Weather to Watch
Chicago White Sox at Cleveland | Progressive Field | Clear, 96F | Wind: 8 mph W
Ninety-six in Cleveland is strange air, and heat is the ingredient that adds feet to fly balls. The breeze runs sideways, so it neither helps nor hurts, and I would treat Progressive as a sneaky power yard tonight rather than the neutral park the book says it is.
St. Louis at Atlanta | Truist Park | Overcast, 97F | Wind: 8 mph E
Atlanta is even hotter, though the air is drifting back toward the plate and steals a little of what the temperature gives. Call it a mild boost. I side with the thermometer in that argument, just not by a landslide.
Tampa Bay at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Overcast, 94F | Wind: 13 mph SSW
The best power conditions of the night are here, 94 degrees with a 13 mph push toward the seats. Kauffman's deep alleys normally swallow home runs, and this is the kind of evening that hands a few back.
Los Angeles Angels at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Overcast, 65F | Wind: 8 mph SW
Thirty degrees cooler than everything else on the card, and that heavy marine air does what it always does to a ball in the air. Runs in Seattle come the slow way tonight.
San Diego at Los Angeles Dodgers | Dodger Stadium | Clear, 68F | Wind: 8 mph WSW
A calm, pleasant evening in Chavez Ravine. The air movement leans toward center, but at 68 degrees I would not bet on any extra carry. This one plays true to the park.
Globe Life has its roof shut for Detroit and Texas, so that game answers to the dimensions and nothing else.
HR Calls
Miguel Vargas (CWS) $5600 vs Slade Cecconi
The White Sox lineup does not scare anyone, but Vargas has turned into the exception worth paying for. He owns a .207 ISO with 11 homers against right-handed pitching this season, and Cecconi is the kind of righty he feasts on: same-side bats are slugging .453 off him, more than a fifth of his fly balls to righties have left the park, and he strikes out fewer than one in six of them. Bake in a 96-degree night and a Cleveland relief group that has been tagged for over two homers per nine by righties across the last 30 days, and the window stays open even after Cecconi leaves. Of the three calls tonight, he is the one I want the most of.
Matt Olson (ATL) $4800 vs Dustin May
I actually think May is a decent buy this season, and I will make that case later, but lefties are the crack in the profile. They carry a .350 wOBA against him with a 16.1% HR/FB, and he walks 8.6% of them, which means Olson gets pitches to hit with a base open behind him. Olson against righties is still a monster, a .276 ISO and a .542 slug with hard contact north of 52%. At 97 degrees in Truist, the mid-tier price is a gift.
Kerry Carpenter (DET) $3500 vs Nathan Eovaldi
A roof, a 7.5 total, and a pitcher I like for cash on the other side. Strange place for a homer pick, I know. Eovaldi's one real leak is the long ball to left-handed bats, 1.63 HR/9 with a 22.2% HR/FB, and Carpenter is the bat built to attack it, a .290 ISO against righties with 13 homers in just 185 chances and 51.9% hard contact. At $3,500 you are paying for one swing, and I like this one more than the price says I should.
Stacks to Target
1. Tampa Bay vs Stephen Kolek (R) | Implied Total: 5.48 | ROO Score: 6.3/10 | Cash
No offense tonight is implied for more runs, none gets better weather, and the starter in the way profiles as the wrong arm for both. Kolek's trouble is with right-handed bats, who reach at a .335 wOBA and slug .448 against him with a 25% HR/FB, and he strikes out barely one in ten of them, so the contact just keeps coming. Tampa Bay's righty group is built to collect: as a team they run a 129 wRC+ with a 26.2% HR/FB when righties face a righty, and Junior Caminero has 20 of his homers off that side alone. Kolek also has not started in 11 days, so I would not count on him carrying this deep, and the Kansas City relief crew behind him has been the worst on the slate, a 5.76 ERA over the last 30 days with nearly five walks per nine. The field will be heavy here, and for once I think the field has it right, so this is my cash stack without much overthinking.
Core pieces: Junior Caminero $6300 (R), Yandy Diaz $5300 (R), Jonathan Aranda $4300 (L), Cedric Mullins $3300 (L), Victor Mesa $3200 (L)
2. Los Angeles Dodgers vs Randy Vásquez (R) | Implied Total: 5.42 | ROO Score: 5.5/10 | Cash
Vásquez's 4.48 ERA undersells how hittable this has been. He strikes out barely 17% of the lefties he faces, both sides of the plate are making hard contact at a 47% clip, and left-handed bats in particular have a .366 wOBA and a .505 slug off him. That is the Ohtani and Freeman side of the plate. He also has not pitched in 13 days, which likely means an early exit, and the San Diego bullpen has its own righty problem, a .377 wOBA allowed with more than two homers per nine over the last 30, so Pages and Betts stay live in the late innings. The one honest knock is the cool park, which trims the ceiling from fireworks to a steady pile of baserunners and extra-base hits. That is the shape cash lineups want anyway.
