Zack Wheeler's re-emergence as one of the very best pitchers in the league has been one of the best stories of the season. But there's been one question in the back of my mind with every vintage, dominant Wheeler performance that I never wanted to raise: How long can this possibly last? 

That question leapt to the front of everyone's mind Monday, when Wheeler experienced a scary velocity drop – down to 91 mph with one sinker in the third inning – and was pulled after just 68 pitches and three innings against the Marlins. A near-2 mph drop in velocity combined with an early exit after giving up five runs in three innings to the Marlins? Yeah, that all sounds like reason to be pretty panicked without even getting into the fact that Wheeler is a 35-year-old whose previous season ended with serious shoulder surgery. 

But not if you ask Wheeler himself. 

"One of those days," Wheeler told reporters after the game. "You have a bad day every once in a while, I'm sure, right?"

Of course, it's extremely rare for a pitcher to suffer a significant drop in velocity and then sidle up to the media to tell them how utterly spooked they are. Professional athletes are used to overcoming the odds, and Wheeler is no stranger to that. They are wired to believe in themselves to a degree fans can't really understand, and we've all watched athletes with little left in the tank continue to insist they are as capable as ever. Being skeptical is reasonable here! 

But, by all accounts, there's nothing to worry about here. Wheeler was apparently dealing with some nausea throughout the day Monday, and while he didn't use that as an excuse, it would seem to be a pretty good explanation for why Wheeler wasn't quite himself. Manager Don Mattingly additionally insisted that there was nothing to be concerned about with Wheeler, and we have no choice but to take their word for it.

It doesn't mean there is nothing to worry about with Wheeler, of course. Given Wheeler's history (specifically the Thoracic Outlet surgery he underwent less than a year ago), being concerned about what we saw Monday is perfectly reasonable. But I don't think there's anything you can do about it. 

You obviously would never drop him, but it also wouldn't make any sense to think about trading Wheeler coming off his worst start of the season. Not with how good he's been lately – he had nine strikeouts or more in his previous four starts! This might end up being a turning point in Wheeler's season, but with the Phillies insisting there is nothing to worry about, I just don't think it would make sense to panic after one bad start. 

So, if you have Wheeler, your only real choice here is to hold on to him and hope he was just a bit under the weather. Just hope it's just one bad start. For now, that's all it is. 

Pre-game Lineup Card

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

Trade tracker. Scott White breaks down the fascinating Curtis Mead-Connelly Early deal that kicked off the trade deadline season. 

Weekend recap. Tarik Skubal looks like the SP1 again. 

Deadline preview. Matt Snyder takes a look at which teams are buyers and sellers ahead of the deadline.

Prospects to know. Mike Axisa looks at 10 prospects who could be on the move at the deadline.

Hitting the Wire

The top waiver-wire targets from Monday's action: 

Walbert Urena, SP, Angels (62%)

I continue to be shocked at how low Urena's roster rate is. There's a part of me that wants to be vocally skeptical about his success – "He has bad control and pitches in front of one of the worst defenses in baseball, how can a 2.70 ERA be sustainable?" is what the argument would look like, in brief. The problem is, it's nearly August, he has a sub-3.00 ERA and he's rostered in fewer leagues than Shane Bieber, so the case against Urena just doesn't make much sense. He's at least pretty good, and he was better than that Monday, upping his velocity nearly 2 mph to 99.3 mph with his four-seamer without sacrificing control, leading to one run in six innings while striking out five and walking two. You'd like to see Urena miss more bats, but he's so good at limiting damage on contact that you can live with it, especially if he keeps the walks in that 3.0 per nine innings range. At the very least, he's not a bad pitcher – the 3.28 xERA tells us that much – but he has some paths to being really, really impactful. His roster rate is just too low. 

Heriberto Hernandez, OF, Marlins (26%)

This is another one I just can't make sense of. Heriberto's homer Monday pushed his season-long OPS to .796, and I think that undersells how good he's been for much of the season – he's up to a .269/.329/.593 line since June 1 with a near-40-homer pace. He probably isn't quite that good, but his expected wOBA of .370 in that span isn't far off from his actual .388 mark. Zoom out and Hernandez has 25 homers and he has 25 homers and eight steals in the first 164 games of his MLB career – and he's done that in just 565 plate appearances, far less than a true full season. He might just be a good hitter. 

Merrill Kelly, SP, Diamondbacks (68%) 

Kelly has been solid for so long that his extremely rough start to the season never really convinced me he couldn't be any good. I dropped him in a few leagues because he's exactly the kind of relatively low-upside pitcher you should be dropping when things aren't going well, but it was never going to take more than a few good outings for me to buy back in. He limited the Pirates to just one unearned run on four hits and a walk Monday and now has a 1.95 ERA with 24 strikeouts to nine walks in 27.2 innings over his past five starts. His underlying metrics don't entirely back it up, but Kelly has outrun his peripherals for long enough to know there is some skill here not being accounted for, and I'm more or less back in on him as a viable starter after this stretch. 

Kumar Rocker, SP, Rangers (26%)

Rocker has strung together a couple of good starts in a row here. He limited the Mariners to two runs over 6.2 innings Monday while striking out seven, and he's up to 13 strikeouts to four walks while allowing just two runs in 12.2 innings over the past two starts. He was tagged for seven runs in the start just before that and still seems to be mostly just a one-pitch pitcher – his slider was responsible for all seven of his strikeouts Monday and 12 of his 14 swinging strikes – so I'm still pretty skeptical of the success he's finding. But he's interesting enough to be worth a look in deeper leagues. 

