Weather to Watch
Philadelphia at St. Louis | Busch Stadium | Overcast, 99F | Wind: 12 mph SSW
Ninety-nine degrees, and a park that spends most of the calendar siding with pitchers quits doing it at that reading. The southerly air is heading for the outfield, righty carry takes slightly more of the boost than lefty carry, and there is enough here for everyone in the batter's box.
Tampa Bay at Athletics | Sutter Health Park | Clear, 87F | Wind: 11 mph SW
Warm, dry Sacramento evening with the breeze running toward the fence. This is the second building tonight where I would let a forecast move a projection instead of just confirming one.
New York Mets at Atlanta | Truist Park | Clear, 92F | Wind: 9 mph WSW
Heat does most of the lifting and the wind adds a small assist on top of it. Lefty pull power takes the larger share, worth remembering when you reach the pitcher discussion for this game.
Baltimore at Minnesota | Target Field | Clear, 91F | Wind: 4 mph NE
Ninety-one against a soft breeze drifting back in, and the temperature wins that argument without much trouble. Watch the shape of it, though, because the homer number moves a lot and the runs number barely twitches.
Seattle at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Overcast, 88F | Wind: 5 mph N
Eighty-eight in the Bronx and almost nothing blowing. The building supplies the help by itself, and the short porch aims most of what exists at lefty swings.
Texas at Los Angeles Angels | Angel Stadium | Clear, 79F | Wind: 9 mph SW
Comfortable night, air drifting out, a modest lift for both dugouts. Anaheim still grades as one of the stingier power yards going, so a 9 mph reading should not talk anybody into anything.
Boston at Toronto | Rogers Centre | Mostly Clear, 77F | Wind: 7 mph SE
Toronto projects to leave the roof up, and 7 mph pointed toward the fence is worth a nudge for righty bats and close to nothing for lefties. Minor either way.
Kansas City at Los Angeles Dodgers | Dodger Stadium | Clear, 73F | Wind: 6 mph WSW
Seventy-three with a soft drift toward the right-field pavilion. Lefty bats get the better end of a small number, and there is nothing else here.
Milwaukee at San Diego | Petco Park | Mostly Clear, 76F | Wind: 6 mph WNW
Heavy marine air and a crosswind, which nets out to a slight subtraction for right-handed bats and a whisper of help for lefties. Petco being Petco.
Cincinnati at Chicago White Sox | Rate Field | Overcast, 74F | Wind: 3 mph SE
Cool and soaked, 91% humidity, and what little wind there is drifting back toward home. This is the one main-slate yard where conditions take runs away, and the arms collect.
Houston at San Francisco | Oracle Park | Foggy, 60F | Wind: 13 mph W
Sixty degrees and fog rolling off the bay, mostly offset by a 13 mph push toward the fence. Those two roughly cancel, which still leaves this the last place I would shop for a home run tonight.
One roof on the main slate. Chase Field projects shut for the Rockies and Diamondbacks, so tonight the dimensions of the building matter and Phoenix weather does not.
HR Calls
Junior Caminero (TB) $6,500 vs Mason Barnett
Caminero has spent this season becoming the hitter the scouting reports kept promising, and against right-handed pitching the case is no longer subtle: a .282 ISO, 27 homers in the split, hard contact on better than half his batted balls, and 43.5% of his fly balls off righties clearing a fence. Barnett is a converted arm with 33 innings on the year and a walk rate above four per nine to right-handed bats, and a young arm that far behind in counts eventually has to put one in the middle of the zone. When he does, 25.0% of the fly balls righties hit against him have already left the yard. Add Sacramento at 87 degrees, a breeze headed for the outfield, and the largest team number on the board, and I have no urge to get cute at the top of an order.
Jazz Chisholm (NYY) $4,600 vs Bryan Woo
DraftKings appears to be charging for a batting average instead of a power profile, because Chisholm at $4,600 owns 13 homers against righties, a 27.7% HR/FB rate, 45.6% hard contact, and a 54.9% pull rate that Yankee Stadium was drawn up for. Woo is a very good pitcher, and I will say that plainly before the rest of this. Left-handed bats are where he springs a leak. They have a .394 slug and 1.13 HR/9 off him with a third of their contact in the air and hard contact at 45.5%, and his split xFIP to that side runs a run and a half worse than it does to righties. Eighty-eight-degree air and the short porch handle the rest.
Joc Pederson (TEX) $3,300 vs Ryan Johnson
I keep waiting for this price to move and it will not. Pederson is hitting leadoff with 20 homers off right-handed pitching, a .248 ISO, hard contact on nearly half of what he puts in play, and he clears the fence on 30.8% of his fly balls in the split. Johnson has walked 5.4 left-handed hitters per nine on his way to a .483 slug allowed and 2.22 HR/9 to that side, and issuing them at that rate leaves him constantly in counts where he has to throw a strike he would rather not, which is how a mistake finds the seats. Anaheim is the concession, since it holds power down better than almost any park in use tonight. At this salary I will trade a small park for the softest arm on the slate.
