Fantasy Baseball Week 8 Primer: Prospect promotions, injured aces and the biggest weekend takeaways

This was a huge weekend for Fantasy Baseball. We saw some big-name prospect debuts, some big-name injury returns, and of course, some big-name injury departures. We'll get to everything you need to know about from this weekend's action in today's newsletter, but first: Let's get those lineups set for Week 8:

Week 8 Preview

Mar 31, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Jack Flaherty (9) delivers a pitch against the Chicago White Sox during the first inning at Guaranteed Rate Field. Getty Images

Biggest Weekend Takeaways

We lost another couple of aces to the IL

The good news is that Carlos Rodon and Blake Snell both made their returns from the IL and debuted this weekend. Neither got great results, but the velocity was up for both of them relative to 2025, which seems like a good sign – Rodon especially was up 1.6 mph and looked good when he wasn't issuing one of his five walks in 4.1 innings. Both should be must-start pitchers moving forward.

Unfortunately, we didn't even get a net gain of aces even when two of them came back from the IL. Because they were promptly replaced by Logan Webb (knee), Cole Ragans (elbow), and Tyler Glasnow (back). Webb and Glasnow seem like they might miss right around the minimum amount of time, but Ragans is dealing with impingement in his left elbow, and while that specific injury isn't a worst-case scenario, the timeline for a potential return is going to be inherently wide – among 21 pitchers in the BaseballProspectus Recovery Dashboard tool who dealt with an elbow impingement, eight returned within four weeks, and another four were back within six weeks; the rest missed longer. At this point, I think you've gotta expect Ragans to miss more than the minimum and we're just hoping it's more like a four-week absence than one measured in months.

To make matters even worse, the ascending Taj Bradley also went on the IL with a pec injury this weekend. I've been skeptical of his breakout, but there's no doubt he's been a big breakout so far, so it's a loss. He's set for a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister, and hopefully it ends up being a relatively minor issue, especially since the initial read of the MRI came in clean. But it's another blow at a position with a lot of losses already.

Spencer Strider … kinda looked great

I told you not to overreact to that first start! Out of Coors Field, Strider took on the fearsome Dodgers lineup and largely dominated them, striking out eight and walking two over six shutout, one-hit innings. Does this mean Spencer Strider, Ace is back? No, we shouldn't overreact to this one start, either, obviously.

But I will say this: This is about as good as Strider has looked since 2023. The fastball was better than in his first start and for much of last season, both in terms of velocity and movement; he averaged 96.4 mph and 17 inches of induced vertical break with the pitch. That's around where he was in his brief 2024 appearances, but still not quite where he was in 2023, and I don't think it'll be fair to ever expect that kind of consistent ace production again. The fastball isn't there, and frankly, neither is the slider (though the curveball has been a nice bonus in these first two starts).

But Strider looked better than he did in his debut and for much of 2025. We'll see what he looks like the next time out, because the quality of his fastball often fluctuated wildly in 2025. But if he can give us a repeat of his performance when he takes on the Red Sox this week, it might be time to get excited again.

Robby Snelling was a let down

I don't really care. It doesn't really matter. Snelling struggled in his MLB debut, which could happen for one of approximately eight million different reasons. It might mean he is not good, or overhyped, or something that should change how excited you were about his promotion. But … it's probably another explanation. He was shaking off the nerves for his debut, or he just didn't have it that day. Some kind of benign explanation is probably the one that will come closest to the truth.

But, indeed, he wasn't very good. He was bad, even, allowing three runs on five hits and four walks in five innings. But you know what? I thought he looked pretty good despite it. The fastball touched the high 90s from a low release point with a good movement profile, and he recorded a strikeout on three different secondary pitches. Snelling definitely lost velocity as the game went on, which is something to watch, but he has a wide and varied arsenal of pitches he can throw in any count, and the stuff looked good. I don't think you'll be disappointed to have Snelling on your side despite the underwhelming debut.

Byron Buxton is locked in

Because last year was such an outlier for his career, it was okay to be a little worried about Buxton's slow start to the season. By the start of play April 13, he was hitting just .300/.269/.333, and with a player like Buxton, with his long history of injuries, there's always the risk that there might be some surprisingly rapid aging at play. Well, after he homered Friday and Saturday, Buxton is now up to 13 for the season with a .301/.339/.718 line since that first homer. Buxton's underlying numbers aren't quite as good as they were last season in some regards, but he's also cut a few points off his strikeout rate while putting up barrels at an even higher rate. Which is all to say, yeah, this dude's pretty good. Nothing to worry about here.

