Weather to Watch
New York Mets at Atlanta | Truist Park | Mostly Clear, 88F | Wind: 2.5 mph SSW
Warm, quiet air in Atlanta. The thermometer gives the bats a small edge and there is nothing moving to take it back.
Pittsburgh at Washington | Nationals Park | Clear, 93F | Wind: 5.4 mph SSW
The best carry conditions on the card, and nothing else is close. Ninety-three degrees with the breeze angled toward center means fly balls in DC get every favor available today.
Baltimore at Cincinnati | Great American Ball Park | Clear, 83F | Wind: 2.5 mph W
Low 80s and nearly windless. The dimensions are the whole story here, and they favor the hitters.
Minnesota at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Mostly Clear, 86F | Wind: 1 mph SSE
One mile per hour of wind is functionally zero. Mid-80s in the Bronx tilts things a shade toward the offense, and the right field seats remain closer than any pitcher wants.
Chicago White Sox at Cleveland | Progressive Field | Overcast, 79F | Wind: 5.7 mph NNE
Gray skies, air leaning against fly balls, and a rain chance near 40% that I am not dismissing. Anyone you roster from this game needs a radar check first.
St. Louis at Chicago Cubs | Wrigley Field | Foggy, 70F | Wind: 4.9 mph N
Fog plus a lake wind knocking everything down. A power hitter can do everything right here and still hand you a zero.
Philadelphia at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Clear, 89F | Wind: 6.7 mph N
Heat helping, wind hurting, close to a wash. The outfield in Kansas City is enormous either way.
Detroit at Texas and Tampa Bay at Houston are indoor games, so Globe Life and Daikin stay out of this section.
HR Calls
James Wood (WSH) $6000 vs Bubba Chandler
Wood already owns star-level contact quality, and the results are catching up fast. He is hitting righties to a .403 wOBA with a .274 ISO and 16 homers, and his 62% hard contact against them is elite by any calibration. Chandler walks nearly 13% of the lefties he faces, and a pitcher who falls behind that often eventually has to give in with something straight to a hitter who barrels 22% of his batted balls. In this DC heat, with the air carrying, the give-in pitch does not come back.
Jac Caglianone (KC) $4700 vs Aaron Nola
I am going to recommend Nola later in this article and still call a homer against him here. Both halves make sense once you see the split. His one real leak is left-handed power: lefties reach him for a .386 wOBA with more than 2 HR/9, over a quarter of their fly balls have left the yard, and he walks nearly 12% of them, so the free passes keep putting him in fastball counts against the exact hitters who punish that. Caglianone swings from that side with 66% hard contact off righties. The wind trims some carry at Kauffman, but a $4,700 mid-tier bat with this specific matchup is my ceiling play of the day.
Coby Mayo (BAL) $3400 vs Nick Lodolo
DraftKings priced Mayo on his full-season line and skipped the split that decides tonight. Against lefties he owns a .441 wOBA with a .413 ISO and seven homers in only 70 trips, and Lodolo has fed righty power all year, a .348 wOBA against with 1.6 HR/9 and 43% hard contact allowed. Great American only helps. At $3,400 this is the cheapest real power I could find on my card.
Stacks to Target
1. Philadelphia vs Luinder Avila (R) | Implied Total: 5.59 | ROO Score: 6.0/10 | Cash
No team on this slate projects for more runs than the Phillies, and Avila is a strange choice to hold them down. He walks almost six per nine, and the splits offer him no hiding place, since righties reach him for a .406 wOBA while drawing a walk 20% of the time. Philadelphia's lefty group has hit right-handed pitching 20% better than league average with a .208 ISO, and the names doing it are who you think. Harper owns a .439 wOBA and a .347 ISO off righties. Schwarber has 20 homers against them, and Marsh has climbed all the way to a 155 wRC+. Behind Avila waits a Kansas City bullpen with a mid-5s xFIP, so the runs do not have to come early. This is chalk I agree with.
Core pieces: Kyle Schwarber $6200 (L), Bryce Harper $5700 (L), Brandon Marsh $4800 (L), Trea Turner $5200 (R), Bryson Stott $4200 (L)
2. Washington vs Bubba Chandler (R) | Implied Total: 5.24 | ROO Score: 5.5/10 | GPP
Chandler's 4.65 ERA is doing him a favor. The estimators behind it sit nearly two runs worse, he walks more than five per nine, and lefties in particular have reached him for a .341 wOBA while drawing free passes 13% of the time. Washington's answer is a lefty group that hits righties 15% better than average while striking out barely a fifth of the time: Wood is the headliner, Abrams brings 15 homers and a .258 ISO off righties, and Garcia and Lile keep the line moving in between. Add the friendliest hitting weather of the day and a Pittsburgh bullpen that has been closer to bad than mediocre, and the ceiling here is real. What seals it for me is that this group looks likely to draw noticeably less attention than Philadelphia or Baltimore, which makes the Nationals my favorite tournament side on the slate.
