Three up, three down: Junior Caminero's power surge looks completely legitimate

Anytime a player does something unprecedented, it's reasonable to be skeptical about what they'll do for an encore. And when that player is switching ballparks from a good hitter's park to a bad one, well, it's fair to ask questions about how that is going to go, too.

>But let me ask you this question: How are you feeling right now if you were questioning Junior Caminero this offseason? Look, he's not quite on pace to match last year's 45 homers, but he's not far off after he homered in every game this weekend (seven in his past six games) to give him 22 on the season. He was viewed as a potentially generational prospect and he's hitting like a generational power hitter – and this season, he's managed to add nearly 30 points to his batting average with the underlying skills to back it up.

>Betting on supremely talented 22-year-old recent top prospects usually isn't a bad move, and betting against them is always risky -- and I know, because I bet against Nick Kurtz this season. One of the reasons some were betting against Caminero has come to look especially silly – Caminero had pretty extreme home/road splits last season, with an OPS more than 200 points higher at home than on the road. With the Rays playing their home games at the minor-league ballpark of George M. Steinbrenner Field, some skeptics took that as a sign that Caminero was a product of his home environment.

>The problem was, Caminero actually hit more homers on the road than at home last season; the biggest reason he was more productive at home is because his BABIP was significantly higher, which is the kind of flukey result we really shouldn't be putting much stock in at this point. Camerino still hit the ball hard, he still made plenty of contact, and he still hit for power on the road, so I didn't see too much reason to doubt him.

>And as it turns out, there wasn't much of one. He's one of the best power hitters in the league, combining top-shelf raw power with rare contact skills – and he's even more than doubled his walk rate this season, making him even more deadly by forcing pitchers to challenge him even more. Caminero wasn't a sure thing, because no player is. But the skeptics are looking pretty bad right now.

>Here's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days:

>Draft Day Regrets! I went on the Fantasy Pros podcast with our buddy Joe Orrico to talk about Draft Day regrets, who we missed on, and who we still have hope for.

>1. Marlins @COL4, @ATH3 2. Giants @ARI3, @COL3 3. Cubs SD3, STL3 4. Cardinals @ATL3, @CHC3 5. Rockies MIA4, SF3

>1. Blue Jays NYM3, @SEA3 2. Rangers @CLE3, DET3 3. Royals TB3, PHI2 4. Angels @SEA3, BOS3 5. Tigers @NYY3, @TEX3

>You can check out Scott's two-start pitcher rankings here, too. He ranks every projected two-start pitcher for the upcoming week, tiering them from must-starts to no-thanks.

>The top waiver-wire targets from this weekend's action:

>For more deep-league targets, plus my thoughts on each of those players and more, head here.

>Three big performances that have players trending up, and three that have the arrow pointing in the opposite direction.

>If you thought last year was a career year for Goodman, that he was some kind of flash in the pan, the past few weeks have been an especially rude reminder for you. Rather than slumping or wilting in the pressure of his emergence as a star for the Rockies, Goodman has proven more than up to the task. He homered three times Saturday against the Twins, giving him 12 homers in June and 25 for the season – remember, that breakout season, the one that was supposed to have been a fluke, saw him finish with 31 homers. He's another good week or two away from matching that at this point. And he's done that despite doing very little in Coors Field, with just seven of his homers coming at home, where he has a .669 OPS. If you're wondering why Goodman's batting average and overall production lag behind where the power is, that's the best explanation – he just hasn't been taking advantage of the batting average-inflating environment he is lucky to call home. Which is to say: Yeah, I don't think this is a fluke.

>When Griffin gave up 14 runs in back-to-back starts in mid-May, I figured that was the end of all that. It was a nice run, but the league had caught back up to him, and he'd go back to being a Fantasy also-ran. But while I was writing Griffin off, he wasn't writing back, and he instead went on an even better run than the one he opened the season with, and after his second straight nine-strikeout effort Saturday against the Orioles, he's now down to a 1.49 ERA over his past seven starts, with 44 strikeouts to seven walks in 42.1 innings. His underlying numbers in that stretch aren't quite that good, but they're still plenty awesome – every single one of us would happily take a 3.07 xERA or 3.58 FIP from a waiver-wire add at starting pitcher, no? I admit to still being pretty skeptical about all of this moving forward, but Griffin keeps making that skepticism look foolish. He has a deep arsenal, with six pitches he throws at least 10% of the time (and a seventh he throws 5% of the time), and he's got pretty good command and control, helping overcome some issues with keeping the ball in the yard. Griffin is giving me some Seth Lugo vibes, and while we've seen how fragile that profile can be, we also know how good Lugo has been at his best in recent years. Assuming you can't get much for Griffin in trade – and I can't imagine you can – your best bet here is probably to ride it out now that he has seemingly taken his game to another level.

