Weather to Watch
Houston at New York Yankees | Yankee Stadium | Clear, 79F | Wind: 6 mph W
Six miles an hour is not much anywhere else, but in the Bronx it only has to carry a ball 314 feet down the line. Warm and clear with the air moving toward right field is the version of this park that scares pitchers.
Kansas City at Toronto | Rogers Centre | Clear, 69F | Wind: 2 mph SSW
The roof is projected open on a 69-degree evening with essentially no breeze. That combination grades a hair under a neutral day, so nothing here helps or hurts, and anything you like in this game you have to like on the matchup alone.
Milwaukee at New York Mets | Citi Field | Clear, 78F | Wind: 5 mph WNW
A soft crosswind that leans toward the right field corner. Left-handed bats pick up a real if modest bump and right-handed bats collect almost nothing, which is worth remembering when you pick sides.
Los Angeles Dodgers at Atlanta | Truist Park | Clear, 90F | Wind: 1 mph WNW
Ninety degrees and dead still in Atlanta. No wind at all means the temperature gets to do all the talking, and 90 degrees talks loudly enough that this is one of the three or four best offensive environments on the board.
Texas at Chicago White Sox | Rate Field | Clear, 78F | Wind: 3 mph S
Calm and pleasant on the South Side. The park grades a touch generous on its own tonight and the forecast does not argue with it either way.
Baltimore at St. Louis | Busch Stadium | Overcast, 88F | Wind: 5 mph SE
Eighty-eight degrees under cloud cover with a light crosswind. Busch usually plays as a pitcher's yard and heat like this is the one thing that pulls it back toward the middle, with right-handed contact getting the better end of it.
Cleveland at Los Angeles Angels | Angel Stadium | Clear, 85F | Wind: 9 mph SW
Warm, clear, and blowing toward the fence in Anaheim. This is the most generous the building gets, and I would not want to be a fly-ball pitcher standing in it tonight.
Pittsburgh at San Diego | Petco Park | Clear, 79F | Wind: 5 mph WSW
Seventy-nine is warm by Petco standards, with a light crosswind riding along with it. The park has not stopped being a park, so treat tonight as a lighter tax rather than an open door.
Minnesota at Athletics | Sutter Health Park | Overcast, 94F | Wind: 8 mph SW
The hottest first pitch of the day, 94 in Sacramento, and the breeze is helping. Nothing else across these twelve games comes close to what this yard does to a baseball tonight, and right-handed contact in particular collects a bump about double whatever finishes second.
Philadelphia at Seattle | T-Mobile Park | Clear, 81F | Wind: 10 mph WSW
Eighty-one in Seattle with the panels projected open and ten miles an hour headed out. T-Mobile spends most of the season eating fly balls and tonight it does the opposite, which flips the way I would normally grade this game.
Cincinnati at San Francisco | Oracle Park | Overcast, 67F | Wind: 16 mph WNW
Sixteen miles an hour headed out, which is the hardest the air moves anywhere today, set against the coolest first pitch on the schedule. The gust wins that argument comfortably, and Oracle turns into a place left-handed power can actually use.
One roof, Chase Field in Phoenix. The building decides that one and the forecast never gets a vote.
HR Calls
Kyle Schwarber (PHI) $6,300 vs George Kirby
Tonight the panels are open and the wind is pushing out, and a park that normally knocks 20% off a fly ball is handing some of it back. Kirby is the wrong arm to meet in that version of T-Mobile. He puts away only 17.8% of the left-handed hitters he faces, which means contact, and that contact has travelled, a .459 slugging mark with 15.4% of their fly balls landing over a wall. Schwarber pulls 60.5% of what he hits with a .301 ISO and 27 home runs off right-handers, and he leads off, so he gets the extra trip nobody else in that order does.
Royce Lewis (MIN) $5,000 vs Gage Jump
The best park on the board has a bat sitting in it at a price that has not caught up. Jump sits at 4.22 BB/9 against right-handed hitters with a 10.6% walk rate, and an arm falling behind that often eventually has to groove one on purpose, several times a night, which is how he has already surrendered a .453 slugging mark and watched 16.3% of his fly balls to that side land in the seats. Lewis answers with a .198 ISO against left-handers and 43.2% hard contact, and a fifth of his fly balls off them have gone out. Add 94 degrees and a wind pushing out and I have a hard time finding the argument against him.
Coby Mayo (BAL) $3,300 vs Matthew Liberatore
Mayo has spent this season turning into a genuine problem for left-handed pitching and DraftKings has not adjusted. He owns a .435 ISO and a 199 wRC+ against them, with 13 home runs in 118 plate appearances and better than 41% of his fly balls off lefties leaving the park. I checked that last number twice. Liberatore is the matching half. He hands right-handed hitters a 4.12 xFIP and 1.31 HR/9, and 30.7% of the contact he allows goes airborne. Busch usually swallows that shape whole, but 88 degrees pulls the park back toward neutral and gives right-handed bats the better side of the crosswind.