Core pieces: Shohei Ohtani $6500 (L), Freddie Freeman $5800 (L), Andy Pages $5500 (R), Mookie Betts $5100 (R), Kyle Tucker $4800 (L)
3. Seattle vs Walbert Ureña (R) | Implied Total: 4.88 | ROO Score: 4.0/10 | GPP
This one is a bet that the record is lying. Ureña carries a 3.16 ERA that his own skills want nothing to do with, and the tell is the free passes: he walks better than 14% of the left-handed hitters he sees. Seattle happens to start a card full of lefty bats, Crawford, Naylor, Canzone, Raley, plus Raleigh from the switch side, and Mariner lefties have hit righty pitching with a 20.9% HR/FB this year. Cold T-Mobile air clips some of the power, so I am picturing walks stacking into crooked innings more than a homer parade. The Angels bullpen is respectable overall but softer against lefties. With the field crowding into Kauffman, this is my favorite tournament pivot of the night.
Core pieces: Cal Raleigh $4300 (S), Josh Naylor $4100 (L), Luke Raley $4100 (L), Dominic Canzone $3600 (L), J.P. Crawford $3400 (L)
Pitchers
There is no true ace tonight, just four arms I can talk myself into at different prices. The order below is roughly my comfort level.
Davis Martin (CWS) vs CLE | $8500 | CASH
Nobody wants to buy White Sox pitching, which is how a 3.00 ERA sitting on a 2.92 FIP ends up priced at $8,500. He is running a .315 BABIP, so no batted-ball luck is propping the line up, and the 8.7 K/9 against a 2.3 BB/9 with almost no homers allowed covers every box I care about. Cleveland's implied total is barely above four. The 96-degree heat is the one thing I side-eye, and I am starting him in cash anyway.
Nathan Eovaldi (TEX) vs DET | $9000 | CASH
Chalk, and I am not fighting it. The skill indicators all read better than the 3.96 ERA, a 3.00 SIERA with 15% swinging strikes and a walk rate barely above two per nine, because an unsustainable share of his fly balls have snuck over the wall this year. A closed roof against a Detroit lineup implied for three and a half runs is about as calm as his job gets. He is my other cash arm, and I could argue him over Martin either way.
Bryce Miller (SEA) vs LAA | $9500 | GPP
The most popular arm on the slate is the one I trust least at the price. That 1.99 ERA is standing on a .216 BABIP and a strand rate flirting with perfect, while the underlying run estimators sit two full runs higher. The matchup is his safety net, since the Angels carry the lowest implied total anywhere at 2.62, so he can coast to a fine line tonight. I just want that risk in tournaments, where the night the luck quits hurts everyone else more than it hurts me.
Roki Sasaki (LAD) vs SD | $7700 | GPP
I keep going back and forth on Sasaki. The whiffs are real, a 9 K/9 with a swinging-strike rate near 13%, and San Diego arrives implied for barely three runs. The trouble is the mistake pitch, 1.75 HR/9 on the season, though a 68-degree night at Dodger Stadium is the most forgiving spot on this card for that particular flaw. The walks keep his floor shaky, so he is a tournament arm, and at $7,700 he unlocks the expensive bats.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Dustin May (STL), Positive Regression Candidate
May's 4.33 ERA is the work of a 65.1% strand rate, one of the ugliest in baseball, sitting under a 3.55 xFIP and a .309 BABIP. The skills describe a mid-3s pitcher who has been paying full price for every baserunner. I am not sure tonight is the payoff, since 97 degrees in Atlanta is a rough room for a correction, but the buy-low window on him is open and I doubt it stays open long.
Walbert Ureña (LAA), Negative Regression Candidate
The 3.16 ERA flatters him. Underneath it sits a .266 BABIP, nearly five walks per nine, and run estimators north of five, which is a combination that eventually sends the bill. Seattle gets the first crack at the correction tonight, which is why the Mariners live in my stacks section.
Final Thoughts
My cash build starts with Martin or Eovaldi, and there is a case for finding the salary to jam both. The bats funnel to Kauffman, Caminero and Diaz as the anchors, with a Dodger lefty or two, Freeman being the steadiest, layered in where the salary fits. Carpenter at $3,500 is the release valve that makes the whole thing solvable, and Mesa or Mullins fill the last outfield spot without pain.
For tournaments, the Tampa Bay and Kansas City game is the one worth attacking from both sides. The total is 10.5, each offense is implied for five runs or more, and neither starter is the type to slam a door, especially with Seymour off a 12-day gap between starts and unlikely to work deep, a 54% fly-ball arm in the wrong yard for it. Pair the Tampa righty core with a Royals bring-back of Witt, Perez, and Marte and you are betting on the game the weather wants to happen. Away from that yard, the Seattle group against Ureña is my favorite lower-owned swing, Sasaki is the arm dart, and Vargas deserves a sprinkle everywhere for the reasons above.
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.