Weather to Watch
Athletics at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Mostly Clear, 98F | Wind: 7 mph SE
Ninety-eight degrees. Humidity sits at 26% and the breeze crosses the diamond without helping or hurting, which leaves thin dry air carrying the whole argument, and it produces the biggest lift on balls hit in the air of any yard on this board. Right-handed hitters collect the larger share of it.
Los Angeles Dodgers at Colorado | Coors Field | Overcast, 88F | Wind: 9 mph ENE
Denver at 88 degrees with humidity at 19% would headline almost any other night. It finishes second tonight and I still would not want to pitch in it, since a mile of elevation swallows whatever the sideways breeze is trying to accomplish.
Chicago White Sox at Chicago Cubs | Wrigley Field | Clear, 74F | Wind: 5 mph WSW
Wrigley asks one question and tonight the answer is yes. Five miles an hour sounds like nothing. No park on the slate multiplies its wind the way this one does, though, so a mild evening pointed at the bleachers turns into real carry, and left-handed bats collect most of it.
Seattle at Milwaukee | American Family Field | Partly Cloudy, 78F | Wind: 10 mph WSW
Panels are forecast open with the strongest air of the night running sideways underneath them. Warm and a touch helpful, not something to build around.
Atlanta at Minnesota | Target Field | Clear, 74F | Wind: 6 mph WNW
Air pushing toward the outfield at a comfortable 74. The direction helps and the temperature does not, so the two argue each other to a draw and Target Field plays about how it reads on paper.
San Diego at New York Mets | Citi Field | Drizzle, 75F | Wind: 5 mph E
Drizzle with humidity at 95% and a soft breeze crossing the field. Heavy damp air in a park that already clips power adds up to nothing. Spend the attention elsewhere.
Arizona at Boston | Fenway Park | Clear, 70F | Wind: 8 mph E
The coolest first pitch anywhere today, and the only spot where the conditions take something away from a hitter. Eight miles an hour off the harbor at 70 degrees with humidity near 90% drags this ballpark a shade under neutral, which almost never describes Boston in August.
Roofs close in Arlington and Houston. Those two get dimensions and nothing else.
HR Calls
Yordan Alvarez (HOU) $6,500 vs George Klassen
Klassen has faced 76 big league hitters and walked 15 of them. That works out to 9.51 BB/9 across his first four turns, and against left-handed bats he sits at 5.79 BB/9 with a .388 wOBA allowed, which is the profile of a young arm who cannot land a strike when the count demands one and has to lay a fastball over the middle to survive the inning. Alvarez ends those at-bats. A .325 ISO, barrels on 18.7% of his contact, a .368 xISO and 75.5 mph of bat speed is the profile you want holding the bat when a pitcher has to come back over the plate. He costs more than any hitter in this section and I do not need to get clever about why.
Carter Jensen (KC) $4,700 vs Jack Perkins
Perkins is a better pitcher than his ledger and I will come back to that below, but the hole in him is specific and it belongs to left-handed hitters. Lefties have slugged .480 off him this season with 1.884 HR/9, a quarter of their fly balls have carried out, and the 4.40 BB/9 he hands lefties is the mechanism, because working from behind at 98 degrees in Kansas City eventually costs a pitcher one over the middle. Jensen leads off against him carrying a .212 ISO and a .238 mark over the last 15 games. Everything in the air gets help tonight.
Abimelec Ortiz (WSH) $2,800 vs Cal Quantrill
Twenty-eight hundred for a hitter batting second in a big league lineup usually means nobody has opened his batted-ball page. Ortiz has a .432 ISO, a .410 xISO, barrels on 20.7% of his contact and pulls 53.3% of what he lifts. Yes, the sample behind that is thin. No point pretending otherwise. Quantrill is why I am paying anyway. Lefties have taken him deep at 1.486 HR/9, they clear a fence on 17.6% of their fly balls, they square him up 43.8% of the time, and he walks 4.46 of them per nine, so he spends those at-bats behind in the count and has to come back over the middle. A hitter who pulls everything into the air is the wrong opponent for that.