Stacks to Target
1. Minnesota vs Gage Jump (L) | Implied Total: 5.51 | ROO Score: 6.0/10 | Cash
Start with the honest part, because the team platoon number is not good. Minnesota's righties own a 99 wRC+ and a .128 ISO versus southpaws this year, which is average on a generous reading. The park is why I am here anyway. Sacramento at 94 degrees with the wind out is worth roughly a 21% bump to right-handed home run rate, which is a bigger edge than any lineup quality gap on this slate. Jump gives the whole thing a floor too, at 4.22 BB/9 to that side with a .351 wOBA allowed and a 3.83 xFIP that his 4.83 ERA is not really lying about. Jeffers has been the exception to the platoon rule at a 162 wRC+ against lefties, and Lewis and Keaschall both sit at 112. Jump gets a shade over five innings a night, and the Athletics relief group behind him runs a 4.59 xFIP.
Core pieces: Byron Buxton $6,000 (R), Ryan Jeffers $5,100 (R), Royce Lewis $5,000 (R), Josh Bell $4,500 (S), Luke Keaschall $4,200 (R)
2. New York Yankees vs Ethan Pecko (R) | Implied Total: 4.84 | ROO Score: 4.4/10 | Cash
Seven left-handed bats in the top eight, in the ballpark built for exactly that, with the air moving toward the short porch. Pecko has one major league start on his record, 3.67 innings and 89 pitches on August 19. That is not enough for me to tell you anything confident about him, which is rather the situation Houston has put itself in, asking a rookie to navigate this order in this building. The bullpen waiting behind him is the softest any of these three stacks has to solve, a 4.75 xFIP group that grades last on the board. New York's lefties carry a .188 ISO against right-handers and hit the ball hard 47.0% of the time. Ben Rice is the one I want most, at a 149 wRC+ with 24 home runs. This is the rare spot where the cheap end works too, since Wells and Jones together cost less than one premium bat.
Core pieces: Ben Rice $6,100 (L), Luis Garcia $5,100 (L), Cody Bellinger $4,700 (L), Jazz Chisholm $4,600 (L), Trent Grisham $4,400 (L)
3. Kansas City vs Max Scherzer (R) | Implied Total: 3.86 | ROO Score: 3.8/10 | GPP
The weather does nothing here and the implied total is ordinary, so almost nobody will bother. They are skipping the ugliest platoon split I found this morning. Scherzer against left-handed hitters has a 6.24 xFIP, strikes out 4.67 K/9, walks 5.33 BB/9 at a 12.2% clip, and has surrendered a .527 slugging mark with 22.6% of their fly balls leaving the park. A pitcher who cannot miss a lefty bat and cannot throw a strike to one either does not get to pick which mistakes he makes. Five of the nine Royals hit from the left side tonight, and the one to build around is Caglianone, who owns a 133 wRC+ and 59.3% hard contact against right-handed pitching. Scherzer has averaged four innings a start, and the Toronto relievers behind him carry a 5.12 xFIP, which is the worst group in this article.
Core pieces: Jac Caglianone $5,400 (L), Carter Jensen $4,400 (L), Vinnie Pasquantino $4,400 (L), Michael Massey $3,600 (L), Kyle Isbel $2,700 (L)
Pitchers
Gavin Williams (CLE) vs LAA | $10,500 | CASH
Nobody on this twelve-game board projects for fewer runs than the Angels at 3.20, and the gap to the next-worst lineup is not small. Williams has been better than his 3.74 ERA all year, with a 2.69 xFIP and a 2.37 SIERA underneath it and 11.73 K/9 that shows up against both sides of the plate. The flaw is worth stating plainly. Righties have taken him deep at 1.90 HR/9, and 41.4% of everything they lift off him has left the park, which is an absurd rate that he now carries into an Anaheim night with the air headed out. That is a real way this start goes sideways. The strikeout floor is high enough and the opponent weak enough that I will take it anyway.
Kyle Harrison (MIL) vs NYM | $9,500 | CASH
No offense on the slate is implied for fewer runs than the Mets at 3.02, which is where I want to start with any cash arm. Harrison has earned his line rather than borrowed it. The 2.84 ERA sits almost exactly on top of a 2.99 xFIP, which is what an honest season looks like, and the ratio underneath is 11.19 K/9 against 2.39 BB/9. The right-handed side is the one that can hurt him, at 1.57 HR/9 and 20.7% of those fly balls gone, and Citi Field is nudging left-handed contact tonight rather than right. My real hesitation is length, because he has averaged 4.27 innings across his last five starts and a short outing caps the whole thing.