>Emmett Sheehan needed a good start, and he got one

>The Dodgers haven't come out and said Sheehan is pitching for his job, but it's not hard to imagine he's on pretty thin ice. They've never seemed as invested in him as the Fantasy community, and he entered his start Sunday with a 5.32 ERA while acting as a serious drag on the rotation as a whole thanks to his inability to consistently go more than five innings. He only gave them five innings Sunday against the Padres, but they were at least good innings this time around, as he struck out five while walking two in five one-run innings. Sheehan's talented, but he has struggled to sustain his velocity deep into starts and just hasn't been as effective this season as expected, so I think if the Dodgers had Blake Snell or Tyler Glasnow healthy, Sheehan might already be out of the rotation. As it is, he probably has at least a few more weeks to right the ship before they start having to make some tough decisions. I think Sheehan is better than Justin Wrobleski, but Wrobleski's been the better pitcher this season and the Dodgers aren't asking my opinion, so Sheehan might still be pitching for his job between now and the All-Star break.

>It still looks like Gerrit Cole. I mean, he's out there pumping 97-98 consistently, and the breaking balls still look like they've got all their bite, at least from the broadcast angle. But something's not translating in the batter's box, because hitters aren't getting fooled at all by Cole right now, who has given up nine runs on 16 hits in 9.2 innings over his past two starts. FanGraphs' Stuff+ model still sees Coles' arsenal as pretty similar to at least his 2024 form, though there has been a drop in his overall Stuff+ metric from 107 (solidly above-average) to 101 (just average-ish). That could be the result of Cole shelving his cutter, though Cole's slider has also dropped from a 119 mark in 2023 to 112 and then 104 over his past few seasons. There's something missing here, even if he mostly looks like the same guy, hence the 7.7% swinging strike rate – only five starters in the entire league have a lower rate right now. I suspect, like Sandy Alcantara last season, he'll figure it out before long, but I can't say it's on the verge of happening right now. It still looks like Gerrit Cole, but right now, it clearly isn't.

>We say it a lot, but progress ain't linear, folks! Sasaki looked like he had fully figured it out as May turned to June, with his 10-strikeout effort against the Angels on June 5 looking like his true coming-out party. Since then? 16 runs in 14 innings with 12 strikeouts to nine walks, including five walks to just two strikeouts in four innings Friday against the Padres. That's supposed to be one of the easiest matchups there is these days, and if you can't trust Sasaki in that one, when can you trust him? It's a fair question, made even tougher to answer with Sasaki only pitching once every seven days through the entire month of June. Maybe he'd fare better with more consistent work, but that might be giving him the benefit of the doubt he hasn't earned yet. Truth be told, Sasaki might just be an incredibly volatile pitcher, and while I don't want to pivot from calling him a must-roster pitcher less than a month ago, I don't think you can slap that tag on him right now. I wouldn't drop him for just anyone, but if there's someone with real upside available on your wire – Sean Burke or Trevor Rogers? – I think I would do it.

>Arrighetti was the AL Pitcher of the Month in May, and he had a 1.34 ERA at the end of the season's second month, so it kind of goes without saying that was probably the high point of his season. But he's been an abject disaster since, putting up a 9.00 ERA in the month of June and undoing all of the good work he did the first couple of months. And the thing is, it's not like this was impossible to see coming. Arrighetti struck out just 22 batters while walking 17 in 29 innings in May, so while the results were pretty good, the process was awful. The strikeouts have been more plentiful lately, at least, but he still has mediocre-at-best command and has suddenly started getting hit a lot harder, which was an issue in each of the first two seasons of his career. At this point, I think "Arrighetti just got really lucky in the first two months of the season" is a lot closer to the correct answer here, and I don't think Arrighetti needs to be rostered in most leagues.

>Because they were two of the best hitters in Japan who came to MLB in the same offseason, it's only natural that Okamoto and Munetaka Murakami would be compared to each other. And it's kind of amazing how similar they've turned out to be, despite the difference between their scouting reports and statistical profiles coming over. Both have been big-time power hitters, which has been enough to overcome pretty dreadful contact skills against MLB pitchers. Murakami was significantly better prior to his still-present hamstring injury, but Okamoto has just gotten better as the season has gone on, and he homered Thursday and Friday this week en route to seven homers in June with a .937 OPS. He also struck out four times Saturday and now has a 32% strikeout rate in June and for the season. And with a seventh-percentile contact rate when he swings, that might just be what life is like for Okamoto. It might lead to some uncomfortable stretches, but he's on pretty close to a 40-homer pace in his first MLB season, so I think it's safe to say Okamoto is nicely overcoming his shortcomings, just like Murakami was.