Most of the time, throwing harder is better than not. That's not true across the board, of course, and some guy's 92 is better than another guy's 97. But as a rule, you'd almost always rather have a pitcher throwing 96 mph than that same pitcher throwing 91 mph.
Brandon Woodruff appears to be the exception to that rule. When he returned from major shoulder surgery last season after missing more than a year, his average fastball velocity was down nearly 3 mph, and it just didn't matter very much – his whiff rate on his four-seamer was actually higher in 2025 than 2023, his overall strikeout rate was higher, and he put together the lowest expected ERA of his career. It's not supposed to work like that, especially for a pitcher as fastball-dependent as Woodruff, but it just didn't seem to matter.
And it didn't really seem to matter that he was leaking even more velocity in his return from another shoulder issue Monday. Woodruff averaged just 91.6 mph on his four-seamer Monday, the second lowest in a full start in his career, and you wouldn't have been able to tell by the results. He generated six whiffs on 23 swings with the pitch en route to a massive 10-strikeout game over six shutout, one-hit innings.
He did that while throwing just two curveballs and five cutters in the entire start. He leaned on the four-seamer, sinker, and changeup for 91% of his pitches, and the Reds couldn't really do anything with him. Well, that's not entirely true – they did have a 94.8 mph average exit velocity on nine batted balls. But only nine batted balls in six innings? You can live with hard contact when you're allowing so little of it.
Woodruff just keeps overcoming the odds, at least when he's on the mound. After he put up a 3.20 ERA last season, he's down to a 3.00 mark this season. The strikeouts haven't been there before this start, and there has been a marked decline in overall whiff rate. Still, his command remains elite, and he continues to generate tons of ineffective contact – even in this one, the Reds had just three batted balls with an expected batting average over .350 despite the loud contact. He remains one of the best pitchers in baseball at generating harmless pop-ups, a result of his incredible command and a testament to how effective his fastballs remain despite the drops in velocity.
Having said all that, this is absolutely, without question, the perfect time to try to move Woodruff. I don't have much doubt he's going to remain effective when he's on the mound – my performance-based doubts mostly died when he dominated last season, and they're pretty much entirely buried by now. But the injury doubts? They haven't gone anywhere.
Woodruff's recovery from shoulder surgery was hardly straightforward, and it's been rocky since he came back. Last season, he made it about two months before suffering a strained lat, and he couldn't even make it that long before going on the IL again this season with a shoulder issue, despite having his workload monitored this spring.
As good as Woodruff is, I just don't know if it's fair to expect him to stay on the mound moving forward. He'll be great when he's out there, but his chances of making it through the season without another issue seem so much slimmer than with any other pitcher. I hope I'm wrong, because he's masterful on the mound. But if you've got Woodruff, right now is the best chance you're going to have to try to move him.
Pre-game Lineup Card
Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:
Sell-high pitchers! Scott White breaks down why you might want to trade six sell-high starting pitchers now while you still can. Some -- hello, Eduardo Rodriguez -- are fairly obvious. Some -- Connelly Early, Emerson Hancock -- may hurt to try to move. But now might be your best chance to send any of them out.
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.
MLB Power Rankings! Matt Snyder ranks all 30 MLB teams, with the Blue Jays looking like the biggest winners of late -- and don't look now, but my scrappy Marlins are all the way up to No. 9 in the midst of a 14-4 run to start June. And they're doing it without Eury Perez -- or basically any starting pitchers besides Sandy Alcantara and Max Meyer right now.
How Jacob Misiorowski got this good. Dayn Perry dives deep into how the young Brewers' ace became arguably the best pitcher in the world. Yes, it's because he has that incredible fastball. But it's not just because he has that incredible fastball.
Pete Crow-Armstrong is doing it again. The question has never been, "Can Pete Crow-Armstrong go on a heater?" It is, now as it always has been, whether he can sustain this latest one. Matt Snyder breaks it all down.
Paul Goldschmidt is helping carry the Yankees. Mike Axisa goes into how the future Hall-of-Famer is keeping the Yankees afloat amidst another run of injuries.
