Weather to Watch
New York Mets at Atlanta | Truist Park | Clear, 91F | Wind: 9 mph W
Ninety-one is the warmest reading on a six-game board, and the crosswind is more passenger than driver. Truist ends up the best power air of the night on temperature by itself.
Seattle at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Overcast, 85F | Wind: 3 mph NW
Barely a breath moving in the Bronx, which leaves the building to do its own work. It is well equipped for that, and right field is where nearly all of the benefit lands.
Cincinnati at Chicago White Sox | Rate Field | Clear, 76F | Wind: 6 mph WNW
Comfortable and dry with a modest push toward the fence. Nothing dramatic, though it is a nudge in the helpful direction for a game already carrying a nine-run total.
Texas at Los Angeles Angels | Angel Stadium | Clear, 73F | Wind: 8 mph SW
Pleasant Anaheim evening, air drifting toward the seats, a light bump for both dugouts. Anaheim is still one of the stingiest power yards in baseball, so I would not let 8 mph move a fly-ball bat up my board here.
Kansas City at Los Angeles Dodgers | Dodger Stadium | Overcast, 71F | Wind: 7 mph WSW
Seventy-one and overcast in Los Angeles, and what push exists runs out toward right. Lefty swings take the bigger share of a modest number. I would not build around it.
Boston at Toronto | Rogers Centre | Drizzle, 74F | Wind: 8 mph SSW
Drizzle falling, a 29% chance of rain, the roof forecast to stay open, and 8 mph angled at the outfield. Real if minor help, and the one reading tonight capable of flipping inside an hour.
HR Calls
Munetaka Murakami (CWS) $5,400 vs Rhett Lowder
Very little has gone right on the South Side this year, and then there is this guy, carrying the loudest power numbers anybody on this slate brings into a matchup with a righty. Facing them he has a .350 ISO, a .609 slug, 21 homers across 246 trips, and 38.9% of his fly balls landing in the seats. He squares up 58.5% of his batted balls, elite by any calibration you want to apply. Lowder carries a 5.4 BB/9 versus lefties along with a .474 slug allowed, and a walk rate that high means he lives in three-ball counts, which is where a pitcher stops choosing his location and starts serving one. At $5,400 he is one of the priciest bats on the board and no kind of discount. Paying it anyway.
JJ Bleday (CIN) $4,700 vs Luis Castillo
Castillo has turned into a very different pitcher against left-handed hitters than his name suggests. They have taken him for a .533 slug and 2.02 HR/9 with hard contact on 42.2% of what they put in play, and an 18.8% HR/FB rate in the split tells you exactly where those hits are going. Bleday counters with a 133 wRC+ and a .248 ISO versus righties, 15 homers in the matchup, and a 58.2% pull rate that fits how Rate Field plays with the breeze pointed out. Mid-tier money for a genuine ceiling, and I do not find that combination often.
Dominic Canzone (SEA) $3,500 vs Will Warren
Canzone spent years as organizational depth and is hitting third tonight, which nobody does with a platoon bat. Fourteen of his homers have come against righties, on a .232 ISO, a 24.6% HR/FB rate, and hard contact on 45.8% of his batted balls, and DraftKings has priced none of it in. Warren leaks in exactly one direction, and it is toward left-handed bats: a .456 slug allowed, 1.40 HR/9, and 20.8% of the fly balls lefties hit off him have cleared a wall. Put that in a building where an ordinary lefty fly ball becomes a souvenir and I would take that swing at this salary.
Stacks to Target
1. Los Angeles Dodgers vs Daniel Lynch IV (L) | Implied Total: 5.97 | ROO Score: 5.7/10 | Cash
Kansas City is opening with Lynch, so the arm that decides this is Mason Black, who threw five innings behind him in exactly this arrangement five days ago and is the one Los Angeles sees two or three times. Black has been a problem against left-handed hitters all season: a .420 wOBA, a .541 slug, a 9.3 BB/9, and hard contact on 57.1% of everything they hit. Ohtani carries a 154 wRC+ and a .235 ISO versus right-handed pitching, Freeman a 154 and a .512 slug, and Tucker collects the same edge from the six hole. Royals relievers grade out as the weakest group on this board against both hands, which is why the profile here does not shut off in the seventh. This will be the most popular stack of the night by a comfortable margin, and I have no interest in arguing with a team total that starts with a six just to be contrarian.
