Weather to Watch
Pittsburgh at Athletics | Sutter Health Park | Clear, 89F | Wind: 11 mph SW
This is the spot the whole slate orbits. Mid-80s heat with the breeze pushing toward the gaps in a yard that already plays small, and you can see why both lineups carry the fattest implied totals on today's card.
Colorado at Chicago Cubs | Wrigley Field | Overcast, 69F | Wind: 7 mph WSW
The flag is blowing straight out at Wrigley, which is the one weather variable I never want to fade. It is not a gale, but a ball in the air to the pull side has help today.
New York Mets at Cincinnati | Great American Ball Park | Clear, 74F | Wind: 5 mph WNW
Great American is a launching pad on a calm night, and this is better than calm. The air is nudging fly balls out, so the cheap power in this park is live again.
San Diego at St. Louis | Busch Stadium | Clear, 80F | Wind: 7 mph WNW
Busch is the rare warm-weather park that still suppresses, so I treat the modest bump here with caution. Warm enough to carry, not a true bandbox.
Tampa Bay at Los Angeles Dodgers | Dodger Stadium | Clear, 69F | Wind: 7 mph WSW
Pleasant Chavez Ravine evening with a soft breeze out to right. Nothing dramatic, but it will not knock anything down either.
Three domes today: Chase, Daikin, Globe Life. The park factors still matter, the forecast does not.
HR Calls
Nick Kurtz (ATH) $6,300 vs Jared Jones
Jones has punchout stuff, but through his three starts back hitters have been barreling him up, with hard contact on half the balls in play and a 1.4 HR/9. Drop that into the warmest, most homer-friendly yard on the slate with the wind helping, and the leadoff lefty with elite barrel and hard-hit rates is my favorite swing of the night. Kurtz pulls the ball in the air as well as anyone in this price range. I cannot really build an argument against him here.
Junior Caminero (TB) $5,700 vs Eric Lauer
Lauer has been a homer pinata this year, coughing up a HR/9 north of 2.0 with a fly-ball lean that travels in a roomy park like Dodger Stadium. Caminero is the right-handed bat you want pointed at a struggling lefty, and his pull-side juice has shown up all season. The salary feels like it is a tier behind where his ceiling actually sits.
Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC) $5,300 vs Michael Lorenzen
Lorenzen is the gift in this section. His command has slipped to where he is leaving too many pitches over the heart, and the results have followed, a HR/9 near 1.5 and a batted-ball line that says hitters are squaring him up. Now he walks into a wind-out Wrigley against a Cubs lineup that owns the highest implied total on the slate. Crow-Armstrong lifts the ball to his pull side, which is the swing that makes a righty pay for leaving one up.
Stacks to Target
The board hands you three lineups with real ceiling tonight, all of them aimed at an arm that should not be on the mound in a hitter's park. I am building around the top of these orders and bringing back where the total justifies it.
1. Chicago Cubs vs Michael Lorenzen (R) | Implied Total: 6.13 | ROO Score: 7.4/10
Nobody on the slate has a cleaner runway than the Cubs. Lorenzen is carrying a near-8.00 ERA, and while a chunk of that is a sky-high batted-ball luck figure that should come down, the underlying damage is real, a HR/9 well over 1.0 and the worst strand luck of any starter here. Chicago's left-handed bats have been a problem for right-handers all year, sitting above league average with strong hard contact, and the Wrigley flags are pointed the right way. Behind Lorenzen, the Colorado bullpen is the worst relief group you will target tonight, so the back half of this game stays open. Crow-Armstrong, Busch, and Happ from the left side are the engine.
Core pieces: Pete Crow-Armstrong $5,300 (L), Michael Busch $4,800 (L), Ian Happ $4,200 (S), Seiya Suzuki $4,500 (R), Alex Bregman $4,100 (R)
2. Athletics vs Jared Jones (R) | Implied Total: 5.59 | ROO Score: 7.1/10
The hottest hitting environment on the board belongs to the A's. Jones misses bats but gets hit hard when contact happens, and a 50% hard-contact rate over a tiny early sample is the kind of number that turns into souvenirs in this yard with the air carrying. Oakland's lefties have mashed righties this season, and Kurtz and Soderstrom line up well at the top against him. The one wrinkle: this is a true coin-flip game environment, so I am happy to stack the A's and sprinkle the Pittsburgh side in tournaments. The Colorado-style worry about the bullpen does not apply, but the ceiling here is about the bats, not the arm.
