Three up, three down: Max Clark and Quinn Mathews bring fresh Fantasy upside to the majors

Prospects come in waves. There are a few landmarks throughout the season that coincide with prospect promotions: There's the start of the season, where teams are incentivized to call their guys up for potential compensation if they win awards; there's the Super Two "deadline" in May/June when teams can call guys up and still retain an extra year of club control; and then there's the mid-to-late-August rush when teams can maintain rookie eligibility for the following season.The trade deadline time is another one. There isn't as much direct incentive for teams to promote top prospects right now, but with big names on the move and opportunities opening up, the deadline nonetheless tends to be one of those periods when we see teams promoting top prospects, and we've got at least one getting the call already – and another might not be far behind.The Tigers are reportedly getting set to promote top outfield prospect Max Clark to the majors for Friday's series opener against the Athletics, per MLB.com. The move hasn't been officially announced, but it has been confirmed by multiple sources, so it sure looks like Clark's ascension to the majors has come. Some might say it's overdue, though Clark struggled in Spring Training and has had an up-and-down season down at Triple-A so far.But, as Scott White noted in his Prospects Report column earlier this week, Clark has found his way again in July, hitting .338/.446/.620 while putting up the kind of plate discipline (16:16 BB:K ratio) that suggests he is no longer being challenged. The five homers in July also suggest that, as he had just six combined entering the month. Power won't be a big part of Clark's game, but he doesn't project to be a total zero there, and the rest of his game looks very MLB-ready. He projects to be a prototypical top-of-the-order hitter, making a lot of contact, getting on base, and wreaking havoc when he gets there. In 90 games at Triple-A, he is hitting .276 with a 16% strikeout rate, with 11 homers and 21 steals as a 21-year-old. You're looking at a potential impact like the one A.J. Ewing has had on the Mets, and that's an exciting player for Roto leagues, with the potential to matter in points leagues thanks to the plate discipline. At the very least, he should be added immediately in any five-outfielder league.The other call-up this weekend is coming from the Cardinals, who will have top pitching prospect Quinn Mathews make his MLB debut Saturday against the Blue Jays. Mathews had been scratched from his scheduled Triple-A start Friday, and will make his debut ahead of some anticipated trades the Cardinals are expected to make before Monday's deadline. And he's a prospect worth getting excited about, despite an up-and-down few years as a prospect. Mathews was on Scott White's Five On The Verge list in this week's Prospects Report, as he seems to have found his stride lately. He struck out 10 in seven innings in his most recent start, and he has a 1.55 ERA with 59 strikeouts in 52.1 innings over nine starts since the start of June. His command has wavered over the past few seasons, but he looks like he has figured out Triple-A and still has the stuff to be an impact arm in the majors. And it doesn't hurt for our purposes that Mathews will be pitching in front of one of the best defenses in baseball when he gets the call. Mathews looks like the kind of pitcher who should matter in all formats. There are no guarantees, obviously, but Mathews has the upside worth chasing at a point in the season where we've been a bit starved for upside among starting pitchers on the waiver wire. Pre-game Lineup CardHere's what you might have missed from CBSSports.com's MLB coverage in recent days: Circle of Trust. Scott White takes a look at which pitchers are worth trusting down the stretch. Prospects Report. Kade Anderson is back from a brief break, and he has to be on the verge of the majors, right? Under Pressure. Dayn Perry takes a look at seven team execs feeling the most heat at the deadline. Trend watch. Mike Axisa highlights MLB's new triples king. Hitting the WireThe top waiver-wire targets from Thursday's action: Roki Sasaki, SP, Dodgers (71%) – We've done this dance with Sasaki so many times this season already. He goes through stretches where it seems like he's fixed whatever his issue is, he shines for a few weeks, and inevitably regresses. If you're exhausted and don't have any faith in him, believe me, I get it. Your skepticism is noted, and I don't necessarily disagree with it. But here's the thing: You probably need to buy back in again. Sure, it may blow up in our faces. But the Dodgers have spent the whole season working with Sasaki to find the right pitch mix, mechanics, and lately, glove, to try to overcome his limitations. Maybe it'll blow up in his face, but his velocity is way up lately and he has Endy Rodriguez, C, Pirates (16%) – A three-week IL stint derailed what was looking like Rodriguez's breakout, but he's been back for a few days and continued to make an impact. He has a hit in each of his first three games back, going 3 for 11 with, interestingly, three steals in as many games. Rodriguez has been hitting the ball hard all season with really solid plate discipline, and now he has five homers and five steals in 38 games – a 15-15 pace even with a catcher's truncated workload. The underlying numbers are pretty strong here, too, so Rodriguez continues to look like a very useful Fantasy option as a No. 2 catcher as long as he's getting playing time. Noah Cameron, SP, Royals (68%) – Just like Cameron was never as good as his numbers looked last season, he was never quite as bad as the 5.27 ERA he carried after his first start of the second half looked. And he's bounced back nicely in his past two starts, striking out eight over seven shutout innings against the Tigers last week and then tossing eight shutout innings with seven strikeouts Thursday against the Twins. What's interesting here is that Cameron did make some changes to his approach in the first start, prioritizing his cutter as his most-used pitch for just the second time all season; it went back to his typical usage Thursday, but he did continue to put his four-seamer on the backburner despite a 1.4 mph bump in velocity. That's a pretty bad pitch for Cameron whether he's throwing 92 or 94, so deprioritizing it isn't a bad idea. I don't think Cameron is suddenly a totally different pitcher than he was before, but he's useful enough against the right matchups, and it looks like he'll get the Twins again in his next start – the Dodgers loom after that, so don't get too comfortable, but he could be a useful option next week, at least. Three Up, Three DownThree big performances that have players trending up, and three