Weather to Watch
Texas at Chicago White Sox | Rate Field | Partly Cloudy, 71F | Wind: 7 mph ENE
Seventy-one degrees and a breeze angling across the diamond from right field. It shaves a little off right-handed contact and does almost nothing to the other side, so I would not let it move a build much either way.
Cleveland at Los Angeles Angels | Angel Stadium | Clear, 79F | Wind: 9 mph SSW
Nine miles an hour headed toward the fence on a warm, clear night. Anaheim usually plays smaller than its reputation and the air is nudging it back the other direction tonight.
Pittsburgh at San Diego | Petco Park | Mostly Clear, 73F | Wind: 5 mph SW
A soft push out to right, and 89% humidity sitting on top of it doing the opposite. Call the two a wash and grade this game on the arms instead.
Minnesota at Athletics | Sutter Health Park | Overcast, 92F | Wind: 11 mph SW
Ninety-two degrees in Sacramento with the strongest wind of the day pointed at the outfield. This building was already generous to right-handed power before the forecast showed up, and everything I write below keeps circling back to it.
Philadelphia at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Overcast, 78F | Wind: 8 mph N
The panels are projected open and the air is drifting in from behind center. Warm for Seattle, though an inbound wind takes most of that back and leaves a pitcher's park doing what it usually does.
Cincinnati at San Francisco | Oracle Park | Overcast, 62F | Wind: 10 mph W
Sixty-two degrees is the chilliest air anybody plays in today, and the wind is running straight out to center. Those two pull against each other hard enough that I would call the environment neutral rather than live.
One roof today, Chase Field in Phoenix. Whatever the desert is doing outside stays outside.
HR Calls
Byron Buxton (MIN) $6,000 vs Jeffrey Springs
I cannot find the angle that talks me out of this one. Springs has surrendered 2.39 HR/9 to right-handed hitters with better than 24% of their fly balls clearing a fence, and he hands that same side 3.65 BB/9, so he spends his night behind in counts and has to come into the zone to survive them. Buxton hits the ball hard 56.2% of the time against left-handers and pulls half of everything he puts in play. Then the park piles on.
Esmerlyn Valdez (PIT) $4,100 vs Robbie Ray
Valdez has been in the big leagues about five minutes and is already doing things most veterans never get to. He has a .423 ISO against left-handed pitching, and better than half of what he hits goes in the air. A 60.5% hard contact rate underneath that means the flight path is not an accident. It is a home run or a strikeout swing with very little living in between, and Ray cannot afford either half of it. He gives right-handed hitters 4.63 BB/9 and a 12.1% walk rate, and a lefty walking righties at that rate is not painting corners, he is falling behind and then grooving something hittable to climb back, which is how a pitcher ends up at 1.52 HR/9 against righties.
Michael Conforto (CHC) $3,300 vs Merrill Kelly
DraftKings has him near the bottom of the price sheet on a night when the matchup deserves a lot better. Kelly comes apart the moment a left-handed hitter steps in. He walks them at 4.87 BB/9 and an 11.7% clip, and when he does find the zone they have put 23.7% of their fly balls over a fence, which is how a 5.69 xFIP and 2.19 HR/9 happen to the same pitcher. Command that shaky means a steady diet of 2-0 and 3-1, and nobody misses the pitch that follows. Conforto pulls half of what he lifts with a 38.6% fly-ball rate, and hitting eighth means Kelly has to survive the whole order to get to him.
Stacks to Target
1. Minnesota vs Jeffrey Springs (L) | Implied Total: 6.18 | ROO Score: 6.5/10 | Cash
Nobody else on this board is implied within a run and a quarter of Minnesota, and that alone would put them here. The case underneath is stronger than the total. Springs owns a 6.04 ERA and the work underneath is only a little kinder to him, because the home run damage is genuine at 2.31 HR/9 overall and 24.4% of the fly balls righties put in the air against him, and Minnesota answers with Keaschall, Buxton, Jeffers, and Lewis stacked through the top five from that side. Jeffers has been a different hitter against left-handers, at a 162 wRC+ with a 20.4% walk rate. Springs has also been getting barely four innings a night in his last five outings. That puts the Athletics relief corps in the game by the fifth, and that group carries a 4.56 xFIP with 1.35 HR/9. Everybody is going to be here. Fading the best spot on the board to be different is how you lose a Monday.