Hitting the Wire
The top waiver-wire targets from Monday's action:
Kyle Teel, C, White Sox (39%) – Teel's recovery from a hamstring injury suffered during the World Baseball Classic ended up costing him nearly the entire first half of the season, but he's on his way back, and it's worth remembering what an exciting player he is capable of being. He was one of the top catching prospects in baseball entering last season, and he more than held his own, hitting .273/.375/.411. And he was even better after a slow start, putting up an .833 OPS in the second half of the season with a 20-plus homer, five-plus steal pace. He's got a terrific approach at the plate and good enough power to think at least 15 homers is a fair floor, and he figures to play regularly enough that at least a top-12 ranking at the position is within reach. Now that he's back, he should be rostered much more widely than this.
Emilio Pagan, RP, Reds (59%) – Closers rarely lose their jobs because of injuries, but Pagan definitely hasn't. Tony Santillan has filled in as the closer in Santillan's absence from a hamstring injury and has seen his ERA rise from 2.87 when Pagan went on the IL in early May to 5.23 after he lost Monday's game against the Brewers. Pagan is set to begin his rehab assignment Thursday and should be back sometime next week, and I fully expect him to step right back into that role for the Reds as they make a playoff push in the second half of the season.
Hurston Waldrep, SP, Braves (17%) – We haven't paid much attention to Waldrep's return from elbow surgery, but it's about time to. He has been pitching in games for about three weeks and got up to 71 pitches in a minor-league rehab start at Triple-A Gwinnett Sunday, which means he's probably going to be back in the Braves rotation in the next turn or two. I'd bet he makes one more tune-up before getting activated, but either way, he's going to be back well before the All-Star break after overcoming surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow. He doesn't have Spencer Schwellenbach's upside or his track record, but Waldrep entered the season with some hype after putting up a 2.88 ERA (3.99 xERA) last season. I don't think he's an ace, but he can absolutely be a useful Fantasy option backed by that offense.
Jake Bennett, SP, Red Sox (11%) – This is looking like another big development win for the Red Sox, as Bennett has seemingly taken a big step forward since joining the organization this offseason. Monday was his best start yet, as he struck out nine over six shutout innings in Coors Field. His four-seamer continues to play up more than the 93-ish mph average velo would make you think, thanks to big extension and good command, and he paired that with his changeup for 10 whiffs in this one – he added five more on his sweeper and curveball for 15 on 72 pitches. Bennett probably isn't on the same level as guys like Connelly Early or Payton Tolle in terms of talent, but he has great command, misses some bats, and has a good defense behind him, so I think he's an interesting target for the wire.
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
Kyle Bradish might have figured it out
Trying to make sense of pitchers will drive you mad. Bradish looked like one of the biggest busts in Fantasy two starts ago, and now he has put up maybe the two best starts of his career. He followed up his 12-strikeout outing last time around with nine strikeouts over eight shutout innings Monday against the Angels, and suddenly he looks like exactly the guy we were drafting as a top-20 starting pitcher coming into the season. What's interesting – and exciting – about Monday's start is that Bradish did it this time while leaning heavily on his slider, the pitch that has held him back the most this season. That was supposed to be his bread and butter pitch, but he had just a 33.5% whiff rate and .410 wOBA with it entering Monday, leading him to lean more on the curveball lately. Well, Monday, he threw it 35% of the time, his highest usage since mid-April, and he generated nine of his 13 swinging strikes with it. Can he repeat it the next time out? That's impossible to say! But Bradish has been pretty consistently excellent since his breakout in 2023, so I always expected him to figure it out before long. So yeah, I'm buying in here and moving Bradish back into my top-30 among starters.
Framber Valdez is starting to look like himself
It's been a frustrating season for Valdez, but I haven't been too concerned, just because of how much his career has been defined by inconsistency. And sure enough, it looks like he's starting to figure things out here, with back-to-back quality starts and eight strikeouts Monday, his most in a start since April. As is usually the case with Valdez, he goes as his curveball goes, and while he had just a 32% whiff rate on that pitch coming in, that was at 42% Monday, in line with where he was last season. Valdez has earned the benefit of the doubt over his career, and I think that's going to pay off for you moving forward.
