Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire: Pitching Concerns Grow with Rogers, Imai Struggles

Fantasy baseball waiver wire: Trevor Rogers struggles, Tatsuya Imai falters as pitching concerns mount

Chris Towers breaks down how to navigate growing uncertainty across Fantasy pitching options

By Chris Towers

May 13, 2026 at 9:19 am ET • 15 min read

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Whenever I fall for a player like Trevor Rogers , I always think back to that cinematic classic, Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith .

*extremely Obi-Wan Kenobi voice*:  " Wait a minute, how did this happen? I'm smarter than this ."

Usually, I'm the one preaching patience, ala Anakin Skywalker (in this scene and literally only this scene). But after watching yet another dreadful performance from Trevor Rogers, I think I'm pretty much ready to throw in the towel on this guy getting back to being an impact pitcher. And I really should have known better.

All of the warning signs were there. Rogers had been awful for three straight seasons between his breakout in 2021 and his bounce back in 2025, and that bounceback really did come out of nowhere – eight starts at Triple-A, he had a 5.51 ERA and showed so little that even after he tossed 6.1 shutout innings in a spot start in May, the Orioles still sent him back to Triple-A. And this was at a point in the season where they were absolutely desperate to get anything from their pitching staff.

He wouldn't come back up until mid-June, and while he was one of the best pitchers in baseball from that point on, it's not like it was the kind of success I typically buy into. Sure, there was an uptick in velocity and decent swinging strike and strikeout numbers, but Rogers was mostly thriving through improved control and by limiting hard contact. You can find sustainable success with merely decent strikeout numbers and elite command and contact suppression, but it's a narrow path to walk, and it's a skill set that takes a lot longer to buy into than someone who is just mowing down 30% of opposing hitters. Rogers' 1.80 ERA was never going to be sustainable, obviously, but even his 3.41 expected ERA should have been taken with a grain of salt, given how dependent it was on outlier results on balls in play despite a pretty massive 48.4% hard-hit rate.

If you aren't striking out at least a quarter of the opposing hitters you face, it puts your fate in the hands of the defense, and the Orioles don't exactly have a great one. And Rogers himself has taken a bit of a step back even in the stuff he can control, with his strikeout rate dipping to 19.5% and his walk rate back up to 8.4%. Those skills indicators still look better than they did during the deepest depths of his Marlins-era struggles, but they don't look great! And that's how you get to a 4.49 FIP through his first seven starts.

Am I saying Rogers is a drop everywhere? No, probably not – attrition has hit hard enough at the position that I'm not going to give up on a guy who showed real skills last season after just seven starts. For whatever it's worth, he is still limiting damage on contact, which is why his xERA entering this start was a still-respectable 3.65. Rogers has not rediscovered the form that made him so useful last season, but I don't think he's totally hopeless; it's also worth noting that his start Tuesday came after he was activated from the IL with an illness, so he may not have been 100% for this one. That's a reasonable excuse as far as it goes.

But I am regretting the decision to draft Rogers where I did. He wasn't terribly expensive – SP45 on average in drafts before the season – but he's just not the type of player I ever want to make a priority in drafts. He was a "well, if nobody else wants him …" pick for me, and hey, it's not like Bubba Chandler (SP46) would be doing a lot more for me right now. But Rogers was going ahead of guys like Shota Imanaga and Drew Rasmussen , pitchers with similar skill sets but longer track records of success, and in retrospect, that looks like a mistake.

Rogers could still pull out of this. In fact, I would still bet on him finishing with an ERA under 4.00 the rest of the way. He isn't as bad as he has looked over the past four starts. But he's probably not going to be an impact arm for your Fantasy team, either. It was probably a mistake to ever think he could have been.

Before we get to the rest of what you need to know from Tuesday's action, a quick thought on a pitcher you can definitely drop: Tatsuya Imai . I wanted to hang on to him after his return from the IL just to see if he could get on track after the poor start to his career, but he looked just as lost. Despite simplifying his arsenal and literally only throwing his slider and sinker, Imai still just didn't look like a viable MLB starter. He gave up six runs over four innings on five hits, walking three and striking out three.

I thought Imai's weird arsenal would give hitters fits, I'll be honest. He didn't always dominate in Japan, but he was usually pretty good and seemed to solve his control issues in recent seasons. With a slider that moves the wrong way and a five-pitch arsenal overall, I thought he would at least thrive for a while before the league caught up to him.

But Imai just hasn't looked comfortable, and he's said as much. He has struggled with the transition to life in America and to the MLB game, and he just hasn't given us any reason to think this is going to work, dating back to the spring. I still think there's enough talent here that I wouldn't be shocked if Imai figures it out eventually. But I will note this: I originally typed "before long" there before erasing it for "eventually," because based on what we've seen from him so far, Imai is a long way from figuring it out. I'm fine with dropping him in basically all leagues at this point.