Core pieces: James Wood $6000 (L), CJ Abrams $5200 (L), Luis Garcia $4100 (L), Curtis Mead $4400 (R), Daylen Lile $3600 (L)
3. Baltimore vs Nick Lodolo (L) | Implied Total: 4.75 | ROO Score: 4.5/10 | Cash
Baltimore against lefties is roughly an average group, and I would rather tell you that than pretend. The argument is Lodolo and the address. Righties have tagged him for a .348 wOBA and a .453 slug with 1.6 HR/9, he walks 10% of them, and the contact he allows to that side is hard 43% of the time, all of it in a park that inflates right-handed power. Ward has been the best Oriole against lefties at a 141 wRC+, Mayo is the split I covered above, and Rutschman turns around to his strong side. The caveat worth naming is Alonso, whose numbers against lefties this season are a real step down, so I prefer the bats around him to the biggest name. Cincinnati's bullpen sits in the mid-4s by xFIP, ordinary but not scary. Plenty of rosters will land here, and it still works for cash at this address.
Core pieces: Taylor Ward $4900 (R), Coby Mayo $3400 (R), Gunnar Henderson $5400 (L), Adley Rutschman $4300 (S), Blaze Alexander $3600 (R)
Pitchers
Joe Ryan (MIN) at NYY | $9900 | CASH
Ryan is the best arm on this slate by my read, and the market agrees. He strikes out 28% of hitters, his SIERA sits at 2.58, and his 3.61 ERA actually undersells him given a 69% strand rate that should drift up. Neither side of the plate touches him, a .289 wOBA allowed to lefties and .266 to righties. The honest risk is the Bronx: lefties have taken him deep more often than I would like, and that porch forgives nothing. With the air completely calm, I am not talking myself out of the best skills on the board. He will be popular, and he should be.
Casey Mize (DET) at TEX | $8700 | CASH
Mize has become the version Detroit always imagined. The 2.63 ERA travels with a 2.75 SIERA, a swinging-strike rate near 13%, and hard contact allowed at barely 24%, a weak-contact profile that holds up in any park. Texas carries one of the lowest implied totals on the slate, and the roof deletes the July weather question. He costs $1,200 less than Ryan while drawing maybe half the attention, and those two facts belong in the same decision.
Cade Cavalli (WSH) vs PIT | $6500 | CASH
Washington shows up twice in this article, and this is the second reason. Cavalli brings a 3.05 SIERA and a 26% strikeout rate for $6,500, while a .341 BABIP says the batted balls have been unkind to him, so even the tidy 3.70 ERA might be underselling it. Righties manage just a .261 wOBA against him, which covers most of what Pittsburgh throws out there. The name that gives me pause is Valdez, whose early barrel numbers are absurd, but one swing rarely sinks a start. At this price he is why my cash rosters can afford two studs.
Ryan Weathers (NYY) vs MIN | $9500 | GPP
The bad news arrives first with Weathers: the ball leaves the yard on him, and not by accident, with more than a quarter of his fly balls to righties clearing. Everything else reads like a front-line starter, 10 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 and an xFIP nearly a full run under his 4.09 ERA. That is the whole fight, elite skills against a genuine homer problem with Buxton in the other dugout. Early numbers suggest almost nobody pays up for him while Ryan soaks the attention, and that combination, real skills plus a scary surface line, is the tournament profile I hunt for.
Aaron Nola (PHI) at KC | $7400 | GPP
Nola's 6.04 ERA is one of the least believable numbers on the board. The skills say high 3s at worst, opponents carry a .331 BABIP against him, and only 68% of his runners have been stranded, the combination that usually corrects itself. So why not cash? Because the homer problem is not luck, more than 2 HR/9 with a quarter of fly balls leaving, and I already called Caglianone against him a section ago. Both takes can be right in the same game. At $7,400 the strikeouts and the win odds make him a fair tournament buy, but I will not anchor cash to a pitcher whose mistake pitch I am betting on two sections up.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Two starters tonight are living well ahead of their skills, and both matchups put the bill on the table.
Martín Pérez (ATL), Negative Regression Candidate
Pérez carries a 3.30 ERA with almost none of the profile that usually earns one. His xFIP sits two full runs higher, opponents hold a .236 BABIP that contact pitchers do not keep, and he has stranded 81% of the traffic he allows. He strikes out fewer than a fifth of his opponents, so the whole act depends on that luck holding. The Mets are the bats positioned to collect if it stops, and with McLean solid on the other side, New York interests me more than its price tags suggest.
Peter Lambert (HOU), Negative Regression Candidate
Lambert's 3.52 ERA leans on a .240 BABIP and an 81% strand rate, and neither tends to survive a full season. The tell is the homer column: barely 4% of his fly balls have cleared a wall even though righties slug .474 against him. A gap that wide is a countdown. Caminero, who has 21 homers and a .280 ISO against right-handed pitching, is the swing I would pay for at Daikin tonight.
Final Thoughts
My cash frame starts with Joe Ryan and Cavalli as the two arms, which leaves enough salary to get greedy with bats. Harper and Schwarber are the Phillies I refuse to cut, Wood joins when the salary bends, and Mayo at $3,400 with Caglianone at $4,700 covers the bottom of the build. Mize slides in for Ryan whenever I want one more expensive hitter instead.
Cleveland's rain chance near 40% is the only forecast on the card that might actually be worth keeping an eye on, and the White Sox side of that game is a bullpen relay anyway, with Murphy built for an inning and Fedde lurking for the long middle.
Tournaments start in Washington for me, Wood and Abrams against Chandler's walk-heavy profile in the day's best air. Weathers gives you the expensive-arm route almost nobody else takes, and Nola is the second pivot, priced off his results instead of his skills. Add Caminero against Lambert's inflated strand rate, and keep Mayo in every tournament roster you can manage, because a $3,400 bat with a .413 ISO split is where real leverage comes from. Happy Sunday. Nine games, no excuses.
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.