Weather to Watch
Toronto at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Overcast, 74F | Wind: 3 mph WNW
The air is dead in the Bronx tonight. The short porch does its own work and the forecast neither helps nor hurts anybody.
San Francisco at Boston | Fenway Park | Clear, 70F | Wind: 9 mph ENE
Nine miles an hour off the harbor takes a little carry off anything hit toward the Monster. I would shade fly-ball bats down a touch and leave it there.
Tampa Bay at Baltimore | Oriole Park at Camden Yards | Overcast, 79F | Wind: 6 mph ESE
Warm night, and the crosswind is doing nothing defensive. Camden rates as a home run boost tonight, which matters more here than the modest total suggests.
New York Mets at Chicago White Sox | Rate Field | Overcast, 72F | Wind: 5 mph SE
A mild breeze pushes in from left. Small drag, nothing that should change how you build.
Detroit at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Clear, 90F | Wind: 6 mph NNE
Ninety degrees in Missouri and the ball travels. The wind pushes back in on paper, but heat wins that argument by a wide margin and the air here plays as a positive.
Cleveland at Colorado | Coors Field | Overcast, 95F | Wind: 12 mph W
Ninety-five at a mile of altitude. This is the far end of what a ballpark can do to a baseball, and a crosswind is not going to rescue any pitcher standing in it.
Minnesota at San Diego | Petco Park | Overcast, 74F | Wind: 5 mph SW
Light breeze out to right. Petco still suppresses on balance, so treat this as a small offset rather than a green light.
Pittsburgh at Los Angeles Dodgers | Dodger Stadium | Clear, 80F | Wind: 5 mph WSW
Warm and blowing out. Chavez Ravine turns into one of the friendlier yards in the league on a night like this.
Chicago Cubs at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Overcast, 82F | Wind: 1 mph NE
Eighty-two degrees in Seattle is unusual and the roof stays open for it. Dead calm plus that temperature drags a pitcher's park most of the way back to neutral.
Four roofs stay shut: loanDepot, Daikin, Globe Life, and Chase. In those four the building does the deciding and you can ignore the forecast.
HR Calls
Yordan Alvarez (HOU) $6,600 vs J.T. Ginn
Houston carries one of the three highest implied totals on the slate and the reason is hitting second. Ginn handles righties fine. Lefties are a different animal, and he hands them 5.45 BB/9 while walking 13.4% of the ones he faces. That is a pitcher who lives behind in the count, and a pitcher behind in the count against Yordan Alvarez eventually leaves a fastball where it does not belong. Alvarez is barreling 18.4% of his batted balls with a .318 ISO, and Houston's lefties as a group carry a 128 wRC+ when a righty is on the mound.
Jazz Chisholm (NYY) $4,800 vs Spencer Arrighetti
DraftKings is clearly not pricing in the platoon problem here. Arrighetti's line against left-handed bats is the ugliest thing I found this morning: 7.03 BB/9, a 16.7% walk rate, a 5.42 xFIP, and 1.48 HR/9 with better than one in five fly balls leaving the yard. A pitcher walking lefties at that clip is not nibbling off the plate every time, he is grooving one to climb back into counts, and Chisholm pulls the ball 53.9% of the time in a stadium designed for that swing. He is also the fifth of seven left-handed hitters in this order. Arrighetti has to get through all of them.
Jose Siri (LAA) $3,500 vs MacKenzie Gore
Gore is a good pitcher with one specific leak. He misses a pile of bats against righties, striking out 27.6% of them, but the contact he does allow travels: 1.35 HR/9 and a 20% HR/FB rate from that side. Siri is built to punish exactly that, with a 21.4% barrel rate that is among the highest on the board and a .254 ISO to match. He will strike out. At this price I do not care, because the ball still travels under a closed roof in Arlington and he needs one swing.