Jesus Luzardo did it again

When it's just one bad start, it's easy to write it off. When it's two? Honestly, it's still pretty easy to write off, especially when you've got a pitcher with Luzardo's peripherals, which remain sterling. But Luzardo was tagged for six runs in just three innings Friday, his third poor start in his past six, and it came after a two-start stretch where it mostly looked like he had gotten back on track. And yet … I'm not worried! This is a frustrating thing about Luzardo, who seems to be mostly elite and then just inexplicably implodes for a few starts every season. But I'm not sure it should change your opinion about him – despite the four starts of at least five earned runs to date, he still has a 3.21 xERA and 23.7% strikeout rate, excellent marks. It's frustrating, but I think the worst thing you can do with a known quantity like Luzardo is to sell him when his value is at its lowest, and Luzardo's almost certainly is right now.

Gavin Williams did, too

You could say much the same about Williams as I did about Luzardo, but I do think there's a key distinction to be made: Luzardo's peripherals are, almost without exception, exceptional, while Williams' are pretty mediocre. He's never had an expected ERA below 4.14, and his FIP sits at 3.87 after he gave up five runs in six innings Sunday. It's the second time Williams has given up five or more runs in his past three starts after it looked like he might finally be figuring it out.

And while I think Luzardo is just a good pitcher who has an unusually low floor on a start-to-start basis, I think Williams is more like a mediocre pitcher with an unusually high degree of start-to-start variance. It's subtle distinction, but it mostly comes down to this: I usually expect Luzardo to be good most of the time, whereas I genuinely never know what to expect from Williams. Matchups don't seem to matter, and neither does anything like momentum or "the hot hand"; he just has it some days and doesn't others, and I think he'll always be destined to frustrate you. Needless to say, I remain not a huge fan.

The regression caught up to Justin Wrobleski

Wrobleski actually had one of the more fascinating starts by any pitcher all season Sunday. The Braves jumped on him for four runs in the second inning and it looked like he was destined for a disaster start. Then he settled in and struck out seven batters in five shutout innings, before giving up three more runs in the eighth and ninth innings – that's right, he gave up seven earned runs and nearly pitched a complete game. In the end this was both Wrobleski's worst start of the season (by far!) and his highest strikeout start of the season. He still has a 2.42 ERA and would be one of the more obvious sell-high candidates in baseball except for the fact of this start, which is surely going to scare most would-be suitors away. I fear you missed your chance, and I might be open to dropping Wrobleski.

Which reminds me: This is always the risk when you have a pitcher getting good results but with bad underlying numbers. You can try to play the hot hand and ride them until the wheels come off, but you run the risk of undoing all the good Wrobleski has been doing if you hang on to them for too long. In Wrobleski's case, he still has a 2.60 ERA over his past four starts even including Sunday's, so it wasn't a disaster. But if you tried to play the hot hand for Tomoyuki Sugano's two-start week this week, you ended up getting nine earned runs allowed in 10.1 innings for your trouble. And this is why you'll rarely see me advocating for a "hot-hand" approach at pitcher for long.

But Bryce Elder keeps getting away with it

Having said all of that, Elder provides quite a conundrum for me. I'll be honest: I just straight up do not think Elder is a very good pitcher. But his success so far this season doesn't just look like a total fluke, necessarily. Sure, his 1.81 ERA is totally unsustainable, but even after he walked four in 5.2 innings of work, Elder still has a 3.11 FIP (and had a 2.83 xERA). He's been pitching well this season, very much unlike Wrobleski, despite the results.

But  … I still don't buy it. At all. His stuff is pretty obviously below average, and his command has never been good enough to overcome that for anything longer than a few weeks. His strikeout rate has ticked up this season, which helps him look better by the underlying metrics, but he's also still relying on outlier results on balls in play, including a .230 BABIP and 5.7% HR/FB ratio. He's generating enough weak contact to say that he has earned much of his success so far, but that's different from it being sustainable. I still don't think it is sustainable for the elderly.

Kyle Bradish looked better

10 strikeouts to one walk in seven innings of work is phenomenal, in fact. Three runs is less great, but still not bad overall, especially on just five hits with no homers. The fastballs are still not generating great results for Bradish, and his success here came on a 77% putaway rate, which as Nick Pollack of PitcherList.com notes in his excellent SP roundup piece, is wholly unsustainable. So, a lot of good, but not quite ready to say Bradish is the ace you expected him to be. But maybe this game can serve as a reminder that Bradish is, if nothing else, still capable of being that ace. Now it's on him to make it happen for more than just one good start.

I still can't make sense of Davis Martin

For a while, it was pretty easy to dismiss Martin's success. Through four starts, he had a sterling 2.16 ERA, but with just 19 strikeouts to six walks in 25 innings, it certainly didn't feel sustainable. It's a lot harder to make that case when he has racked up 31 strikeouts in 25 innings over the past four starts, because those kinds of strikeout numbers really matter, especially with just four walks along the way.

I'm just not sure I trust how he's getting there. Typically, Martin is dominating with his slider, which entered Sunday's nine-strikeout effort with a 59% whiff rate and 43% putaway rate, absolutely unsustainable numbers. But Sunday, he only got three of his 19 whiffs with the slider; eight of the rest came on his four-seamer, and seven combined on the changeup and curveball, neither of which had been good swing and miss pitches entering the start.