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

Francisco Lindor looked like himself

We're used to Lindor getting off to slow starts, and it's worth keeping in mind that Monday was just his 50th game of the season. And hopefully it's the start of him doing his usual "pull out of a slow start and dominate for several months" thing. He homered twice in Monday's drubbing of the Braves, going 3 for 5 with a walk, six RBI, two runs, and a triple for good luck. He is hitting just .233/.318/.425 on the season even after this huge showing, but he's also sporting a career-best 91.4 mph average exit velocity with his typically excellent plate discipline, so there's no sign Lindor's skill set has regressed at all. I expect him to hit like a top-20 player the rest of the way. 

Baby steps for Jackson Holliday 

At this point, I don't think it's fair to expect Holliday to turn into the superstar we once hoped he would be. But it's worth remembering that, at 22 years and roughly seven months old, he's still younger than a lot of prospects when they make their debut – he's about six months younger than Mike Sirota, a top-50 prospect in the Dodgers system who hasn't even gotten out of Double-A yet. He put together one of his best games of the season Monday, going 4 for 5 with a double and a couple of runs scored, but that only pushed him to a .243 batting average for the season. Holliday is showing really impressive plate discipline this season, though it has come with the worst quality of contact metrics of his career, which is frustrating. Holliday is still young enough that you can project some growth in power, and if he can continue to improve his approach at the plate, it's not impossible to see a breakout here at some point, even if Monday's game is more the exception than the rule so far. 

Joc Pederson keeps mashing

Pederson has been on a heck of a heater lately, hitting .314/.364/.686 in the month of July, and he's done that after putting up close to a .900 OPS across May and June. For the season, he's up to a .254/.343/.513 line, and you can squint and see some Kyle Schwarber in that line. Of course, Schwarber has done that in 457 plate appearances and Pederson has done it in just 322, as the Rangers basically never let him face lefties at this point – he has just 29 plate appearances against them on the season. Pederson's roster rate feels a little low at just 13%, but with that playing time deficit, it's probably right, unfortunately. 

Three Down

Yeah, we're done with Tatsuya Imai

There's no question Imai has talent, and he might put it all together at some point and be a viable Fantasy option. But the occasional flashes of that upside just aren't worth the consistent downside he's been delivering during his rookie season. Monday saw another new low, as Imai was chased after recording just two outs, giving up two runs on a hit and four walks along the way. He just hasn't consistently been able to throw strikes, and this was his fourth start where he has failed to finish even two innings in a start. Imai wasn't bad in his previous start, but at this point I think I need to see something like a whole good month in a row from him with no blow-ups before I'm willing to trust him again. And I don't have any faith he's capable of something like that right now. 

George Kirby just isn't the same guy

Pitchers are inherently volatile creatures, so you want to avoid making too many definitive statements about anyone. That being said, I think we're past the point where we need to recalibrate our expectations for Kirby, because he just hasn't looked like that fringe top-12 guy we expected at any point this season. He doesn't look that different from the guy he was back in 2024, but it seems like there have just been some relatively minor, across-the-board losses for his skill set. He's got excellent command, but it isn't quite what it was at his best, and he's lost the strikeout rate gains he made last season along with it, giving us a bit of a "worst of both worlds" aspect. He still hasn't been that bad, but his 3.98 ERA after Monday's four-homer outing against the Rangers doesn't seem like a fluke, either. He could still figure it out, but at this point, I think Kirby is more like a top-30 or top-40 pitcher than the guy he once was. 

Where have Kyle Bradish's strikeouts gone? 

I don't really know what to do with Bradish anymore. I'm not dropping him, but it's growing increasingly hard to justify even having him as a top-40 starting pitcher anymore when he hasn't even had six strikeouts in any of his past five starts. That's especially frustrating because he had 21 strikeouts across consecutive starts in mid-June right before this five-start stretch where he has just 20 strikeouts. That includes just four strikeouts while giving up five runs in 4.2 innings against the Tigers Monday, where he had just two swinging strikes combined with his slider and curveball. I don't know where the guy who had a sub-3.00 ERA and elite strikeout rates in 2024 and 2025 has gone; heck, at this point, I'd be thrilled to get the 2.83 ERA and 25% strikeout rate guy he was in 2023. His command has been off all season, his stuff hasn't been as sharp as the previous few seasons, and the whole profile has just been pretty unappetizing. He's not as bad as his worst starts look, but Bradish looks pretty far from being a must-start pitcher right now, too. 

Extra Innings

Max Fried stumbled in his second start

If Fried hadn't just come back from an elbow injury, my inclination would be to completely dismiss Monday's start as a one-off from a great pitcher. Instead, I'm only mostly writing it off. He was tagged for three runs on five hits and two walks in three innings against the White Sox, but his stuff mostly looked like it should, and coming off seven strikeouts in five shutout innings in his first start back from the IL, I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Let's not forget that Fried came back from a two-plus month absence after just one rehab start, too, so he might just be rusty. But it might be something more than rust, given the proximity to the injury, so I can't entirely write it off as nothing. Just mostly.