Stacks to Target
1. Los Angeles Dodgers vs Ryan Feltner (R) | Implied Total: 7.29 | ROO Score: 6.2/10 | Cash
Feltner has nowhere to hide, which is what makes this one simple. Righties have slugged .543 off him with 2.093 HR/9 and a 25.0% HR/FB rate, lefties have slugged .488 while drawing 4.81 BB/9, and 40.6% of what right-handed hitters put in play against him is struck hard. So how this batting order is arranged barely matters: Ohtani and Freeman come at him lefty, Betts and Pages and Teoscar Hernandez righty, and all of them are pointed at the same soft target. Colorado's relief corps is ordinary rather than awful, which is thinner comfort than usual at a 7.29 team total in this building. Everyone knows. It is still the offense least likely to give you nothing, and in a cash build I would rather roster the safest thing available than the cleverest.
Core pieces: Shohei Ohtani $7,100 (L), Freddie Freeman $6,100 (L), Andy Pages $5,600 (R), Kyle Tucker $5,100 (L), Mookie Betts $4,900 (R)
2. Chicago Cubs vs Erick Fedde (R) | Implied Total: 5.10 | ROO Score: 4.9/10 | Cash
Outbound air on the North Side is the obvious hook, and the split page is the useful one. Fedde has survived left-handed hitters this year at 0.926 HR/9 and a .392 slug, then comes apart the instant a righty steps in: a .547 slug, 2.861 HR/9 and a 30.8% HR/FB rate. So the stack is Suzuki, Bregman, Hoerner and Amaya. Not the leadoff name most people reach for first. Fedde also has not taken a big league mound since the end of July, so I would plan on a short outing with the White Sox relievers showing up around the fifth, and that group has been steady enough to make this a five-inning window rather than an all-night one. Get the damage early. Do not talk yourself into the seventh.
Core pieces: Seiya Suzuki $5,800 (R), Alex Bregman $5,100 (R), Nico Hoerner $4,600 (R), Miguel Amaya $3,000 (R), Ian Happ $4,400 (S)
3. Colorado vs Eric Lauer (L) | Implied Total: 4.21 | ROO Score: 4.0/10 | GPP
Almost nobody is going to build this, which is the whole reason I want it. Lauer's 4.68 ERA is propped up by a .234 opponent mark on contact, the lowest of any starter working tonight, and the arm underneath carries a 5.78 FIP, 2.02 HR/9 and better than half of everything hit off him going in the air. Righties have gone deep at 1.878 HR/9 against him with a 17.4% HR/FB rate. Goodman, Beck, Norby and Tovar all hit from that side, and this Colorado group grades out with the strongest top-five offensive line of any lineup here. A fly ball pitcher out of luck. In Denver, at 88 degrees, against the half of the order he handles worst. The prices are low enough that a full five fits without touching the rest of the roster.
Core pieces: Hunter Goodman $5,900 (R), Cole Carrigg $5,000 (S), Jordan Beck $3,100 (R), Connor Norby $3,000 (R), Ezequiel Tovar $2,900 (R)
Pitchers
Kyle Harrison (MIL) vs SEA | $10,000 | CASH
Harrison has turned into the arm Milwaukee hoped it was getting, and the strikeout profile is doing all of the heavy lifting. He punches out 29.7% of the hitters he faces at 11.02 K/9 against a 6.25% walk rate, his 2.50 SIERA sits below an already excellent 3.00 ERA, and Seattle is priced at 3.10, the lowest implied total on the board. One honest wrinkle. Righties have homered off him at 1.62 HR/9 on a 21.1% HR/FB rate, and Seattle is loaded with them, so his best outcome and his worst outcome are hiding in the same at-bats. He will be the most popular arm here by a distance and he has earned it.
Kevin Gausman (CHC) vs CWS | $9,000 | CASH
A 4.53 ERA on a pitcher this good is a bookkeeping error more than a scouting report. Gausman's 3.43 xFIP, 3.32 SIERA and 3.53 FIP all agree the arm is intact, opponents are hitting .314 on contact off him, and barely two thirds of his baserunners have failed to score, at a 66.1% clip, which covers nearly the entire distance between his skill and his line. The bat-missing is intact. He punches out 10.26 per nine against righties at a 1.96 BB/9, and the White Sox at a 3.40 implied total are the softest offense anybody draws. Outbound air is the counterargument, since he does concede 1.358 HR/9 to righties and Murakami barrels 22.0% of his contact. I will accept that at this price against this lineup.