So, is Martin unlocking a new path to success? Maybe! His changeup looks like it should be a better bat-misser than it has been, and maybe he just needed to face a lineup stacked with lefties for it to reach its true level. But the curveball doesn't look great and tends to get hit pretty hard, so I'm skeptical. I'm generally skeptical about these kinds of mid-career breakouts, of course, and that usually works out. Most of the time, 29-year-olds don't suddenly become aces overnight, no matter how good their most recent eight starts have been. And Martin is way outperforming his underlying metrics, so the smart money is on this being another fake-out.

But here's one thing to consider about all of these pitchers I'm skeptical of: I'm surely going to be wrong about some of them. Maybe it'll be Martin, but it could be Elder or Wrobleski, or maybe someone else like Nick Martinez or Michael McGreevy or Foster Griffin. I would bet against any one of those guys being a must-start pitcher forever. But random variance alone will likely lead at least a couple of them to remain relevant until June, and one of them may just have one of those magical, 2024 Seth Lugo seasons where nothing goes wrong. It's not smart to be on that happening, but it does, in fact, happen every year to someone. That's what makes this all so frustratingly, delightfully unpredictable.

News and notes

Garrett Crochet has resumed playing catch from 60 feet and is making progress in his strengthening program, but he won't return when first eligible on Tuesday. We're probably at least a couple of weeks away at this point.

Ronald Acuña went through pregame agility drills on Friday. Walt Weiss said Acuña still has some boxes to check before he's potentially activated when first eligible on Wednesday. I'd lean toward sitting him for this week, given that uncertainty, but hopefully he'll be back by mid-week.

Mookie Betts traveled back to LA on Sunday and could be activated on Monday. If you don't have a great alternative, I'm fine with starting Betts.

Jeremy Peña is expected to start a rehab assignment Tuesday or Wednesday, so hopefully he can be back next week.

Good news as Ben Rice returned on Friday and started all three games this weekend.

We had a trade! The Guardians acquired Patrick Bailey from the Giants in exchange for tugboat Matt Wilkinson and the 29th pick in the 2026 First-Year Player Draft. Bo Naylor was optioned to the minors, and we'll likely see Bailey used as the primary catcher in Cleveland. That gives recently promoted Giants prospect Jesus Rodriguez the inside track to run away with the starting job.

Gerrit Cole made another rehab start at Double-A on Sunday, striking out eight over five innings. He's probably just one or two starts away from returning to the rotation, I would guess.

Hunter Greene is up to 150 feet of long toss as part of his rehab program.  The Reds are targeting late May for Greene to throw a bullpen, so it's probably still an early-July return at the earliest to the rotation.

Bryce Miller will return Wednesday against the Astros. I wouldn't start him given that matchup, but I do think Miller should probably be rostered in pretty much all leagues now.

Apparently the Mariners will go with a six-man rotation this week but it sounds like Luis Castillo could piggyback Bryce Miller as a reliever the following week, which might limit both of their values while the situation gets sorted out.

Willson Contreras left Sunday after getting hit by a pitch on his right hand. Initial scans came back negative, but if you have a viable alternative, I'd look their way unless Contreras is cleared Monday.

Pete Fairbanks is expected to return on Wednesday. I'd lean toward sitting him unless you really don't have any alternatives for saves.

The Giants optioned Ryan Walker to Triple-A on Sunday. There isn't an obvious closer in this bullpen, but it could be Caleb Killian.

Trevor Rogers threw a simulated bullpen Saturday and is optimistic he'll make a start during the Orioles' upcoming series against the Yankees. I'd lean toward getting a free look at him before deciding to bring him off the IL.

Tatsuya Imai will return Tuesday against the Mariners. That makes him a two-start pitcher home vs. SEA, vs. TEX, but I don't see any way you can trust him. If you have the flexibility to leave him on the IL this week to see how he pitches, I would do that before deciding if I want to keep him around

Jackson Holliday played third base in a rehab game at Double-A on Sunday, which could be a good sign for Jeremiah Jackson's role long term.

Shane Bieber will face live hitters Tuesday, his first time doing so since the World Series. He's probably still a month or more away, but this is progress.

Kyle Teel could play in rehab games this week. He's returning from a spring hamstring injury but is worth rostering in all two-catcher leagues.

Jacob Wilson left Sunday with a left shoulder injury.

Kerry Carpenter went on the IL with an AC joint sprain in his left shoulder.

Rhett Lowder is going on the IL with a shoulder strain.

Addison Barger was scratched from the lineup Sunday due to right elbow soreness.

Jorge Polanco's bruised right wrist has recovered nicely, but he's still dealing with left Achilles soreness.

Owen Caissie was scratched Sunday with left triceps discomfort.