Stacks to Target
1. Cleveland vs Tanner Gordon (R) | Implied Total: 6.17 | ROO Score: 6.1/10 | Cash
Skip past the altitude for a second and look at what left-handed hitters have done to Gordon: a .617 slugging mark, 2.52 HR/9, and a 21.6% HR/FB rate, with better than half of everything hit off him this year going in the air. Now stick that profile in a building at 95 degrees. Cleveland answers with Kwan, DeLauter, Lowe, and Bazzana from the left side. One wrinkle worth knowing: Gordon has not logged a start in six weeks, so I would plan on a short outing and plenty of Colorado bullpen, a 4.86 xFIP group that surrenders a .357 wOBA to lefties. The innings get ugly either way, and I am not interested in arguing with a six-plus implied total in that building.
Core pieces: Steven Kwan $3,800 (L), Chase DeLauter $4,900 (L), Nathaniel Lowe $3,700 (L), Jose Ramirez $6,000 (S), Travis Bazzana $5,000 (L)
2. New York Yankees vs Spencer Arrighetti (R) | Implied Total: 5.12 | ROO Score: 4.7/10 | Cash
Seven left-handed bats. One right-hander who cannot throw strikes to them. I walked through the Arrighetti split above, so the short version is that his command evaporates once a lefty digs in, and free baserunners in Yankee Stadium turn into crooked numbers in a hurry. These lefties hit the ball hard 46.8% of the time against righties. Arrighetti also has not started a game in four weeks, which means Toronto's pen shows up early, and that pen manages just 6.75 K/9 with a 4.43 xFIP. What sells me is the cost of entry: McMahon, Wells, and Jones together come in under the price of a single premium bat.
Core pieces: Trent Grisham $4,600 (L), Ben Rice $5,800 (L), Jazz Chisholm $4,800 (L), Spencer Jones $3,200 (L), Austin Wells $2,600 (L)
3. Baltimore vs Freddy Peralta (R) | Implied Total: 4.09 | ROO Score: 3.9/10 | GPP
Peralta's 5.27 ERA overstates how badly he has thrown, and the 4.23 xFIP underneath says some of it came down to luck. The home run rate is the part that will not correct: 1.63 HR/9 against left-handed hitters with a 20.5% HR/FB and a .477 slugging mark. Baltimore runs Holliday, Henderson, Basallo, Beavers, and Cowser from that side, in a warm park with a crosswind that gives the pitcher nothing. If Peralta gets pulled early it does not fix much either, since Tampa's relievers give up 1.46 HR/9 to lefties themselves. The implied total is modest, and that is the entire appeal at these prices, because five of these bats cost under $4,300.
Core pieces: Jackson Holliday $4,100 (L), Gunnar Henderson $5,100 (L), Samuel Basallo $4,200 (L), Dylan Beavers $2,900 (L), Colton Cowser $2,600 (L)
Pitchers
Cam Schlittler (NYY) vs TOR | $11,000 | CASH
If one arm on this slate is close to mandatory, it is this one. Schlittler sits at 11.19 K/9 with 2.01 BB/9 and a 13.6% swinging strike rate, and unlike most of the shiny ERAs on this board, his 2.19 mark is backed by a 2.73 xFIP and a 2.25 SIERA. He earned that run prevention with strikeouts and command instead of borrowing it from a friendly BABIP. Toronto grades at a 94 wRC+ from the left side against righties, and Schlittler holds lefties to a .261 wOBA while striking out 34.6% of them. He is the priciest arm on the slate and he will be popular. I cannot build the case against him.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LAD) vs PIT | $10,600 | CASH
Pittsburgh is implied for 2.64 runs, the lowest figure on the board, and Yamamoto has held both sides of the plate under a .255 wOBA. I will take the counterargument first: a .221 BABIP and an 80.5% strand rate mean he borrowed some of that 2.61 ERA, and the Pittsburgh lefties do damage against righties, a 125 wRC+ bunch. But a 3.09 SIERA says the arm is real, he has gone nearly seven innings a night over his last five turns, and the Dodgers should stake him early. Both of the top two arms will be popular, which is what a slate with one Coors game and twelve ordinary ones looks like.
