Weather to Watch
Chicago White Sox at Boston | Fenway Park | Overcast, 82F | Wind: 7 mph WSW
Warm evening with the breeze working out toward left, which nudges the scoring environment up a notch. I would call it a modest plus rather than a green light.
Miami at Atlanta | Truist Park | Mostly Clear, 79F | Wind: 4 mph SSE
A soft push across the yard that favors right-handed pull power a touch. Nothing here should change a roster decision on its own.
Minnesota at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Overcast, 91F | Wind: 1 mph SW
A 91-degree evening with dead-calm air, and the ball carries for it. The best power conditions of the night live here, and both offenses get to use them.
Pittsburgh at Milwaukee | American Family Field | Overcast, 73F | Wind: 8 mph NNE
Milwaukee is expected to leave the roof open with a 24% rain chance hanging around. Cool and damp trims carry a bit, and a late closure would erase the question entirely.
St. Louis at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Clear, 79F | Wind: 7 mph SE
The crosswind takes a little off balls hit to right, and lefty swings lose the most. That corner of the Bronx was built without any need for assistance, so I am not downgrading anyone over it.
Detroit at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Clear, 82F | Wind: 7 mph NNW
A warm night by Seattle standards with the roof expected open, and the heat outweighs a slight inward angle on the wind. This yard still plays bigger than most either way.
One roof is shut tonight, in Phoenix. Weather gets no vote there.
HR Calls
Ben Rice (NYY) $5,900 vs Andre Pallante
Rice has put together the loudest left-handed power season on this roster, and the matchup math is simpler than the price tag. Against righties he runs a .407 wOBA with a .329 ISO, and roughly a third of the fly balls he hits in that split have cleared a fence. Pallante is a ground ball pitcher first, I will grant that, but the lefties who do get him in the air have made it count, with a .167 HR/FB mark and a .411 slugging line in the split. A premium bat, the short right field corner, and mistakes that travel. I am paying.
Jac Caglianone (KC) $4,500 vs Dean Kremer
DraftKings is still pricing Caglianone like a rookie finding his footing, and the profile stopped looking like that a while ago. He punishes right-handed pitching with hard contact on nearly six of every ten balls he puts in play, and 29.5% of his flies in that split have gone out. Kremer has allowed 3.0 HR/9 this season, lefty bats have slugged .622 against him, and now he walks into 91-degree Kauffman air that turns warning-track contact into souvenirs. Mid-tier price, top-shelf conditions. That is the swing I want most tonight.
Royce Lewis (MIN) $3,800 vs Noah Cameron
Not many bats at this price arrive carrying a .381 ISO across their last 30 days. Lewis has that, and his season work against lefties backs it up: a .236 ISO with better than a quarter of his flies clearing in the split. Cameron's ERA looks respectable and his profile does not, with an xFIP near five and a half and a fly ball lean that gets dangerous in this heat. At $3,800 he is the value price with real power attached, and he shares the same friendly air as the Kansas City call above.
Stacks to Target
1. San Diego Padres vs Mitch Bratt (L) | Implied Total: 5.06 | ROO Score: 4.2/10 | Cash
San Diego carries the largest implied total of the night, and the arm across from them is the reason. Bratt has a 6.68 BB/9 across 20.2 big league innings, righties have posted a .370 wOBA while drawing a free pass better than 20% of the time, and a 6.32 xFIP says none of it is bad luck. He also averages barely four innings a start, so Arizona's bullpen inherits half this game, and I will be straight with you: that relief group is competent, so most of the scoring chances come early. Tatis owns a .381 wOBA against lefties with 37.5% of his flies in the split leaving, France has been even better at a 144 wRC+, and Machado brings a .213 ISO to the middle of it. The field will be here in numbers, and I think the field has it right.
Core pieces: Fernando Tatis $6,000 (R), Manny Machado $5,300 (R), Jackson Merrill $4,700 (L), Ty France $4,300 (R), Luis Campusano $3,500 (R)
2. New York Yankees vs Andre Pallante (R) | Implied Total: 4.96 | ROO Score: 4.6/10 | Cash
The Yankee card stacks five or six left-handed swings in the one park that rewards exactly that, and Pallante's split sheet cooperates. Lefty hitters have hit him to the tune of a .321 wOBA and a .411 slugging mark while righties have managed almost nothing, so which side to build from is not a debate. His ground ball lean caps how loud the early innings get, which is my one hesitation, but the St. Louis relief group behind him runs a soft xFIP with its own homer trouble against lefties, and the porch shortens every mistake. Rice anchors it, Grisham and Chisholm ride along, and McMahon at $2,300 hitting seventh is the glue that lets an expensive build breathe. Broadly owned for good reason, and I am fine sharing it in cash.
Core pieces: Ben Rice $5,900 (L), Jazz Chisholm $4,700 (L), Trent Grisham $4,300 (L), Spencer Jones $3,300 (L), Ryan McMahon $2,300 (L)
3. Minnesota Twins vs Noah Cameron (L) | Implied Total: 4.25 | ROO Score: 4.0/10 | GPP
I can hear the objection already: 4.25 implied runs is nothing special. The pieces underneath are what sell it. Cameron's 4.61 ERA sits nearly a run better than his 5.48 xFIP, he has no safe side since lefties have hit him harder than righties this season, and once he exits, Kansas City's bullpen is the softest relief matchup on this slate with an xFIP over six and 2.3 HR/9 allowed. All of it happens in that same 91-degree air. Jeffers is the priciest piece and the best one, running a .413 wOBA and a 166 wRC+ against lefties, Lewis you already know about from the section above, and Martin reaches base at a 128 wRC+ clip in the split to keep innings alive. Projections have this group well behind the two offenses above in roster share, which is exactly the point of building it in tournaments.