Core pieces: Shohei Ohtani $6,500 (L), Freddie Freeman $5,500 (L), Andy Pages $5,000 (R), Kyle Tucker $4,400 (L), Teoscar Hernandez $3,700 (R)
2. Atlanta vs Zac Thornton (L) | Implied Total: 5.05 | ROO Score: 5.1/10 | Cash
Thornton's 2.53 ERA is the least believable number in this game. He has stranded 79.9% of his baserunners while 57.1% of the contact against him qualifies as hard, and his strikeout rate sits at 6.2 K/9, so nothing underneath justifies the run prevention. None of that holds up in 91-degree air at the most homer-friendly address on this board. One complication, and it is a real one: Atlanta's right-handed group has managed an 89 wRC+ against left-handers this season, so the lefty half and the switch-hitters carry this. Olson, at a 133 wRC+ and a .523 slug opposite southpaws, is the anchor, with Albies at a 119 right behind him, and New York's relief group is competent enough that I want the damage done in the first five innings.
Core pieces: Matt Olson $5,300 (L), Ronald Acuna $5,800 (R), Drake Baldwin $5,100 (L), Michael Harris $4,500 (L), Ozzie Albies $4,200 (S)
3. Chicago White Sox vs Rhett Lowder (R) | Implied Total: 5.11 | ROO Score: 4.5/10 | GPP
The platoon gap on this arm is the widest anywhere tonight. Lowder has held right-handed hitters to a .287 wOBA and 0.25 HR/9, and from that same delivery lefties get a .365 wOBA, a .474 slug, 1.69 HR/9, and a 5.4 BB/9. Chicago runs five left-handed bats through the top seven, and that group has posted a 106 wRC+ with an 18.6% HR/FB rate against righties. Murakami is the centerpiece for the reasons above, while Colson Montgomery's 26.9% HR/FB rate in the same split and Benintendi at $3,200 are where the salary math turns friendly. Here is the part that caps it. Cincinnati's bullpen has been outstanding against left-handed hitters, near a 2.53 xFIP, so the scoring has to arrive while Lowder is still out there. That caveat is also why the room stays lighter here than on the two spots above, and it is why this is my tournament build.
Core pieces: Munetaka Murakami $5,400 (L), Miguel Vargas $4,900 (R), Colson Montgomery $4,400 (L), Sam Antonacci $4,200 (L), Andrew Benintendi $3,200 (L)
Pitchers
Ranger Suarez (BOS) vs TOR | $9,000 | CASH
I cannot assemble an argument against him. Suarez has a 3.32 ERA sitting above a 2.70 FIP, which is the rare direction that gap runs, and a .307 batted-ball average plus a 71.8% strand rate cover the gap. Toronto is the specific reason to pay up. Righties have a .264 wOBA and a .300 slug against him, plus a 0.36 HR/9 in the split, and the Blue Jays run seven of them out of an offense grading at an 83 wRC+ opposite southpaws. This game also owns the smallest total on the board. He will be popular, and he has earned it.
Jose Soriano (TOR) vs BOS | $8,700 | CASH
Both arms in the lowest-scoring game of the night are worth owning, which is not a sentence I get to write often. Soriano misses bats at 9.2 K/9 with a 24.5% strikeout rate and keeps better than half the contact he allows on the ground, and righties have been stuck at a .253 wOBA with 0.31 HR/9. Boston counters with five righties. The honest concern is a 4.2 BB/9 walk rate that puts traffic aboard, plus a .276 batted-ball average that has done him a modest favor. I will take the cheaper half of the same bet.
Bryce Miller (SEA) vs NYY | $9,700 | GPP
I trust the priciest arm on this board less than anything else in this section. The skills are real. A 25.8% strikeout rate against a 4.9% walk rate is a shape almost nobody here matches, and a 13.4% swinging-strike rate stands up against anybody on this board. It is the run prevention I do not believe. A 3.08 ERA propped up by a .239 batted-ball average and a 79.6% strand rate is borrowed money, and his one true flaw is that right-handed hitters have gone deep at 1.98 HR/9 with a 22.9% HR/FB rate. He is pitching in Yankee Stadium and he will be the most popular arm of the night. A great arm to gamble on. A poor one to depend on.
