Weather to Watch
Smaller board tonight, just seven games, which makes the few spots with real air movement matter more than usual. Two parks are screaming and a couple are quietly working against the hitters. Let me start where the ball flies.
Pittsburgh at Athletics | Sutter Health Park | Clear, 82F | Wind: 12 mph SW
The breeze is blowing toward the alleys, and this yard was tight before the temperature climbed into the low 80s. Both lineups share the highest game total on the card, and out in this air, the number makes sense.
San Francisco at Atlanta | Truist Park | Clear, 85F | Wind: 11 mph SW
Eighty-five degrees with the wind kicking out to left is a loud combination, and Truist sits a touch up in elevation anyway. Any fly ball with backspin has a real ride out to left tonight.
Colorado at Chicago Cubs | Wrigley Field | Mostly Clear, 66F | Wind: 4 mph WSW
The flags point out, which I never want to argue with at Wrigley, but it is a soft 4 miles an hour and the air is cool and heavy. I treat this as a mild help, not a green light, and let the matchup do most of the talking.
Chicago White Sox at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Overcast, 73F | Wind: 12 mph SSE
The wind rides across the field instead of straight toward that short porch in right. Call it neutral, though the porch is always sitting there waiting for a lefty to yank one.
Toronto at Boston | Fenway Park | Overcast, 77F | Wind: 9 mph E
This one cuts the other way, with the breeze drifting in off the Atlantic. It knocks a little off the fly balls, so I am banking on the arm being bad rather than the air helping.
Baltimore at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Clear, 73F | Wind: 8 mph N
Wind in at a venue that is brutal on power even on a still night. This is the lone outdoor game where my interest is the arm, not the lineup.
One roof is shut, at American Family Field, so Cleveland against Milwaukee is a clean park read with the forecast on the bench.
HR Calls
A handful of cards are locked, which lets me chase bats that pair real thump with an arm coughing up homers. I want a premium swing up top, a mid-priced platoon spot, and a near-minimum dart in a yard that helps.
Brandon Lowe (PIT) $5,800 vs Aaron Civale
This is the bat I trust most tonight. Lowe carries a .311 ISO, and the lefty side has been a problem for Civale all year, taking him for a .542 slug and a 2.32 HR/9 that says better than one in five fly balls off left-handed bats leaves the yard. Civale is also making his first start back from a multi-week absence, so Lowe likely only sees him a couple of times before the bullpen, but the early cuts come in the loudest hitting environment on the card. I want the swing while the matchup is this clean.
Austin Riley (ATL) $3,900 vs Robbie Ray
I will concede the obvious: Riley's power has been down, sitting at a .167 ISO that does not jump off the page. The matchup is the whole argument. Ray is a lefty who right-handed bats have battered for a .462 slug and a 2.10 HR/9, and dropping a righty with Riley's hard-contact track record into Truist with the wind kicking out is a spot I will pay a mid-tier price for. If the bat is anywhere close to healthy, this is the night it shows.
Cole Carrigg (COL) $2,900 vs Javier Assad
A Rockies bat at the near minimum is contrarian by definition, which is exactly why I keep circling it at this number. Carrigg hits left-handed against the righty Assad, who hands lefties a .451 slug and a 1.90 HR/9 while looking unhittable the other way. Colorado is a light road offense, so nobody is forcing you here, but Wrigley has the flag pointed out and the price frees up real money. I would rather take the cheap swing than skip the game entirely.
Stacks to Target
1. Chicago Cubs vs Sean Sullivan (R) | Implied Total: 6.25 | ROO Score: 6.0/10
Vegas has the Cubs scoring more than any other team on the card, and nothing in the matchup argues with it. Sullivan is a rookie who has not gone much past the third inning in his recent work, with command and length both shaky, so Chicago likely gets into the Colorado bullpen by the middle innings. That pen is the softest relief group you can attack tonight, running an xFIP north of 5.00 with a homer rate to match. The Cubs are righty-heavy against him, with Seiya Suzuki and Alex Bregman the bats I want most, and Wrigley has the breeze drifting out. The left-handed pop comes from Crow-Armstrong and Busch underneath. This is the closest thing to a clean stack on the card.
