Weather to Watch
Los Angeles Angels at Baltimore | Oriole Park at Camden Yards | Clear, 86F | Wind: 6 mph SSW
Blowing out toward center on an 86-degree afternoon, and Camden grades as the best power air on this slate by a comfortable gap. Contact in the air travels today.
Athletics at Cincinnati | Great American Ball Park | Clear, 82F | Wind: 2 mph SE
Barely a breath of wind, but 82 degrees in a yard this generous keeps the carry above average anyway. No reason to shy away from power in this game.
New York Mets at Cleveland | Progressive Field | Partly Cloudy, 84F | Wind: 9 mph WNW
A warm crosswind that leans toward the left-handed pull side while giving righties no lift at all. I would let it break a tie between two similar bats and nothing more.
Pittsburgh at Milwaukee | American Family Field | Partly Cloudy, 77F | Wind: 4 mph SE
Milwaukee should have the roof open, and the light air angling in leaves the game close to neutral. This is the one afternoon spot where the forecast is a non-story.
Toronto at Chicago Cubs | Wrigley Field | Overcast, 74F | Wind: 6 mph ENE
Wrigley with the wind coming in off the lake is a pitcher's building, and today the incoming air takes the biggest bite out of left-handed fly balls. Arms play up here all afternoon.
HR Calls
Gunnar Henderson (BAL) $5,000 vs Ryan Johnson
Not much about Henderson's season line against righties looks like the hitter we know, and I am choosing to ignore it. The contact quality never left: nearly half of what he puts in play against righties is struck hard, and he has 12 homers in the split despite the sagging batting average. Johnson is the cure for whatever ails a left-handed bat, allowing a .505 slug to that side with 2.4 HR/9, and Camden's air is blowing out on a hot day. An expensive bat in the best power spot on the board.
JJ Bleday (CIN) $4,400 vs Mason Barnett
Bleday has grown into one of the more dangerous lefty bats nobody talks about, with a .245 ISO and 14 homers against right-handed pitching this season. Barnett has faced big-league lefties for all of 14 innings and they are slugging .518 against him, and his split xFIP crowds five. Great American Ball Park does the rest. This is my favorite swing at a mid-tier price today.
Tyler Stephenson (CIN) $3,200 vs Mason Barnett
A cleanup hitter at $3,200 is usually a trap. Stephenson is the exception, because the power inputs are loud: a 14% barrel rate, hard contact on half his batted balls against righties, and a .185 ISO in the split. Barnett also runs a 4.3 BB/9, and a young arm pitching behind in counts is exactly how a catcher with this kind of thump runs into one. I will have plenty.
Stacks to Target
1. Baltimore Orioles vs Ryan Johnson (R) | Implied Total: 6.00 | ROO Score: 6.3/10 | Cash
Johnson carries a 7.63 ERA next to a 7.42 xFIP, and for once the two numbers agree: there is no bad luck to blame here. He is allowing a wOBA north of .365 to both sides of the plate, he strands barely half the runners he puts on, and the Angels bullpen behind him has been homer-prone all year. Baltimore's lefty group of Beavers, Henderson, Holliday, and Cowser gets the fat side of his profile, that .505 slug allowed to left-handed bats. Add the wind blowing out at Camden and a six-run implied total, and this is chalk I am swallowing without complaint. Everyone will have some. They should.
Core pieces: Dylan Beavers $2,800 (L), Pete Alonso $5,500 (R), Gunnar Henderson $5,000 (L), Christian Encarnacion-Strand $4,100 (R), Jackson Holliday $3,400 (L)
2. Cincinnati Reds vs Mason Barnett (R) | Implied Total: 5.69 | ROO Score: 5.5/10 | Cash
Barnett has thrown fewer than 30 innings in the majors and the early returns are shaky: a 4.93 ERA, an xFIP crowding six and a half, and 1.5 HR/9. The deeper problem for the Athletics is what comes after him, because their bullpen has been reached for 2.3 HR/9 this year, enough to turn a five-run implied total into seven. Cincinnati's lefty side, Bleday and the switch-hitting De La Cruz, lines up against his worst split, while Stewart and Stephenson bring enough right-handed thump that you do not have to force handedness at all. Heavily rostered, and it should be. My only quibble is that everyone else has done this same math.
Core pieces: Elly De La Cruz $5,900 (S), Sal Stewart $4,900 (R), JJ Bleday $4,400 (L), Tyler Stephenson $3,200 (R), Eugenio Suarez $3,400 (R)
3. Milwaukee Brewers vs Braxton Ashcraft (R) | Implied Total: 4.13 | ROO Score: 3.5/10 | GPP
Ashcraft is a good young pitcher, and I say nicer things about him a section down. His one leak happens to be the exact shape of this lineup. Left-handed bats have reached him for 1.64 HR/9 with a 21% HR/FB, and Milwaukee runs out two lefty hitters in Turang and Bauers who each carry a 150 wRC+ against righties this season. The implied total is quiet and the ownership should be too, which is the point. If Ashcraft's fly-ball problem shows up, the people holding Brewers bats will be very alone and very happy. That is my kind of tournament stack.