Core pieces: Byron Buxton $6,000 (R), Ryan Jeffers $5,000 (R), Royce Lewis $4,900 (R), Kody Clemens $5,400 (L), Luke Keaschall $4,300 (R)
2. Chicago Cubs vs Merrill Kelly (R) | Implied Total: 5.07 | ROO Score: 4.8/10 | Cash
Chicago has not swung it well over the past week and I am not letting that decide anything, because the matchup underneath is the best left-handed spot outside of Sacramento. Kelly's problem is laid out in the home run section above, and it ends where you would expect: a .532 slugging mark and a .387 wOBA surrendered to that half of the plate. Chicago's left-handed hitters have posted a 117 wRC+ against righties with a .198 ISO and 44% hard contact, and Crow-Armstrong at a 149 wRC+ is the best of the group by a wide margin. My one real caution is the Arizona relief corps, a 3.72 xFIP unit surrendering under 1.00 HR/9, so the damage has to land while Kelly is still out there. Aim for the first two innings.
Core pieces: Pete Crow-Armstrong $6,600 (L), Seiya Suzuki $5,300 (R), Michael Busch $4,600 (L), Ian Happ $4,300 (S), Michael Conforto $3,300 (L)
3. Pittsburgh vs Robbie Ray (L) | Implied Total: 3.75 | ROO Score: 3.5/10 | GPP
The obvious objection lands first, and it lands hard. Pittsburgh as a team has hit left-handed pitching at a 95 wRC+ this season, and that is below average by a comfortable margin. What pulls me back in is that the team figure is being dragged around by the bottom of the card while the hitters batting second through sixth have punished lefties, with Valdez at a 196 wRC+, Reynolds at 139, and Cruz at 137. Ray is a 3.36 ERA sitting on a 5.03 xFIP, and righties are where the whole thing splits open, at 4.63 BB/9 behind a 5.16 xFIP with 1.52 HR/9 attached. San Diego's relievers are the better group in this game at a 3.83 xFIP, so I want these innings against Ray rather than after him. The field is going to leave this lineup alone, and at a 3.75 implied total that reaction is defensible rather than dumb. I still want the exposure.
Core pieces: Oneil Cruz $6,200 (L), Bryan Reynolds $4,600 (S), Esmerlyn Valdez $4,100 (R), Nick Gonzales $3,600 (R), Rafael Flores $3,100 (R)
Pitchers
Parker Messick (CLE) vs LAA | $9,500 | CASH
The Angels are implied for three runs, the lowest figure of the night, and Messick is the arm aimed at them. Take the counterargument first, because an 80.5% strand mark on top of a .261 BABIP says a slice of that 2.54 ERA got handed to him. What holds the rest up is that his 3.04 SIERA and 3.04 xFIP land in the same place, so the strikeouts and the command are doing the work instead of the sequencing. He has been better still when a righty steps in, at a 2.91 xFIP with a .257 wOBA surrendered, and Anaheim is stacked that way tonight. He has averaged north of six innings across his five most recent turns, and at $9,500 the length matters almost as much as the strikeouts do.
Chase Burns (CIN) vs SF | $11,000 | CASH
There is a version of tonight where I am wrong and Burns hands back half of his ERA. An 82.2% strand mark is not something any starter carries across a full season, and some of that 2.51 is going to leave. The rest of the page is the real thing, though, at 10.52 K/9 with a 15.4% swinging strike rate that no other starter today comes near, and a 2.86 SIERA that leans on none of the luck. The Giants are down at a 3.08 implied total, and no offense on this seven-game board grades out worse tonight. He is the most expensive arm on the slate, he will be the chalk, and I have no interest in getting cute about it.
Zack Wheeler (PHI) vs SEA | $10,800 | CASH
Wheeler is having the cleanest season of anyone starting today and the surface line undersells it. A 2.92 ERA with a 2.81 xFIP and a 2.51 SIERA underneath means none of it was borrowed, and he has done that at 10.79 K/9 against 2.47 BB/9. Seattle sits at a 3.14 implied total with the T-Mobile wind pointed back at home plate, which takes away the one thing that beats him. My hesitation is workload, since his five-start average has slid to a shade over four innings, and a strikeout ceiling shrinks in a hurry when the night ends in the fifth. Expensive, popular, and still hard to argue with.