Core pieces: Ryan Jeffers $5,600 (R), Royce Lewis $3,800 (R), Josh Bell $3,600 (S), Luke Keaschall $3,300 (R), Austin Martin $3,000 (R)
Pitchers
Paul Skenes (PIT) vs MIL | $9,600 | CASH
There is a version of this writeup where I talk myself out of the obvious, and I am not doing it. Skenes has run poorly this season by his standards: a 3.91 ERA against a 2.76 xFIP, a .312 BABIP, and only about two thirds of his baserunners stranded, which for an arm with this stuff is plain misfortune. He still misses bats at 11.3 K/9. Milwaukee sits at 3.93 implied runs, their lineup leans lefty while his strikeout punch is loudest against righties, and even so the .289 wOBA he allows to lefties hardly counts as a weakness. He projects as the most rostered arm tonight and deserves to be, so he is my cash anchor.
Bryan Woo (SEA) vs DET | $9,000 | CASH
Woo's surface line is lying about him. The 4.57 ERA comes with a 61.9% strand rate near the bottom of what any quality starter runs, while the inputs read like an ace: 9.1 K/9 against 1.9 BB/9, a 3.46 xFIP, and a SIERA nudging three. Detroit checks in at 3.40 implied runs, the second-lowest figure on the board. Getting the discount and the matchup at the same time is rare enough that I am not overthinking it, and I am comfortable pairing him with Skenes in cash when the bats allow.
Sonny Gray (BOS) vs CWS | $9,300 | CASH
Gray and Fenway have been a clean marriage so far, and I want to flag the fine print before endorsing it. An 82.2% strand rate is doing some lifting under the 2.94 ERA, so the real arm is closer to his 3.53 xFIP, good rather than great. The matchup covers most of that gap: the White Sox carry a 3.89 implied total, he fills the zone at 2.39 BB/9, and a 48% ground ball rate keeps tonight's outward breeze from bothering me much. He is the second cash arm when I cannot fit both of the names above.
Will Warren (NYY) vs STL | $7,800 | GPP
St. Louis is the offense I most want to pick on at this price point. The Cardinals carry a 3.54 implied total, Warren strikes out more than a batter per inning, and a 4.16 ERA against a 3.96 xFIP means nothing about the season is fake. What keeps him out of my cash builds is the lefty side of his ledger, a .338 wOBA and 1.47 HR/9 allowed in that split, plus enough walks to let one bad inning spiral. At under $8,000 with modest projected interest, that is a trade I will take in tournaments.
Eury Perez (MIA) vs ATL | $8,300 | GPP
I could argue this one either way, which tells me it belongs in tournaments. The strikeout stuff is real, 9.7 K/9 with a 13.5% swinging strike mark, and the salary undercuts arms with worse profiles. The trouble is the shape of the assignment: Atlanta leans right-handed, and righty bats have tagged Perez for a .323 wOBA with 1.80 HR/9 in the split, while Truist gets a small power bump from the weather tonight. The ceiling and the bust case are both real here, so I want shares rather than certainty.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Sean Burke (CWS), Negative Regression Candidate
Burke's 3.05 ERA and his 5.10 xFIP are describing two different pitchers, and the gap between them is about as wide as this sport produces. An 80.9% strand rate and a 6.3% HR/FB mark both sit at extremes no fly ball arm holds for a full season, and Fenway with the wind working out is an unkind place to start giving it back. Boston at 4.61 implied runs is the direct beneficiary, which is part of why Gray plus a Red Sox bat or two keeps showing up in my builds.
Noah Cameron (KC), Negative Regression Candidate
Cameron reads fine in the box score at 4.61, and the machinery underneath disagrees at a 5.48 xFIP. He does not miss enough bats to control his own outcomes, the fly ball lean is dangerous in his home park on a hot night, and lefties have out-hit righties against him this season, which removes the usual escape route of a favorable side. The Twins section above is the practical application. The shorter version: the ERA is the nicest thing anyone can say about his year.
Final Thoughts
Cash for me starts with Skenes, with Woo beside him when the salary works, since both arms are priced under what their underlying seasons deserve. The bats come from San Diego, where Tatis and France are the two I surrender last, and the Yankee lefties fill in around them. McMahon at $2,300 and Martin at $3,000 are the price breaks that let a roster hold two expensive arms without going thin everywhere else.
Before lock, the Milwaukee roof is the forecast item with teeth, since a closure would settle the rain question in that game, and Seattle projects open on a warm enough night to matter for anyone leaning Mariners. The Kauffman temperature deserves one more look too, because a good chunk of tonight's Minnesota and Kansas City thinking rides on that heat holding into the evening.
For tournaments, my money funnels toward the heat. The Twins against Cameron and that Kansas City bullpen is the build I like most, and if you would rather zag inside the same park, the Royals against Kremer work too, since a third of the fly balls he has allowed this season have left the yard and Caglianone gives that path a headliner. Seattle at 4.60 implied against Anderson, on a big league mound for the first time since mid-June and likely on a managed workload, is the quieter version of the same idea. The arm-side pivot is Warren over Harrison: Harrison projects among the more popular pitchers tonight while making his first start in four weeks, and I would rather not pay full price for rust.
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.