Ranger Suarez (BOS) vs ARI | $8,700 | CASH
I have looked at this price four times and still cannot explain it. Suarez has a 2.71 FIP under a 3.25 ERA, he has allowed 0.50 HR/9 all season, and right-handed hitters have managed a .224 average and a .303 slug against him with 0.339 HR/9 on a 5.8% HR/FB rate. Arizona is priced at 3.14 and sends a righty-leaning order straight into that buzzsaw. Boston also has air pushing back in off the water tonight. That removes the one outcome that could wreck the start. Barely anyone will roster him. That makes him the rare starter who fits a cash build and a tournament lineup without a single change.
Tyler Mahle (ATL) vs MIN | $8,000 | GPP
Mahle keeps getting graded on results that do not describe him. His 3.56 SIERA and 4.09 FIP both sit well under a 4.66 ERA, opponents have hit .306 on contact off him, and a 71.3% strand rate explains what is left. Minnesota at 3.91 is a fair place to bet on the correction. The Twins have been the quieter half of this matchup all year. Here is why he is not a slot higher: righties draw 4.67 BB/9 from him and have homered at 1.624 HR/9 on a 23.5% HR/FB rate, and Minnesota leans right with Buxton doing most of the damage. Tournaments only. The price and the light attention make those swings easy to stomach.
Robbie Ray (SD) vs NYM | $8,500 | GPP
Ray's 3.45 ERA is the prettiest thing about him and also the least trustworthy. A 4.46 SIERA and a 4.70 FIP describe a pitcher a full run worse, a .265 opponent mark on contact and a 78.3% strand rate have been carrying the difference, and 4.53 BB/9 means those free baserunners will not stay harmless forever. He can still miss bats. Lefties have managed almost no power off him at 0.27 HR/9. New York sits at 4.09 with an offense closer to average than dangerous. Use him in tournaments for the strikeout ceiling; do not anchor a cash roster to that ERA.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Eric Lauer (LAD), Negative Regression Candidate
Nobody starting tonight is running further ahead of his own work. Lauer has kept opponents to .234 on contact, the lowest such reading of any starter here, and 77.1% of his baserunners never came around to score, while a 5.78 FIP and a 5.52 SIERA both grade him better than a full run worse than his 4.68 ERA. The shape underneath is the real problem: more than half of everything hit off him goes in the air, he has already surrendered 2.02 HR/9, and 16.3% of those fly balls have cleared a fence. Now hand that profile Denver. Colorado collects the check, and that is much of the reason I am willing to buy an offense the market has priced for nothing.
Kevin Gausman (CHC), Positive Regression Candidate
Gausman is the cleanest buy-low available and the gap is not subtle. A 4.53 ERA sitting on top of a 3.43 xFIP and a 3.32 SIERA is already a wide spread, and the two things creating it are exactly the two that come back: a .314 opponent mark on contact and a 66.1% strand rate, both parked at the wrong end of this board. The stuff has not slipped either, with 8.94 K/9 against 2.46 BB/9 and a 12.3% swinging strike rate. He is not free at $9,000. He is priced off a number that describes his luck rather than his arm, and the White Sox are the wrong offense to make him pay for it.
Final Thoughts
Start the cash roster with Suarez at $8,700 and work outward from there, because he is the only arm tonight offering an ace profile without an ace tax, and stacking Gausman next to him leaves real money for the offense. The bats come from Denver first, Ohtani and Freeman, then Suzuki and Bregman as the second block against Fedde, with Amaya at $3,000 covering catcher so nothing in the middle gets squeezed. That covers two of the three biggest implied totals tonight. Salary left over, too.
Two things deserve another look before lock. The Royals order is one: Jensen hitting first rather than seventh is what makes attacking Perkins from the left side worthwhile, and a move down the card takes most of that away. Milwaukee is the other, since the panels there are only forecast open and a closed roof erases the modest help the wind was offering.
Tournament money goes to Colorado. The strongest top-five offensive group on this slate, at home, at 88 degrees, against a starter whose surface numbers have been borrowed all year, is the widest gap available between what a stack costs in attention and what it can return. Ortiz at $2,800 belongs on those same rosters. The price is wrong, and a hitter pulling 53.3% of his air contact against an arm walking 4.46 lefties per nine only needs one mistake. If a second contrarian block appeals, the Athletics bats at Kauffman are close to free, and Mason Black shows up there carrying a 91.7% strand rate no pitcher has ever held onto.
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.