Core pieces: Pete Crow-Armstrong $5,800 (L), Michael Busch $4,900 (L), Seiya Suzuki $4,800 (R), Ian Happ $4,500 (S), Alex Bregman $4,300 (R)
2. Pittsburgh vs Aaron Civale (R) | Implied Total: 5.24 | ROO Score: 5.8/10
Pittsburgh draws the loudest hitting backdrop on the board and an arm whose ledger is living on borrowed time. Civale has stranded 86% of his baserunners, which is the kind of luck that does not last, and underneath it sits a FIP near 5.50 and a HR/9 close to 2.0. Left-handed hitters do the real damage, slugging .542 with a 2.32 HR/9 against him, so Brandon Lowe, Ryan O'Hearn, and Spencer Horwitz line up beautifully from that side. The wrinkle is that Civale is back from an extended absence, so I would expect a short outing, which means the leaky Athletics bullpen comes in early rather than late. That cuts both ways, but with this lineup in this air, more arms is fine by me.
Core pieces: Brandon Lowe $5,800 (L), Bryan Reynolds $5,100 (S), Ryan O'Hearn $5,000 (L), Spencer Horwitz $4,000 (L), Tyler Callihan $2,800 (L)
3. Boston vs Max Scherzer (R) | Implied Total: 5.06 | ROO Score: 5.6/10
I will admit the air at Fenway is working against this one, with the breeze pushing in off the water. I do not care, because Scherzer has been unplayable, sitting on a double-digit ERA with a HR/9 near 3.7 and getting squared up from both sides of the plate. He has averaged barely three innings across his last five starts, which drops Boston into a Toronto bullpen carrying an xFIP above 5.00 by the time the order turns over twice. Willson Contreras and Jarren Duran anchor it, with Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela cheap and useful underneath. The wind keeps this from being a pure home run stack, but the runs should come regardless.
Core pieces: Jarren Duran $4,700 (L), Willson Contreras $4,100 (R), Wilyer Abreu $3,800 (L), Ceddanne Rafaela $3,700 (R), Masataka Yoshida $2,800 (L)
Pitchers
Gavin Williams (CLE) vs MIL | $9,300 | CASH
Williams is the best pitcher on the slate. He backs a 3.34 ERA with an xFIP under 3.00 and a SIERA near 2.80, striking out 28.7% of hitters with a whiff rate that ranks near the top of the pool. Milwaukee carries a modest team total into a closed roof, and the only nit to pick is a long-ball rate that occasionally bites him. In a dome with this much swing-and-miss, I am comfortable making him the anchor.
George Kirby (SEA) vs BAL | $9,000 | CASH
Kirby's 4.07 ERA is hiding a sharper arm, with a FIP near 3.40 and a .331 BABIP that has gone against him. T-Mobile with the breeze pushing in is the best pitcher's park in this pool, and Baltimore brings one of the lighter road bats of the night into it. He keeps the walks down, manages the contact, and the park erases most of the homer worry. He is a clean second cash arm.
Carlos Rodón (NYY) vs CWS | $8,700 | GPP
Rodón is the strikeout swing here, with a K/9 near 10 against a White Sox lineup that owns the quietest team total on the card. The catch keeps him in tournaments: a BB/9 above 5.0 that puts traffic on for free and caps the floor. If the command shows up against a team that chases, the ceiling is enormous, but I am not banking the cash lineup on it.
Kyle Bradish (BAL) vs SEA | $8,300 | GPP
Bradish racks up whiffs, near 9.0 K/9, and Seattle's park with the wind in gives him a soft place to work. Same problem as Rodón, though, with a walk rate close to 5.0 per nine that turns clean innings messy. I want him in tournaments where the strikeout upside matters more than the floor.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
George Kirby (SEA), Positive Regression Candidate
His ERA and his peripherals are telling two different stories. Kirby's FIP and xFIP both sit well below his 4.07 mark, his BABIP is up at .331, and a low-70s strand rate accounts for the rest. None of that tends to hold for a pitcher with this command. The runs should taper off, and tonight's park gives the correction a head start.
Aaron Civale (ATH), Negative Regression Candidate
Civale's surface line flatters him. An 86% strand rate is propping up an ERA that should be much worse given a FIP near 5.50 and a HR/9 close to 2.0, and that luck tends to snap back hard. Pittsburgh is the offense set to cash in tonight, batting in a loud park against an arm working back from time off on a likely short leash. The bats up top, plus the Athletics bullpen arriving early, make the Pirates the side I want when this number finally corrects.
Final Thoughts
For cash I open with Williams, who draws a dome and a quiet Milwaukee bat, and pair him with Kirby if the salary stretches that far. The hitting core leans on the Cubs, where Suzuki and Bregman attack a rookie who cannot hold a lead, with a left-handed Pirate like Brandon Lowe mixed in against Civale and a near-minimum bat like Cole Carrigg or Tyler Callihan to make the money work.
The Boston bats against Scherzer are my favorite contrarian swing, and if you want a different righty angle, the Yankees lining up Goldschmidt, Rosario, and Volpe against a left-hander who cannot retire right-handed hitters is a quiet way to be different.
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.