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Fantasy Baseball players are an antsy sort. Whether you've spent your whole life watching baseball or you are deep into the minutiae of advanced stats, you should know that it takes a lot more than a few weeks to change your opinion on a player. It should take more than a few months, even. 

Should.

In practice, that's not how it works for anyone. It's natural, especially when you're playing Fantasy and you're watching your team slide down the rankings. Who wants to be patient when your opponents' small-sample-size All-Stars are dominating and your actual, multi-time All-Stars are floundering? Who has time to be patient when you're losing games?

But we've been given several stark reminders this season of how important patience is, especially when it comes to pitchers coming back from significant injuries. It took guys like Spencer Strider, Sandy Alcantara, and Felix Bautista some time to find themselves, but they've all more or less gotten to where we want them to be. And it looks like Eury Perez is following in their footsteps. 

Perez – who I will always take time to remind you, is just a few months past his 22nd birthday – was terrible in his first four starts back from Tommy John surgery. He struck out just 14 and walked 10 in 16 innings of work while giving up a 6.19 ERA. The stuff still looked pretty good, but his command was scattershot and the swinging strike rate fell from an elite 15.7% rate in 2023 as a rookie to a downright pedestrian 9.1% rate through those four starts. It was bad enough we had to wait multiple months just for him to get back on a mound at the start of the season, but then he returned and looked like that? What was even the point of waiting all that time?

Allow Thursday's start to remind you. Perez cruised through six innings on just 80 pitches, and he did his very best Jacob deGrom impression, largely shelving his curveball (he threw just four of them) and his changeup (two) in favor of a heavy, consistent dose of fastballs and sliders. And it worked. The seven strikeouts and one hit over six innings tell that story, but you know what might tell it even better? A whopping 20 swinging strikes on 40 swings, a truly massive number. He became the first pitcher this season and just the 15th in the past five to have 20 swinging strikes on 80 or fewer pitches in a start. 

The Twins aren't the mightiest offense known to man, of course, but doing that against any major-league lineup is hard to do. And it's not like Perez is some out-of-nowhere flash in the pan – he was arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball when he made his debut two years ago and, again, is still just 22 years old. I cannot stress enough how precocious Perez is, and how well that bodes for his chances of turning into an ace in the long run. The list of pitchers who have even thrown 90 innings in a season as a 20-year-old over the past 20 years is: Jose Fernandez, Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, Rick Porcello, Madison Bumgarner, and (weirdly) Jordan Lyles. That's pretty good company.

Does this mean Perez is just an ace moving forward? Probably not. Strider and Alcantara have had their missteps since figuring it out, and Perez will probably be no different. But he's on the shortlist for most talented pitchers in baseball, and we've finally seen the evidence for it. Perez is available in just over one-quarter of CBS Fantasy leagues right now, and I don't see any reason to think that number should be any higher than zero after this start.

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

Friday's top waiver-wire targets

Colson Montgomery, SS, White Sox (12%) – I'm not sure how this is going to go. Montgomery was the No. 22 pick in the 2022 draft and hit .287/.455/.484 during a breakout 2023 campaign, but he has struggled mightily since. That includes a .218/.298/.435 line at Triple-A this season with a 33.9% strikeout rate, though the White Sox did at least wait until he got hot to give him the call – Montgomery has four homers in his past six games with 11 hits in that span. Maybe he's just now figuring it out and will live up to the hype he once had, but I kind of doubt it. For now, Montgomery is only worth adding in the deepest of leagues. That being said, he does at least have this going for him: He's definitely gonna play a lot on a team getting a .252 wOBA from its shortstops, the second-worst mark in baseball. 

Ha-Seong Kim, SS, Rays (19%) – Kim was a tough player to stash while he worked his way back from shoulder surgery because he's not such an obvious difference-maker that you need to make sure you have him around at the expense of other players who might be more immediately impactful. But Kim was reinstated from the IL Thursday and will make his season debut Friday when the Rays begin a series against the Twins in Minnesota. They might opt to work Kim back in a little slowly at first, given how long he's been out, but the Rays have been consistent that Kim is "expected to be their primary shortstop," according to MLB.com, though he'll likely see some time at a few other spots around the field at times, as per the Rays typical approach. Kim has averaged 17 homers and 36 steals per 162 games over the past two seasons. 

Thairo Estrada, 2B, Rockies (15%) – This is what we hoped it would look like. Estrada went 3 for 4 with a homer and four RBI Thursday against the Astros and is now up to a .317/.339/.436 line through 25 games. He still isn't stealing many bases, but at least he's trying a bit more often than he did last season – he has one on four attempts in 25 games, after attempting just four in 96 games a year ago. I don't know if Estrada will ever get back to being a 20–plus steal guy, but with his contact-heavy approach fitting in well in Coors Field, he might be a viable starting middle infielder anyway. 

Ezequiel Tovar, SS, Rockies (50%) – Let's just stick with the theme! Tovar was more or less viewed as a must-roster and even must-start shortstop back in draft season, but with a slow start snowballing into a month-plus absence from an oblique injury, his roster rate has dropped considerably. Well, he's set to begin a rehab assignment Friday, so it's time for that roster rate to start creeping back up. How high? He's a pretty fringe-y option in H2H points leagues because of his poor plate discipline, but Tovar should be a solid source of power and batting average, and the counting stats shouldn't be terrible with the Rockies lineup playing better of late. He's more of a MI option, but he's a solid one now that he's on the verge of a return.