Kumar Rocker finally found something that worked
Rocker has experimented with his pitch mix a lot throughout his career, especially with his cutter and slider. He's never quite been able to figure out what he wants to do with those pitches – sometimes he'll lean on the slower slider and other times he'll lean on the harder cutter, but we've never seen him use both pitches together the way he did Monday against Miami. He threw the slider 51% of the time and the cutter 25% of the time, the first time he's ever thrown those two pitches more than 61% of the time in an MLB start and the first time he's thrown either pitch 25% of the time in the same start. And it was incredibly effective, as he generated 20 swinging strikes overall, including 17 of them with the slider – which is especially noteworthy against a lefty-heavy Miami lineup. Rocker has never really figured out an approach that works with his fastballs, so maybe leaning more heavily on these two pitches can help him find sustained success for the first time? I'm skeptical, but with the success he found in this one, I'm very interested to see what his next start looks like.
Three Down
Gerrit Cole still doesn't look right
The stuff mostly looks like it's there. The results? They aren't anywhere close. Cole was hit hard Monday, giving up five runs on nine hits and a walk over 4.1 innings, with nine hard-hit balls against the Tigers. He did at least miss some bats in this one, but he got hit so hard that we can't even take solace in that. So far, Cole has mostly been effective thanks to a ton of weak contact, but that's a tough way to make a living against major-league hitters, as he found out Monday against what's supposed to be a pretty good lineup. We learned this lesson with guys like Spencer Strider and Sandy Alcantara last season, and we're learning it again with Cole, I guess: Sometimes, guys need a bit of time to get their feel back following Tommy John surgery. Even if the stuff is there. I'm probably still rolling Cole out there for good matchups against the Red Sox, Twins, and Rays coming up to close out the first half, but I'm not terribly confident in him right now.
Hunter Brown is looking a little rusty
It's understandable, given that he missed more than two months recovering from a shoulder injury, but Brown hasn't quite looked right so far. He got okay results in his first start back, but struggled a bit with command, walking three in 5.2 innings, and he was worse Monday. He only made it out of the third inning, laboring through 85 pitches despite giving up just one run, two walks, and four hits. Brown's velocity was down a bit across the board – 1.1 mph on the sinker, 0.5 on the four-seamer, 1.7 mph on the curveball – and he needed at least 23 pitches to get through each of his three innings, hence the early hook. Despite the results, nothing here looks too concerning – 29% called-plus-swinging strike rate is fine, as is a 48% zone rate and a 64% strike rate – so I'm inclined to give Brown a mulligan for this one. He wasn't great, or even good, but he wasn't alarmingly bad, and you've gotta figure he'll get better with more reps.
Grant Taylor's ascension may have stalled
A few weeks ago, it seemed like a safe bet that Taylor would end up the closer for the White Sox, if not in the immediate future, at least by the All-Star break. It's getting harder to make that argument after he allowed runs for the third outing in a row Monday, this time three without even getting out of the seventh inning. The White Sox would go on to win the game despite Seranthony Dominguez giving up two runs in the ninth, and if you're looking for a silver lining for Taylor in this one, it's that Dominguez has looked extremely vulnerable lately, too. Taylor still has a 3.05 ERA and 1.17 WHIP for the season, so we're still talking about a pretty limited period of time where he has struggled. But it's hard to argue his ascension to the ninth-inning role is imminent now.
Extra Innings
Hunter Goodman can't hit at home
Here's one I just realized today: Goodman is having yet another breakout season, and he's doing it despite hitting just .197/.280/.409 at home with July fast approaching. Has Coors Field lost its effect? Oh, not at all – hitters at Coors Field are still putting up a collective .806 OPS on the season, the second-best mark in baseball. I don't actually think there's anything here, to be honest. Goodman has just happened to have his best stretches when the Rockies were on the road, and .236 BABIP probably explains most of his relative struggles. He won't sustain a .944 OPS on the road, but he'll improve on his .695 home mark before long, too.
Add CBS Sports on Google Join the Conversation comments