Logan Gilbert (SEA) vs PHI | $9,800 | GPP
Recommending both sides of the same game feels odd, but the two arguments do not collide. Gilbert's 3.36 ERA and 3.36 xFIP sit right on top of each other, which is the least exciting and most trustworthy shape a pitcher can carry, and his 2.91 SIERA suggests he has been a touch better than either number. The part that fits tonight is the split, because left-handed hitters have managed a .195 average and a .272 wOBA against him with a 30.7% strikeout rate, and Philadelphia leads off with Schwarber and bats Harper third. The catch is that the home runs he does allow come from that same side, at 17.7% of the fly balls lefties lift, so Schwarber stays a live threat in a start that otherwise lines up well. Fewer people are going to get here than to the other dugout, and that is most of the appeal at this salary.
Kevin Gausman (CHC) vs ARI | $8,500 | GPP
Nobody is going to enjoy looking at the 4.59 ERA, which is most of why I want him. A .319 BABIP and a 66.7% strand mark account for nearly the whole distance between that number and a 3.42 xFIP, while his 3.33 SIERA insists a mid-threes arm has been in there the entire time. He is still missing bats at 8.99 K/9 with 2.52 BB/9. Arizona is implied for 3.93 under a closed roof, which is not a soft draw, and I would not build a cash roster around him. At this salary with that strikeout profile, he is the arm I want when the expensive ones go sideways.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
José Urquidy (CWS), Positive Regression Candidate
This is the widest gap between a pitching line and the pitching behind it that I have found in weeks. Urquidy carries a 5.06 ERA against a 2.97 xFIP and a 2.85 SIERA, and two figures do all the damage: a .400 BABIP and a 51.9% strand mark, both sitting so far outside normal that they are the story rather than a footnote. Underneath it he sits at 9.56 K/9 with 1.13 BB/9, which is a strikeout-to-walk profile you can build a rotation spot around. Chicago has been giving him his innings out of the middle of games rather than the front, so the run totals look worse than the pitching does. Texas is a real lineup and I am not rostering him today. The price does not survive many more starts like the ones underneath.
Robbie Ray (SD), Negative Regression Candidate
A 3.36 ERA sells lineups, and this one is held together with tape. Ray sits on a .259 BABIP with 79.2% of his baserunners stranded, while a 5.03 xFIP hangs a run and two-thirds above the ERA. The mechanism is not hiding either: 4.53 BB/9 paired with a 49.1% fly-ball rate, a combination that turns into a crooked inning the moment sequencing stops breaking his way. Righties have already located it, at 4.63 BB/9 with 1.52 HR/9 behind a 5.16 xFIP when they step in. I made the Pittsburgh case above and this is the other half of the same argument.
Final Thoughts
I would anchor the cash roster with Messick and Wheeler if the salary allows both and Messick alone if it does not, then run Minnesota bats through the middle of the lineup. Buxton and Jeffers are the two I want most, Lewis at $4,900 is the third, and Keaschall at $4,300 keeps the math workable. Michael Conforto at $3,300 costs almost nothing and arrives attached to a real matchup instead of a shrug, which is more than most bats at that price can say.
Two things worth a second look. The Sacramento wind is the first, because an eleven mile an hour push toward the outfield is the largest weather input anywhere today and a late shift would take a real bite out of the friendliest yard on the schedule. The second is how Chicago opens against Texas, since Urquidy has been throwing his innings out of the middle of games rather than the front, and the shape of that start changes how much of the Texas card is worth owning.
For tournaments I want Pittsburgh and Gilbert. The Pirates hand you a top of the order that has hammered left-handed pitching, pointed at a starter carrying a run and a half of daylight between his ERA and the walks and home runs underneath it, at a fraction of the ownership Minnesota is going to draw. Gilbert pairs with that cleanly on salary and gets you into the Seattle game from the side nobody is buying. If you want a third angle, Cincinnati against Carson Whisenhunt is sitting right there, because right-handed hitters have slugged .557 off him with 54.5% hard contact, and Oracle Park is the only thing standing between that split and a big number.
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.