Core pieces: Brice Turang $5,400 (L), Jackson Chourio $5,600 (R), Jake Bauers $4,900 (L), William Contreras $4,400 (R), Garrett Mitchell $4,000 (L)
Pitchers
Dylan Cease (TOR) vs CHC | $10,500 | CASH
I cannot really build an argument against him. Cease is striking out 36% of the hitters he faces with a swinging-strike rate north of 15%, the 2.42 ERA matches the profile underneath it, and now he gets a Cubs lineup in a Wrigley wind that knocks fly balls down. No arm on this slate draws more rosters, and none deserves it more. Pay up.
Nolan McLean (NYM) vs CLE | $9,000 | CASH
The rookie has been steady enough that the word rookie barely applies: a 3.31 ERA with a 3.27 xFIP, so what you see is what he is. He is holding righties to a .252 wOBA, and Cleveland's implied total sits under four. At $1,500 less than Cease he is the natural pivot for anyone who wants to spread salary to bats. My lean is Cease in cash and McLean in anything where I want to be different without being reckless.
Dustin May (MIL) vs PIT | $7,000 | CASH
That 4.38 ERA is lying to you. May's xFIP is 3.67, opponents are batting .325 when they put the ball in play against him, and he has stranded far fewer runners than a pitcher with his stuff should. Sooner or later that evens out. Now he draws Pittsburgh, the lowest implied total on the board at 3.37, in a park playing neutral today. $7,000 is the right price to find out.
Braxton Ashcraft (PIT) vs MIL | $8,700 | GPP
Everything under the hood is better than the 3.97 ERA: a 3.24 xFIP, 9.9 K/9, and a 2.2 BB/9. So why is he not in cash? Because the home-run problem against lefties is real, and Milwaukee's best bats swing from that side. The strikeout ceiling makes him a fine tournament arm. I covered the other half of this argument in the stacks above, and I mean both halves.
Foster Griffin (CLE) vs NYM | $8,500 | GPP
Almost nobody will roster Griffin, and the shiny 3.07 ERA says they are wrong to skip him. I am not so sure. Opponents are hitting just .258 when the ball lands in play, he is stranding 81% of runners, and 18% of the flies against him have cleared a fence, a mix that usually gets corrected in public. He also strikes out enough hitters that the good version wins a tournament. Low ownership plus a wide range of outcomes fits a tournament roster and nothing else I build today.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
David Peterson (CHC), Positive Regression Candidate
Peterson's Cubs tenure has produced a 6.16 ERA that his 4.77 xFIP wants no part of. Opponents own a .330 mark when their contact finds grass, he has stranded under 60% of his baserunners, and neither number is the kind a ground-ball lefty usually sustains. Today he gets a wind blowing in at Wrigley, the setting where a correction tends to show up. At $6,300 he is a tournament-only dart, and this is a fair day to throw it.
Andrew Abbott (CIN), Negative Regression Candidate
Abbott's 3.91 ERA is better than he has pitched. The 4.62 xFIP says so, and a thin .265 batted-ball average against paired with a 77% strand rate says it twice. The soft spot sits on the righty side of the plate, where he walks nearly as many hitters as he strikes out and allows a .320 wOBA. The Athletics can counter with right-handed bats up and down the card, and Jacob Wilson and Tommy White are the names I would use to chase the correction.
Final Thoughts
My cash game starts at pitcher, and it starts with Cease. From there I want the spine of the Baltimore offense, Henderson and Alonso at minimum, with Cincinnati exposure through Bleday or Stephenson, and Cowser at $2,500 is the salary relief that makes all of it fit. May at $7,000 as the second arm keeps you from choosing between Cease and bats. That construction leaves enough room that you probably will not need to punt anywhere else.
The 12:35 lock in Baltimore means this slate arrives fast, so do your final pass early. The two things I would recheck near lock are the Wrigley wind reading, since the 2:20 start leaves it the most time to shift and both offenses there are priced on thin totals, and the Camden heat, which is forecast to build through the afternoon and only helps the over.
For tournaments, the Milwaukee stack is the pivot I trust most, and pairing it with Ashcraft's strikeouts on the other side is a legitimate double-tap on the same quiet game. Griffin and Peterson are the two arms whose range of outcomes the field is mispricing in opposite directions. And if you want one more contrarian move, underweight Cincinnati relative to Baltimore: both are correct, but only one of them comes with a six-run implied total and a breeze pushing balls toward the seats.
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.