Weather to Watch
Arizona at Kansas City | Kauffman Stadium | Clear, 90F | Wind: 10 mph SSE
Ninety degrees, and no other yard on this board is doing hitters a comparable favor. The crosswind adds a little instead of taking it away, and right-handed bats collect close to double what the lefties get out of it.
Cleveland at Baltimore | Oriole Park at Camden Yards | Clear, 81F | Wind: 6 mph N
Warm enough to matter, with a soft push back in from center that swallows most of the gain. Camden still grades out fine for right-handed power, just not the version you'd get on a dead-calm afternoon.
Los Angeles Angels at Boston | Fenway Park | Clear, 77F | Wind: 9 mph NW
The wind crosses instead of blowing, so the temperature does the work here, and it tilts a few points toward left-handed hitters. Boston has the roster to use that.
Chicago Cubs at Milwaukee | American Family Field | Clear, 77F | Wind: 10 mph ESE
Ten miles an hour coming in trims the run environment even though the home run number lands near neutral. I'd knock both offenses down a notch and leave it there.
Atlanta at Philadelphia | Citizens Bank Park | Clear, 77F | Wind: 6 mph N
The one ballpark today where the air works against you. Citizens Bank usually helps and this afternoon it doesn't, with right-handed bats docked about twice what the lefties give back.
One roof is shut, loanDepot in Miami, so the Mets and Marlins get the building and nothing more.
HR Calls
Kyle Schwarber (PHI) DK $6,400 | FD $4,000 vs Grant Holmes
Bad news first: the wind at Citizens Bank is blowing in and it clips a couple of points off left-handed power. I'm making the call anyway. Holmes issues 4.29 BB/9 to lefties, and a right-hander living in three-ball counts eventually has to groove one, which is how that side has gotten 1.36 HR/9 and an 18.5% HR/FB out of him while hammering 46.8% of its contact. Schwarber answers with a .262 xISO, an 18.5% barrel rate and 54.6% of everything pulled. FanDuel tops its hitters out at $4,200 and asks $4,000 for him, so he's premium money on both sheets rather than just this one.
Ketel Marte (ARI) DK $4,600 | FD $3,100 vs Noah Cameron
This one is a ballpark call and I'd rather admit that up front. Cameron handles right-handed hitters fine, holding them to a .224 average and 0.85 HR/9, so the matchup gives me nothing. The park gives me plenty. It's adding better than 20% to right-handed home run odds this afternoon, and Marte turns around against the lefty carrying a .261 xISO, 51.4% hard contact and half of everything pulled. He's the best power bat in the warmest air anybody is hitting in today, and DraftKings still has him at mid-tier money.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand (BAL) DK $4,200 | FD $2,900 vs Joey Cantillo
Barrels are the entire case. Encarnacion-Strand barrels 27.8% of his contact behind a .404 xISO and lofts 47.2% of it, and a hitter shaped like that needs one mistake, not five. Cantillo hands out mistakes: 4.64 BB/9 to right-handed hitters, and pitching behind in the count that often against a righty pull hitter is how he's ended up at 1.12 HR/9 and a 17.3% HR/FB to that side. Fair warning, Cantillo shows up in my Pitchers section too, so I'm working both ends of this game on purpose. At $2,900 on a FanDuel board that bottoms out at $2,000, he's the cheapest of my three calls on either site.
Stacks to Target
1. Kansas City vs Jose Cabrera (R) | Implied Total: 4.60 | ROO Score: 4.4/10 | CASH
The market likes this game more than any other today, in the best hitting environment on the board. Cabrera's trouble is left-handed hitters, who've taken him for 1.84 HR/9 and a 25% HR/FB while he strikes out 4.91 per nine against them, so the Royals lefties draw a pitcher who can neither miss their bats nor keep the ball down. Five of the nine bat from that side and a sixth switches over, and that group runs a 109 wRC+ off righties with hard contact on 44.8% of its batted balls. He's been idle eleven days too, with his last five outings averaging a shade over four innings apiece, so Arizona has to go to a bullpen that posts a 4.47 xFIP against lefties well before this is decided. The field will be here in numbers. So will I.
Core pieces: Bobby Witt $6,300 (R), Jac Caglianone $5,300 (L), Carter Jensen $4,800 (L), Vinnie Pasquantino $4,300 (L), Michael Massey $3,700 (L)
2. Boston vs Grayson Rodriguez (R) | Implied Total: 4.88 | ROO Score: 4.2/10 | CASH
Top implied total on the slate belongs to a lineup nobody would call scary, and the reason is the man pitching to them. Left-handed hitters own a .318 average and a .534 slugging mark against Rodriguez this season, with 51.8% hard contact and 4.89 walks per nine handed to them on top of it. Anthony and Abreu are the two I want most, with Duran, Rutschman and Gasper all able to turn around from that side, and Fenway is nudging left-handed power up a few ticks in 77-degree air. One catch. The Angels bullpen carries a 4.81 ERA that its 3.24 xFIP and 10.71 K/9 say is fake, so whatever Boston gets needs to happen while Rodriguez is still in the game. Score early or skip it.
Core pieces: Wilyer Abreu $5,500 (L), Roman Anthony $5,000 (L), Jarren Duran $4,000 (L), Adley Rutschman $3,500 (S), Trevor Story $3,100 (R)
3. Chicago Cubs vs Robert Gasser (L) | Implied Total: 3.97 | ROO Score: 3.6/10 | GPP
Almost nobody builds around a team implied under four runs, which is most of why I want them. Gasser sends 52.5% of his contact into the air, the highest rate of any starter working today, and right-handed hitters have converted that into a .483 slugging mark, 1.77 HR/9 and a 20% HR/FB. Chicago is built to punish it, a 122 wRC+ from its righties against left-handed pitching with an 18.9% HR/FB of their own, and Suzuki, Bregman and Hoerner all bat inside the top five. Milwaukee's pen sits at a 4.05 xFIP against right-handed bats, so the middle innings don't get any friendlier for the home side. The wind is in and the total is only 8.5. That's the honest argument against, and it's the same reason nobody else will be here.