that have the arrow pointing in the opposite direction. Three UpSean Burke keeps blowing hitters awayWhen Burke started turning his season around in June, we thought we had an easy explanation: He was suddenly pumping gas. When he carved up the Yankees on June 18, he did it with a four-seamer averaging 96.1 mph and touching 99, and he sustained 96 or better in three of his next four starts, too. Simple enough! Except that his velocity has crashed back down over the past three starts and he's been just as dominant – he has 10 strikeouts in his past two starts despite averaging right around 95 mph in both starts. Despite the lost velocity, he still got five whiffs on the four-seamer in this start and had 18 whiffs total on 91 pitches and has a 1.78 ERA with 67 strikeouts and just nine walks in 50.2 innings over his past eight starts. He had four different pitches with a whiff rate over 30% in July, and while I maintain a bit of skepticism about how sustainable this will all prove to be, there's no way I'm doing anything but starting Burke moving forward. Eury Perez is peakingPerez had a slight hiccup in his most recent start, so it was nice to see him get back on track Thursday. He limited the Mets to just one run on three hits and a couple of walks in this one, generating 16 whiffs, one start after he had just two strikeouts and seven whiffs in his previous outing. Given his age, Perez doesn't have an especially long track record for success, so any stumble puts him under the microscope. But after a pretty rocky start to the season, he's strung together a nine-start stretch with a 1.75 ERA and 54 strikeouts to just 12 walks over 46.1 innings – and that's even more impressive than it sounds because he had an IL stint in the middle of it. Perez is up to 104.2 innings on the season, about 14 short of where he finished last season and about 25 short of his career high, so I don't think we're going to see any real innings limitations down the stretch for him – that four-week IL stint may prove a blessing in disguise in that regard. He could finish the season as a top-20 starting pitcher the rest of the way and put himself in line for some serious helium in 2027 drafts. Don't be surprised if we're drafting Perez as a top-15 guy next spring. There's no slowing Luis Garcia downGarcia is showing no signs of slowing down. He went 3 for 5 Thursday, coming up a single short of a cycle, and he now has 18 homers since June 1. That's impressive enough, but even more so when you realize his previous career high for an entire season was 18 – he's matched that in his past two months. He's hitting .295/.335/.675 since June 1, and the only thing holding him back at this point is that the Nationals rarely play him against lefties – he has started four of eight against them since July 1 and just 11 all season long. If he was playing in a truly everyday role and could hold his own against lefties, Garcia might be able to play his way into the top-12 of the position moving forward, but he might need a trade away from the ultra-cautious Nationals to get that chance. Three DownWhat's wrong with Bryan Woo? Woo struggled again Thursday, giving up five runs in five innings to the Dodgers, and he's now sitting on a 6.16 ERA in nine starts since the beginning of June. I don't really have a good explanation for why things have gone so wrong for him – he's getting hit a bit harder in that span, but he still has 54 strikeouts to 12 walks in 49.2 innings, which should be good enough. My best guess? The Mariners have been spacing Woo's starts out a lot lately – he made just four starts in the entire month of July – to accommodate a six-man rotation, and maybe that's causing Woo to struggle to get on a workable schedule. The alternative is that they are trying to limit his innings because he is running out of steam, though you'd expect that to show up in declining velocity or strikeout numbers, and that's not what we've seen. All in all, I still feel pretty confident that Woo will remain worth starting moving forward, but I'd sure like to see some good evidence to back that up soon. Jordan Walker is slowing downI'm starting to see some concern crop up in the comments around Walker. He had just a .723 OPS in the month of June, and while that has improved to .792 in July, he has just four homers in the month, and all four came in the first 10 games. For a player whose track record of success at the MLB level doesn't really stretch beyond Opening Day of the current season, a two-month-long slump can't be written off. But here's the thing: Despite a middling .772 OPS since June 1, there aren't a ton of red flags in his profile – his 25% strikeout rate in that time is high, but manageable, and he still has a 91.9 mph average exit velocity in that span. In fact, his expected wOBA over the past 100 plate appearances is still .370, actually slightly higher than his season-long number. I don't think Walker is as good as he looked early in the season, but I also don't see much reason to be too concerned about him moving forward. He still looks like an impact bat moving forward, if not a 40-homer guy. Time to dump JJ Bleday? In some ways, Bleday's situation is very similar to Walker's – a one-time top prospect who floundered for years before getting off to a red-hot start to this season. He has slowed down even more than Walker, putting up a .699 OPS in July after going 0 for 4 with three strikeouts Thursday, and while his underlying numbers are still solid (.347 xwOBA over the past 100 PA), they aren't quite as good as Walker's. Bleday's average exit velocity has fallen to 87 mph since June 1, and while his plate discipline remains pretty solid and his home park helps out plenty, that kind of quality of contact is pretty fringey. And that might be all Bleday is as a Fantasy option, too. Extra InningsNobody wants to be the Royals closerSome teams don't have a set closer because they don't want one. The Royals don't have a set closer because nobody has been good enough. It started with Carlos Estevez's early-season meltdowns, transitioned to Lucas Erceg, and then to Alex Lange when Erceg proved unable to hold the job down. Well, Lange saw his ERA spike to 6.33 with a blown save earlier this week, so they're still searching, but it doesn't seem like anybody is up to it. Erceg got the first crack Thursday, but he loaded the bases before handing it to Matt Strahm, who turned a 3-0 lead into a 4-3 loss with a two-out homer surrendered to Kody Clemens. The Royals have been hesitant to trust Daniel Lynch with the ninth inning, but with a 2.00 ERA through 45 innings, he's basically the only pitcher in the bullpen who has looked up to the job. They've gotta give him a chance at some point, despite the low strikeout rate and the fact that he is a lefty. It's just that nobody else deserves the chance here.