Core pieces: Nick Kurtz $6,300 (L), Shea Langeliers $6,000 (R), Tyler Soderstrom $5,000 (L), Carlos Cortes $4,300 (L), Zack Gelof $4,900 (R)
3. Texas vs Mike Paredes (R) | Implied Total: 4.85 | ROO Score: 6.2/10
Texas is where I go to be different tonight. Paredes is a thin-resume arm with a BB/9 over 5.0 and an xFIP approaching 8.00, and command that shaky puts runners on for free before anyone swings. Texas does not need to slug to cash in this matchup; the walks and traffic do the work, and Globe Life is a dome so the forecast is irrelevant. Seager and Pederson give the lefty side a real punch against the right-hander, and the price tags up and down this order are the cheapest of any stack I like. If you want a stack the field will be lighter on, this is it.
Core pieces: Corey Seager $4,600 (L), Joc Pederson $3,000 (L), Wyatt Langford $3,300 (R), Josh Jung $4,000 (R), Jake Burger $3,300 (R)
Pitchers
Pricing is honest at the top tonight, so the build is really about how much you want to pay for the one true ace. After him, the value plays are the regression bets in soft matchups.
Chase Burns (CIN) vs NYM | $11,000 | CASH
Burns is the one arm on this slate I am not going to overthink. A K/9 above 10.5, a strikeout rate near 30%, a sub-1.00 WHIP, and a swinging-strike rate that ranks with the best on the board. Yes, his ERA is propped up a touch by strand luck, but the swing-and-miss is the real thing, and the Mets carry one of the lower implied totals on the slate as the road bat. Pay up and move on.
MacKenzie Gore (TEX) vs MIN | $7,800 | CASH
Gore's 4.18 ERA is hiding a much better pitcher underneath, with a FIP and xFIP both well below it and a strikeout rate that travels. Minnesota carries the lowest implied total on the slate, the game is in a dome, and the price has not caught up to the strikeouts. He is my favorite value arm for cash tonight.
Dustin May (STL) vs SD | $7,300 | GPP
May has pitched in tough luck, a low-4.00s ERA sitting on top of a FIP in the low-3.00s, an inflated batted-ball figure, and the worst strand rate of his profile. San Diego is a middling road offense at a sub-4.00 implied total, and Busch helps a contact-managing righty. I want him more in tournaments than cash given the lower strikeout ceiling.
Kai-Wei Teng (HOU) vs DET | $7,000 | GPP
Teng misses bats at a healthy clip, and Detroit's low implied total makes the matchup playable. The catch is the walks, a BB/9 over 4.0, which caps the floor and keeps him in the tournament bucket only. If the punchouts show up, the ceiling is there at this number.
Shota Imanaga (CHC) vs COL | $8,500 | GPP
The Rockies are a brutal road offense, and Imanaga has the strikeout profile to carve a lineup that whiffs. The landmine is the homer rate paired with a wind-out Wrigley, so this is a leverage tournament arm rather than a safe cash anchor. High strikeout ceiling, real variance.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
We are far enough into the year that the surface numbers are starting to mean something, but a couple of these lines are still running ahead of or behind the underlying work.
Dustin May (STL), Positive Regression Candidate
The ERA says one thing, the peripherals say another. A FIP more than a full run below the ERA, a batted-ball luck figure that is bound to normalize, and a strand rate in the mid-60s that is the main culprit. The skills point to a better pitcher than the ledger shows, and I expect the runs to slow down.
Troy Melton (DET), Negative Regression Candidate
Melton's high-2.00s ERA is a mirage. The FIP sits above 5.00, the batted-ball figure is unsustainably low, and he is stranding 95% of baserunners, which simply does not hold. Houston is the lineup that stands to cash in tonight, and with Yordan Alvarez already in a plus power spot against him, I think the Astros are the side to be on as that ERA starts climbing back toward where it belongs.
Final Thoughts
The cash core starts with Burns at the top and Gore as the cheaper second arm, which frees up plenty for bats. From there I am anchoring to the Cubs with Crow-Armstrong and Busch against a Lorenzen line that is breaking down, mixing in a Kurtz or Langeliers from the A's, and using a salary-saver like Joc Pederson off the Texas value tier to round it out.
For tournaments, I want to get weird with the Athletics and Pirates game. The total is the highest on the slate with the breeze carrying out, and neither arm scares me, so a four-bat A's stack with a couple of Pittsburgh bring-backs like Brandon Lowe and Bryan Reynolds is a clean way to take a swing at a shootout. The Texas stack against a wild rookie is the other contrarian path if you want to zig while the field piles onto the Cubs and A's.
Tools used for this slate
Every number in this playbook comes off the free BankrollSZN tools: today's MLB DFS projections, the MLB home run predictor, first-pitch weather for every game, today's starting pitchers, and the free MLB lineup optimizer.