Stacks to Target
1. Tampa Bay vs Mason Barnett (R) | Implied Total: 6.01 | ROO Score: 6.5/10 | Cash
Nobody on this board is priced for more offense. The Rays sit inside the only ten-run game total tonight, and the setting cooperates, with Sacramento at 87 degrees and the wind headed out. Barnett has thrown 33 innings across 16 appearances this year behind a 5.68 ERA and a 6.57 xFIP, and neither handedness offers him shelter: lefties have hit him for a .548 slug and 2.40 HR/9, righties have taken him deep at 1.93 HR/9 with a 25.0% HR/FB, and he is walking better than four per nine to each group. Tampa Bay answers on both hands, since its right-handed group carries a 117 wRC+ versus righties and turns 28.3% of its fly balls into homers there, while Aranda and Hicks sit at 141 and 144 in the same matchup. He also averages under five innings, and the Athletics relief group that follows him runs an xFIP near 5.80 against righties and 5.50 against lefties. The sixth inning is no reprieve. Everybody will be here. So will I.
Core pieces: Junior Caminero $6,500 (R), Yandy Diaz $5,500 (R), Liam Hicks $4,600 (L), Jonathan Aranda $4,500 (L), Victor Mesa $4,100 (L)
2. Los Angeles Dodgers vs Michael Wacha (R) | Implied Total: 5.95 | ROO Score: 6.4/10 | Cash
Wacha's 3.44 ERA is a full run better than the strikeout and walk profile beneath it deserves, and the interesting part is which half of the plate has been carrying the illusion. Lefties have been held to a .358 slug and a 9.2% HR/FB, propped up by an 87.3% strand rate no pitcher sustains, while righties have gotten a .458 slug, 1.45 HR/9, a 20.8% HR/FB, and hard contact on 43.5% of their swings. That points toward Pages, Betts and Teoscar Hernandez, and I will admit the split and the roster disagree, since Ohtani and Freeman are better hitters and I am not bending a build around a few hundred plate appearances of platoon data. Buy the good bats and let handedness break ties at the margin. No bullpen here handles left-handed hitters worse than Kansas City's, near a 6.65 xFIP against them, and that is what makes a quiet 73-degree night in Chavez Ravine safe rather than dull.
Core pieces: Shohei Ohtani $6,400 (L), Freddie Freeman $5,400 (L), Andy Pages $4,900 (R), Mookie Betts $4,100 (R), Teoscar Hernandez $3,900 (R)
3. Philadelphia vs Andre Pallante (R) | Implied Total: 5.16 | ROO Score: 5.5/10 | GPP
While Pallante is a competent pitcher, a 3.63 ERA next to a 3.79 xFIP with nothing lucky running in either direction, he is a ground-ball arm being asked to survive the hottest reading on the board with 12 mph of wind headed for the outfield. His one soft spot lines up with almost the whole Philadelphia card. Lefties have gotten a .392 slug off him with a 16.2% HR/FB and 39.1% hard contact, while the right-handed side has managed only a .317 slug and 0.61 HR/9, and the Phillies send six lefty bats through this order. Schwarber and Harper are the obvious names, having turned 44.2% and 36.8% of their fly balls off right-handed pitching into homers, though Marsh at 47.1% hard contact and Stott at 45.2% are what let you go deep without spending. St. Louis relievers sit near a 5.47 xFIP versus lefties, so nothing improves late. None of this is a secret, and the edge comes from going five or six deep here while most of the room buys the top two bats and stops.
Core pieces: Kyle Schwarber $6,200 (L), Bryce Harper $5,700 (L), Luis Arraez $4,500 (L), Brandon Marsh $4,200 (L), Bryson Stott $3,800 (L)
Pitchers
Dylan Cease (TOR) vs BOS | $10,500 | CASH
There is no version of this where I talk myself out of him. Cease is striking out 36.4% of the hitters he faces on a 15.3% swinging-strike rate, his 2.28 ERA is endorsed rather than undercut by a 2.41 xFIP and a 2.21 SIERA, and he has averaged better than seven innings across his last five turns. Boston arrives with the smallest team total on the slate inside the lowest game total of the night. He draws more attention than any arm here, and that is not a reason to look elsewhere.