Sonny Gray (BOS) vs SF | $9,100 | GPP
I could argue this one either way. The Giants sit at a 2.83 implied total, second-softest offense on the board, and the Fenway breeze is knocking fly balls down, which is the whole case for treating him as a cash anchor. The problem is that Gray's 2.66 ERA rests on an 84.3% strand rate that no pitcher holds, and the 3.52 xFIP is the honest version of him. He is a solid arm having a lucky year. At 7.97 K/9 there is also a hard ceiling on how big the night gets, so I would rather chase this upside in a tournament than build around it.
Reid Detmers (LAA) vs TEX | $8,700 | GPP
Detmers might be the best buy-low arm on the slate. His 3.78 ERA is worse than his 3.33 xFIP and a good deal worse than his 2.72 SIERA, which is a fancy way of saying the results have lagged behind the stuff all season. He is at 10.51 K/9 and holds right-handed hitters to a .271 wOBA while striking out 30.3% of them. Texas is starting seven righties. At this salary he should go overlooked relative to what that strikeout profile can do on a good night.
Hayden Wesneski (HOU) vs ATH | $6,400 | GPP
Every stars-and-scrubs build needs a cheap arm to work, and this is my choice tonight. Wesneski's 5.27 ERA reads badly, but his 4.24 xFIP says a .318 BABIP and a 63.8% strand rate did most of that damage. Houston is a heavy favorite, Oakland sits at a 3.16 implied total, and the roof stays closed so nothing strange happens to a fly ball. Four starts is not much of a sample and I am not pretending this is safe. The salary buys me that.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Troy Melton (DET), Negative Regression Candidate
Melton's 1.50 ERA will sell a lot of lineups tonight and I want none of it. He is carrying a .217 BABIP and a 90.5% strand rate, two of the least sustainable marks you will find anywhere, and his 3.60 xFIP sits more than two full runs above the ERA. Nothing underneath holds it up either, since he sits at 7.81 K/9. Left-handed hitters have already found the seam: a 4.74 xFIP, 3.80 BB/9, and 1.33 HR/9 from that side. Kansas City bats Jensen, Caglianone, Pasquantino, Massey, and Isbel from the left, which is five cracks at him at 90 degrees in a park where the ball is carrying, and Detroit's relievers have given up 2.84 HR/9 to righties behind him.
Connor Prielipp (MIN), Positive Regression Candidate
Prielipp's season looks like a disaster on the surface and mostly is not one. The 5.37 ERA is propped up by a .316 BABIP and a 60.4% strand rate, while a 3.86 xFIP and a 3.49 SIERA suggest a mid-threes arm is sitting underneath. He is at 9.70 K/9 and holds righties to a .312 wOBA with a 26.3% strikeout rate. San Diego is a rough draw and I am not forcing him into a lineup tonight. His price keeps sliding while the underlying work holds steady, and that gap closes eventually.
Final Thoughts
Start the cash lineup at the top with Schlittler and fill in behind him with Cleveland bats. Coors hands you the highest implied total on the board against a starter making his first appearance in six weeks, and the Cleveland pieces sit in the value tier, so Kwan at $3,800 and Lowe at $3,700 leave enough room for a second premium arm. If you need salary relief elsewhere, Austin Wells at $2,600 and Colton Cowser at $2,600 are the two cheapest slots I would actually roster.
Two things worth a look before lock. Kansas City's card is the one I would refresh, because the value of fading Melton changes a lot depending on whether Caglianone and Pasquantino end up stacked back to back in the middle of that order. And Colorado is warm enough that a late wind shift is about the only development that could take any edge off the best offensive environment of the day.
For tournaments I would get to Baltimore and Houston. Both have the soft platoon side of a matchup, warm air, and an ownership profile where a five-man stack separates you without giving up much ceiling. If you want one more angle, Detmers at $8,700 pairs cleanly with a Baltimore stack on salary, and the Angels give you a cheap way into that Texas game from the right-handed 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.