Tyler Mahle (ATL) vs NYM | $7,700 | GPP
New York's righties sit at a 76 wRC+ when a right-hander is on the mound, the weakest platoon group anywhere on the board, and Mahle draws six of them. Then you check his own split and righties are exactly where he leaks: a .374 wOBA, a 4.97 BB/9, and a 21.2% HR/FB rate in that matchup. I could argue this either way. He survives as a tournament play instead of a fade on 8.8 K/9, a 4.85 ERA that overstates a 4.17 FIP, and a New York offense priced closer to three runs than to four. Ninety-one degrees at Truist is the reason he never reaches the cash tier.
Eric Lauer (LAD) vs KC | $6,500 | GPP
A punt, and I want that on the record before anything else. Lauer's 4.89 ERA flatters a 6.00 FIP, his strikeout rate is a thin 5.6 K/9, and he has surrendered a 2.15 HR/9 on a 51.4% fly-ball rate, the shape of a pitcher one poor inning from wrecking a lineup. Context buys him the mention. Kansas City owns the lowest team number of the night at barely over three, Los Angeles is the heaviest favorite of the night, and $6,500 for a probable win in a forgiving park frees up money the bats can use. He will go lightly rostered. On the right night that is the entire point of him.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Zac Thornton (NYM), Negative Regression Candidate
Thornton's 2.53 ERA sits more than a run beneath his 3.69 FIP, and you can set that gap aside, because how he arrived there is the actual story. Across 39 innings he has run a .248 average on contact and stranded 79.9% of his runners, all while 57.1% of the batted balls against him were struck hard. Pitchers who give up contact that loud do not keep watching it die in gloves. His 6.2 K/9 leaves no swing-and-miss floor beneath the good fortune either. Atlanta gets first crack at the correction in 91-degree air, and Olson, at a 133 wRC+ opposite southpaws, is the swing I want pointed at it.
Will Warren (NYY), Positive Regression Candidate
A 4.21 ERA undersells Warren by a wide margin. His 3.84 FIP describes a better arm than the surface line admits, and a .320 average on contact plus a 67.7% strand rate explain where the extra runs went. The 23.0% strikeout rate and 9.1 K/9 underneath it confirm the stuff is legitimate. So why am I not buying tonight? Left-handed hitters are his single failure mode, at a .456 slug with better than a fifth of their fly balls leaving the park, and he is making this start in the park that rewards left-handed fly balls more than any other. Seattle sends five of them to the plate. Store the name for a road start in a neutral yard and it turns into a genuine discount.
Final Thoughts
Suarez is where cash starts, and Soriano at $8,700 pairs beside him without forcing a choice between the mound and the bats. Ohtani or Freeman anchors the Dodger side, Olson handles the Atlanta piece, and Canzone at $3,500 funds all of it. Benintendi at $3,200 closes most of the gap, Sean Murphy at $2,600 closes the rest, and I would burn one of those slots before downgrading anything at the top.
Two concrete items before lock. The Rogers Centre forecast has the roof open with rain in the air at a 29% chance, and shutting it erases an 8 mph tailwind in the lowest-total game of the night, which lands harder on anyone touching Boston bats than on the two arms. The other is Kansas City, where Lynch is listed but threw under two innings in his last turn with Mason Black covering five behind him. If that arrangement holds, the Dodger lefties see a right-handed arm with a 9.3 BB/9 to their side of the plate for most of the game, and the top three spots in that order are where the value concentrates.
Chicago gets my tournament money. Five left-handed bats against a starter who hands out a 5.4 BB/9 to lefties, in a yard with the breeze pointed out, and the field will be busy on the two chalk stacks instead. Lauer is the quieter version of the same idea, a lightly rostered arm attached to the largest favorite on the board, and he pays for a Dodger bat you could not otherwise fit. If you want a third differentiating move, take Bleday and one more Red instead of a fifth White Sox hitter, since Castillo has been just as generous to left-handed hitters as Lowder has and almost nobody in that game is shopping the Cincinnati side.
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.