Cristopher Sanchez (PHI) vs STL | $10,700 | CASH
The most expensive arm on the board is also the one whose surface line understates him, which is a strange sentence to have to write. His 2.65 ERA sits a touch above a 2.51 xFIP and a 2.41 SIERA, a .337 batted-ball average against accounts for the small gap, and 10.5 K/9 from a left-hander walking barely two per nine is the shape worth paying up for. St. Louis checks in under three and a half runs. The uncomfortable part is the setting, since 99 degrees and a breeze toward the fence have turned Busch into a hitting yard for one night, so I would call him the second-safest arm on the slate rather than the safest.
Kyle Harrison (MIL) vs SD | $9,500 | CASH
Harrison buys most of the Cease strikeout argument for a thousand dollars less. He is missing bats at 11.3 K/9 with a walk rate under 6%, and a 2.30 SIERA and a 2.91 xFIP both sign off on the 2.86 ERA rather than picking a fight with it. The one thing I would flag is an 82.9% strand rate that is not going to hold. San Diego priced under three and a third runs inside Petco is enough cover that I am fine finding out on some other night.
Ryan Weathers (NYY) vs SEA | $8,700 | GPP
Almost nobody is going to roster Weathers, and the 3.79 ERA is why. It is also wrong. A 3.03 xFIP and a 2.92 SIERA describe an arm nearly a run better than that, and 9.8 K/9 with a 26.2% strikeout rate says the stuff shows up on time. The ERA came from home runs, a 17.2% HR/FB overall that climbs to 25.5% against right-handed bats, and rates that extreme drift back toward the middle. So why not cash? Because the long ball is his one failure mode and he is throwing in the friendliest homer building on the slate, even against a Seattle order priced at 3.60. That range of outcomes belongs in a tournament.
Sean Burke (CWS) vs CIN | $8,500 | GPP
Burke has turned into a strikeout arm, 10.1 K/9 and a 27.4% strikeout rate against a walk rate near 7%, with a 3.36 FIP and a 2.90 SIERA underneath the 3.09 ERA. Cincinnati is priced at 3.26, and Rate Field tonight is cool and humid with the air pushing back over the plate, the rare main-slate environment that subtracts. What checks my enthusiasm is an 81.3% strand rate, which means some of the run prevention is borrowed rather than earned. Interest in him should stay well under what the cash names in this section pull.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Martin Perez (ATL), Negative Regression Candidate
The distance between Perez's 3.15 ERA and his 5.23 xFIP is the widest I found on this slate, and nothing underneath argues for the pretty number. He is allowing hard contact on 40.1% of batted balls while opponents hit .231 when the ball finds grass and he strands 80.5% of the runners he allows, and that mix does not survive a warm night. The righty half is where the whole thing is buried: a .217 batted-ball average against, an 85.2% strand rate, 4.27 walks per nine, and a 16.7% HR/FB. The Mets are the offense standing on the other end of that correction, and Luis Robert and Francisco Alvarez are the two right-handed bats I would use to chase it in 92-degree air.
Walker Buehler (SD), Positive Regression Candidate
Buehler has pitched better than a 5.08 ERA suggests, and it is not close. His xFIP sits at 4.11 with a 3.99 SIERA, a .315 mark on balls in play has followed him since April, and the righty split contains a 50.5% strand rate, a figure that exists only because seasons end before luck evens out. Lefties have run a .360 average on contact against him, so the .291 they have hit is mostly noise too. Milwaukee at 4.23 is not where I want to be right about this, so I am parking this one until a friendlier draw instead of paying for it now.
Final Thoughts
Cash starts with Cease, and Harrison at $9,500 is the second arm that keeps you from choosing between pitching and bats. From there I want Caminero plus one more Ray, Ohtani or Freeman as the Dodger anchor, and Pederson at $3,300 doing the salary work that lets the top of the roster stay expensive. Austin Wells at $2,100 and Nicky Lopez at $2,600 are the two cheap slots that make that math work, and using one of them beats trimming a bat I actually want.
Two things I would recheck close to lock. Toronto lists the roof up with 7 mph headed out, and shutting it takes away a small tailwind in a game already priced on a seven-run total, which matters more to the under crowd than to anybody stacking. The other is Los Angeles, where Blake Snell's last logged start goes back to early May, and returning from an absence that long almost always comes with a hard pitch limit. That cuts two ways: fewer innings from him, and Dodger relief work arriving well ahead of schedule, which changes how Kansas City can score even at the smallest team total on the board.
Philadelphia is where I want tournament exposure, five or six lefties deep against a ground-ball arm in 99-degree Busch air, because most of the room will buy Schwarber and Harper and stop there. Weathers is the quieter idea, an underpriced arm drawing almost no interest, and rostering him is a way into the Bronx game through the mound while everyone else shops the hitters. If you want one more contrarian move, underweight Arizona relative to Tampa Bay. Both spots are defensible, and only one comes with a six-run team total, the best hitting air of the night, and a relief group behind the starter that cannot stop the bleeding.
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.