Core pieces: Pete Crow-Armstrong $6,600 (L), Alex Bregman $6,100 (R), Seiya Suzuki $5,700 (R), Nico Hoerner $4,300 (R), Tyrone Taylor $3,000 (R)
Pitchers
Jesús Luzardo (PHI) vs ATL | DK $10,500 | FD $11,000 | CASH
The best arm on the slate also drew one of the two weakest offenses on it, in a park where the breeze is pointed back at the hitters today. Luzardo: 3.03 ERA, 2.81 xFIP, 11.12 K/9, 26.1% hard contact allowed. Left-handed hitters are batting .144 with a 1.66 xFIP against him, and I'll concede that Atlanta's card runs mostly right-handed, except that side still strikes out 28.2% of the time off him. He's gone better than six innings a start across his last five. He costs $10,500 here and the FanDuel maximum of $11,000. Everyone is going to land on him. I looked for a reason not to and couldn't build one.
Trevor Rogers (BAL) vs CLE | DK $8,300 | FD $9,600 | CASH
DraftKings prices him fourth among today's starters and FanDuel prices him second, and the DraftKings number is the wrong one. Rogers has a 4.31 ERA that both a 3.54 xFIP and a 3.49 SIERA want nothing to do with, and the culprits are a .301 BABIP and a 67.5% strand rate, neither of which is a skill he controls. He walks 2.31 per nine. Cleveland is implied for 3.50, second lowest today, and the wind at Camden is coming in from center. The knock deserves saying out loud: right-handed hitters have gotten 1.28 HR/9 and a 17.2% HR/FB off him, and the Guardians run four switch hitters who'll bat from that side all afternoon. He's still the best price on the DraftKings board.
Eury Pérez (MIA) vs NYM | DK $8,500 | FD $9,000 | GPP
The building is doing a lot of the work in this one. Close the roof at loanDepot and you get about the stingiest home run environment in baseball, which Pérez needs, because 48.4% of his contact goes airborne and right-handed hitters have pulled 1.73 HR/9 and a 25% HR/FB out of him. You're paying for swing-and-miss: 9.66 K/9, a 26.1% strikeout rate, 13.5% swinging strikes. New York is implied for 3.86. The 3.93 BB/9 is what keeps him out of my cash tier, because walks are how a good start turns into five innings.
Joey Cantillo (CLE) vs BAL | DK $7,800 | FD $8,200 | GPP
We covered the other face of this above, where I have Encarnacion-Strand going deep off him, so read it as one coin with two sides. Only Luzardo and Pérez miss more bats today. Cantillo has struck out 24.5% of the hitters he's faced, and against right-handers he gets that up to 10.75 K/9. He also walks 4.64 per nine to that side, and Baltimore's 4.00 implied total is the highest number any of my four arms is staring at. Nine punchouts and four earned runs is the likeliest afternoon, and in a tournament I'll buy the nine.
Pitcher Regression to Watch
Grant Holmes (ATL), Negative Regression Candidate
Every number Holmes owns that looks good is on loan. His ERA is 3.64. His xFIP is 6.00. No starter with 100 innings today has a gap anywhere near that. A .257 BABIP built it, along with an 81.3% strand rate that climbs to 87.6% against left-handed hitters. Neither of those holds. Lefties are hitting 46.8% of their batted balls hard off him and drawing 4.29 walks per nine. Philadelphia is the lineup positioned to collect, which is why Schwarber is my premium call above and why I like the Phillies' left-handed bats as one-off pieces even without going full stack.
Grayson Rodriguez (LAA), Positive Regression Candidate
Awkward one, given that I have Boston stacked against him. The 6.06 ERA has a 4.47 xFIP and a 4.03 SIERA underneath it, dragged up by a .324 BABIP and a 62.5% strand rate that nobody else starting this afternoon comes close to, and the 8.39 K/9 says the stuff hasn't gone anywhere. The piece that isn't luck is the platoon split. Lefties have posted a .396 wOBA against him, and Boston happens to be stocked with exactly that kind of bat. So I believe the buy-low case in general and I'm fading it for one afternoon.
Final Thoughts
Cash runs through Luzardo and Rogers, and those two only fit together because Rogers costs $8,300 instead of the $9,600 FanDuel thinks he's worth. That leaves room for Witt and Caglianone off the Royals plus Abreu out of Boston, with Massey at $3,700 filling the last spot. Down to a single starter, keep Luzardo and push everything you save into a sixth Kansas City bat.
Cabrera's workload is the thing I'd look at again before lock. Eleven idle days on top of five straight short outings adds up to a quick hook, and the relievers waiting behind him are even softer against left-handed bats than he is, so Kansas City's lefties profit whichever way it breaks. Boston's starter is in a comparable spot from the opposite direction, making his first start back after months away, which likely means Fenway sees both bullpens by the sixth and this game plays bigger than an 8-run total suggests.
Tournaments are where the Cubs earn their keep. Implied under four runs and priced like it, but Gasser is a fly ball pitcher standing in front of a pen that can't put right-handed bats away, and the Chicago righties hold the best platoon edge of anyone I've listed today. Pair five Cubs with Cantillo and neither arm the room anchors to is anywhere on your card. Encarnacion-Strand at $2,900 on FanDuel is the other place I'd differentiate, because a 27.8% barrel rate does not usually sell at that price.
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.