Paul Skenes (PIT) vs SD | $9,000 | GPP
Everybody is going to look at a 3.95 ERA and move on, which is the entire opportunity. Underneath sits a 2.90 xFIP and a 2.60 SIERA, and what accounts for the distance is a .310 BABIP alongside a strand rate stuck at 66.7%, neither of which is something he controls. He is at 11.07 K/9 and gets even better against right-handed hitters, where a 2.41 xFIP and 12.35 K/9 have held them to a .305 wOBA. San Diego is implied for 3.99 with a lineup the engine reads as cold. He is the lowest-rostered arm in the top tier and the numbers do not justify that.
Jacob deGrom (TEX) vs CWS | $9,300 | CASH
This is the popular one and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The case is simple enough. There is a full run of daylight between his 3.78 ERA and a 2.84 xFIP, he misses bats at 11.20 K/9, and the White Sox are implied for 3.66 with an offense that has gone quiet over the past week. Lefties and righties alike have been stuck under a .305 wOBA against him, so there is no split to attack here. The one thing I would flag is that his last five starts have averaged 4.27 innings, and at this salary you are partly paying for innings you may not get.
Tyler Glasnow (LAD) vs ATL | $10,000 | GPP
Read the workload before you read anything else. Glasnow has not logged an appearance since May 6, which is 111 days, and every source I checked agrees on that date rather than disagreeing the way a sync problem would. A pitcher returning from an absence that long is going to be on a strict pitch count, so the strikeout ceiling that justifies this salary is not on the table tonight. He is projected as one of the two most popular arms on the slate, which tells me the field is looking at the name and the 2.76 ERA rather than the calendar. If you want him in a tournament for the stuff, fine. He is not a cash anchor today, and I would not describe this as a clean matchup no matter how good the arm is.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Walbert Ureña (LAA), Negative Regression Candidate
A 2.81 ERA over 112 innings will look like a breakout to anybody who stops reading there. The 5.07 xFIP underneath is one of the widest gaps I have found all season, and the mechanism is not subtle. Against left-handed hitters Ureña sits at 5.71 BB/9 and a 14.6% walk rate and has still stranded 86.3% of them, which is the single least sustainable number on this board. Free baserunners plus a strand rate that high adds up to a run-prevention record built on sequencing, and sequencing does not hold. Cleveland's lefties are the group standing in tonight, and while that unit has been ordinary all year at a 92 wRC+, they do not need to be good to draw walks off a pitcher handing out that many.
Aaron Nola (PHI), Positive Regression Candidate
Nola's 5.12 ERA is the worst-looking number belonging to a good pitcher today. A 3.62 xFIP and a 3.31 SIERA sit well under it, a .319 BABIP explains most of the distance, and the swing-and-miss has not gone anywhere at 9.59 K/9. The counterargument is a good one and I will make it myself. His 2.04 HR/9 is bad, xFIP normalizes that exact number and therefore flatters him, and he walks into a T-Mobile Park with the panels open and the wind blowing out. That is close to the worst night imaginable for the specific flaw he has. The arm underneath is a mid-threes starter and the price keeps reflecting the ERA, so I am filing this one for a better park rather than firing it tonight.
Final Thoughts
The cash build starts with Gavin Williams against the weakest offense on the slate, and Harrison next to him if the salary works, since the Mets are the only lineup implied lower than the Angels. Fill the middle of the roster with Twins, Buxton and Jeffers ahead of the rest, and Royce Lewis at $5,000 as the one I expect to beat his tag outright. Josh Bell at $4,500 and Keaschall at $4,200 keep the money workable without asking you to roster anybody you do not want.
Two things to keep an eye on. The first is Sacramento, where a 94-degree forecast and a wind pushing out are doing more work than any other input on this board, so a late shift there changes the whole shape of the slate. The second is Tyler Glasnow, who the field will roster on name recognition after four months away, and if the Dodgers announce anything about a pitch count before lock it will matter more to the Atlanta side of that game than to his own.
For tournaments I want Kansas City and Skenes. The Royals get five left-handed bats against a pitcher with a 6.24 xFIP to that side and a bullpen behind him that is worse than he is, at ownership almost nobody else will touch, and Caglianone at $5,400 is the cleanest way in. Skenes pairs with it on salary and gives you a strikeout ceiling the field is discounting because of an ERA his own peripherals reject. There is a third road in if you want it, because the Yankee lefties travel from cash to tournaments without changing anything, since a rookie making his second career start in that ballpark with the wind out is a wider range of outcomes than the ownership suggests.
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.