least in part because, well, that's who the Dodgers' money is on. Remember, they gave Scott a massive contract just last offseason to be their closer, a job he promptly lost amid a pretty disastrous first season with the club. Maybe that was enough to lose their trust, but Scott has the most recent closing experience and is probably just the best pitcher in the bullpen now, last season notwithstanding. Alex Vesia and Blake Treinen could figure into the mix, and I don't expect this to be a situation where any one pitcher gets, say, 90% of the chances, as was likely to be the case with Diaz. But Scott has bounced back from last year's struggles and would be my bet to get the majority of the save chances here. 

As for Diaz … I mean, you try to hold him where you can, but it sounds like he'll be out until at least the All-Star break. There's no guarantee that he'll return to be the dominant closer he was expected to be, though the loose bodies in his elbow do at least give us an explanation for why he's been so far from that so far. As long as the surgery does not reveal more damage to the elbow than expected, you might still end up with an elite closer by August. But in leagues without an IL spot to play with, actually having the patience to wait for that is a lot easier said than done. 

Payton Tolle, SP, Red Sox (39%) – Tolle was scratched from his Triple-A start over the weekend in case the Red Sox needed to call him up this week. That was due to some concern about rain in the forecast, but with Sonny Gray leaving his start Monday with a hamstring injury, it might work out for Tolle anyway. He's one of the best prospects in baseball on the strength of a truly elite fastball, with high-90s heat from the left side and the kind of movement profile that should miss bats with ease. The rest of the profile is somewhat more in question, but the Red Sox have a tendency to figure these things out with their pitchers, so he remains a very good bet. He's off to a good start at Triple-A, and if Gray needs to miss time, Tolle is the kind of talent who could force the Red Sox to keep him around in the long run. I'd add him anywhere I can right now, just in case he gets the call, especially if I just lost Abel. Tolle could be a real difference maker; he has that kind of upside. This one is speculative at this point, but the pitcher they are expected to call up to replace Gray, Tyler Samaniego, has been pitching as a reliever this season, so I'm going to guess he isn't the choice for the rotation spot. 

Connor Prielipp, SP, Twins (2%) – With Abel going on the IL, the Twins have a rotation spot open, and Prielipp was the first name called on from Triple-A. I'm not sure that means he's definitely taking a turn in the rotation or not, but he's a moderately interesting pitching prospect, armed with a solid mid-to-high 90s fastball and an excellent slider – plus a new curveball he's been throwing 19% of the time in Triple-A so far this season. He's put up consistently strong swinging strike and strikeout rates in the minors, but has had your typical problems with control and health as he has climbed the ladder. But he's healthy now and could catch lightning in a bottle if he gets the chance. If not, Andrew Morris is already on the big-league roster and could have some viability as a starter, or they could turn to Zebby Matthews – though he struggled in spring and has a 7.71 ERA in his first four Triple-A starts, so that seems like a long shot at this point, even if I do have some long-term hope for him. 

Isaac Paredes, 3B, Astros (75%) – Did someone in your league drop Paredes? Did you drop Paredes? I didn't, and Monday's two-homer game was a reminder of why. That's not to say there's been nothing concerning going on with Paredes, whose plate discipline has been notably worse so far this season than in years past. But his outlier bat control is still very much intact, and a change in strikeout rate of roughly four percentage points just isn't all that concerning when we're talking about 80 or so plate appearances – it means he has struck out three more times this season than would be expected based on last year's rate. That's nothing. As long as Pardes is still playing every day and playing half his games in Houston, I still expect him to get 30-ish homers and be a very useful Fantasy option in all formats – especially since he's still just two appearances away at both first and second base from gaining eligibility. 

Dalton Rushing, C, Dodgers (31%) – The Dodgers have got to find a way to get Rushing's bat into the lineup more often. He homered twice Monday, giving him seven homers in eight games, and the underlying numbers don't even suggest it's undeserved – he had a 98.8 mph average exit velocity before his two homers. And it's not like it's an out-of-nowhere fluke, as Rushing was a consensus top prospect before his MLB debut. The problem is … I don't know where he's supposed to play! Will Smith is an All-Star catcher. Freddie Freeman is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Shohei Ohtani is Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers were willing to use Rushing in left field at times in the minors, but they haven't played him there a single inning since his promotion last season, and I'm not sure an outfield with Rushing and Teoscar Hernandez or Kyle Tucker is something any major-league team can really stomach. I'm only half-joking when I suggest maybe they should see if he can handle second base. I don't see where the playing time is supposed to come from, but at some point, he's going to force them to do something weird if he keeps hitting like this, and I do think Rushing has top-12 catcher upside if he ever gets the chance to play every day.