Here's what else you need to know about from Tuesday's action around MLB :

Wednesday's top waiver-wire targets

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

Daylen Lile , OF, Nationals (72%) – Lile is a good hitter, and we're starting to see signs of it after a cold April. He went 3 for 5 with a couple of homers Tuesday, and he's now hitting .286/.366/.571 since the calendar flipped over to May. He hasn't been quite as good overall as he was last season, though the underlying numbers are closer than you might think – he had a .348 xwOBA in 2025 compared to a .333 mark before his two-homer game. The strikeout rate is up a couple of ticks, but so is the walk rate. His quality of contact is a bit worse so far, but it mostly seems like he's just been a bit off – he's a few percentage points down on his hard-hit rate, line drive rate, and pulled-air rate, but is generally in the right neighborhood. This still looks like a good source of batting average (I would take the over on .275, at least) with 20-ish homers – and I still have hope for him as a base stealer despite his inefficiency.

A.J. Ewing , OF, Mets (31%) – Well, that's about as well as a debut can go when you're a sparkplug type of hitter. Ewing hit eight for the Mets Tuesday, but he sure looked like a future leadoff hitter, going 1 for 2 with three walks, two runs scored, a couple of RBI, and his first career stolen base. Ewing probably won't hit for much power early in his MLB career, but the hope is he'll put the ball in play, get on base, and make things happen when he gets there – think maybe a less extreme version of Chandler Simpson as a best-case scenario. A more likely outcome might be something like what Justin Crawford is doing for the Phillies , though the fact that Ewing stole his first base in his first game is a sign that hopefully he'll be a bit more active on the bases than Crawford. It all adds up to make him worth adding in pretty much all Roto leagues.

Anthony Volpe , SS, Yankees (22%) – Well, he's getting another chance. At this point, it's not clear if he's actually a player worth getting excited about anymore, of course, especially coming off shoulder surgery – he's hitting just .221/.276/.294 in 18 games in the minors so far, so I would bet against Volpe coming up and making an immediate impact again. But with Jose Caballero dealing with a finger injury, Volpe is going to get the chance, and he's not that far removed from a 20-20 season in 2023, and he only fell a few short in each category from doing it again in 2025. The batting average skills have been terrible, and I don't think it's at all likely Volpe will matter in 12-team points leagues. But in leagues where you use a middle infield spot, it's at least possible he could be viable again. I'm not counting on it, though.

Walbert Urena , SP, Angels (9%) – Urena is interesting. He has legit elite velocity, with his sinker averaging 98.1 mph in Tuesday's start, and he has a very good changeup that has shown the ability to miss bats. He also has shown really, really poor control early in his MLB career, which is what is the primary thing holding him back from being much more than just interesting. He only walked one hitter Tuesday, so let's hope that's something he can build on, because he's already doing a lot else well, allowing just four runs in his past 16 innings over three starts.

Tuesday's standouts

Bailey Ober , Twins vs. MIA: 9 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K – Great start! Ober is pitching well right now! I don't intend for these exclamation points to be sarcastic! Ober is executing what he is capable of at a super high level right now, and I don't think his current 3.46 ERA is totally a fluke. I just don't think it's especially sustainable. He's one of the softest-tossing starting pitchers in baseball at this point, and he predictably misses bats worse than just about any pitcher in baseball at this point. He has good control, but hardly elite – his 7.2% walk rate even after this zero-walk effort would still be the worst mark of Ober's career, believe it or not. Ober has been a very good pitcher in the past, and clearly, he's still capable of good runs in the present. But I have very little confidence that this is going to prove to be something he can pull off for months on end, let alone for the rest of the season, and I'm still keeping him firmly in the streamer category of pitchers. And he gets the Brewers later this week and then the Red Sox and White Sox in his three starts after that, so I think Ober could be useful for the next few weeks. I just don't expect it to last long.

Zack Wheeler , Phillies @BOS: 7.1 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K – 2.55 ERA through four starts! He's back! 2.71 FIP! Poke holes in that, nerds! Look, Wheeler isn't as good as his pre-injury self. I think you could even make the case that there are legitimate red flags in his profile – he had just seven swinging strikes on 87 pitches Tuesday and gave up 11 hard-hit balls. His 16.8% strikeout-minus-walk rate is still decent, but it would also be his worst mark since 2020 and would rank 31st out of 74 qualifiers on the season. Wheeler is succeeding with outrageous results on balls in play right now, and everything else looks more "good, not great." Good, not great, would still be a pretty outstanding result for a guy coming back from a serious shoulder issue, but I still think Wheeler looks more like a top-30 SP for Fantasy than a top-20 one, let alone the ace he used to be. If someone sees the pretty ERA next to Wheeler's name and wants to value him like an ace, I think there's an opportunity to sell here. But I also think we've likely avoided the worst-case scenario for his return from injury, so it's not like you have to trade him.

Paul Skenes , Pirates vs. COL: 8 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 K – Opening Day feels like so long ago. With Tarik Skubal and Garrett Crochet on the IL and facing uncertain futures, Skenes is the obvious No. 1 pitcher in Fantasy and would be in my first round if we were drafting today. When Scott White re-ranked the first two rounds for that exact exercise yesterday, he had Skenes ninth . I think that's right.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto , Dodgers vs. SF:

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/fantasy-baseball-waiver-wire-trevor-rogers-struggles/)._