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Weather
We are all clear! And the temperatures have cooled off, because weather doesn’t make any sense. We’re in the mid-70s where most of these games are being played, so we don’t have big spots for hitters temp-wise.
Game Info
IMPLIED TOTALS
I’m seeing seven spots that pop.
Twins vs. Jacob Lopez (5.6 implied,+0.82 over average)
Dodgers vs. Sean Manaea (5.4, +0.21)
Marlins vs. German Marquez (5.2, +0.75)
Giants vs. Grayson Rodriguez (5.09, +0.93)
Cardinals vs. Rhett Lowder (5.02, +0.57)
Orioles vs. Grant Holmes (4.89, +0.30)
Red Sox vs. Trey Yesavage (4.82, +0.60)
Usually we have a team or two implied for a full run or more above their season average; not the case tonight.
The Twins (+0.82) and Giants (+0.93) are the best that we have. The Twins have high ownership projected early in the day here. The Giants are at home, which is always a problem. But they do get Grayson Rodriguez in this redemption tour he’s on which isn’t going well by any measure.
We have no Coors, no Sacramento, no Cincinnati. It’s a pretty even-looking slate. No obvious stack spots for us to have to decide on.
O/Us
9.5: ATH vs. MIN
9.0: SD vs. MIA, ATL vs. BAL, LAD vs. NYM
Just four games over nine. We’re typically looking for that 10.5 game to pile up on for DFS, but we don’t have it tonight.
Moneylines
Giants (-175) [Webb vs. GRod/Angels]
Cardinals -168 [May vs. Lowder/Reds)
Pitchers
First thing we do is check the projections. Here’s everybody over a 15-point projection:
Bryce Miller ($10K) is not at home for this one, which we don’t like with Mariners pitchers. But it’s still an awesome park factor for him to take advantage of, and a beatable Rangers lineup.
Logan Webb ($9.7K) goes at the Angels at home. That’s an awesome matchup, and it’s the highest projection we’ve seen on Webb for awhile. That’s a solid cash option with the safety we’ve come to know from Webb over the year. The value mark isn’t quite there, but my first reaction is to be okay with that, happily taking the floor in cash games.
MacKenzie Gore ($8.3K) is in a spot. We like him at home, he gets a lot more strikeouts there for whatever reason. But he has a 4.80 ERA and doesn’t ever seem to actually come through on the ceiling projection we always have for him. The Marainers are hitting just .216/.299/.334 against lefties this year with a 24% K%, and on the road they hit for a .683 OPS. This is a good spot for Gore, but he’s failed in many good spots before!
His three best starts have come at home. He has a 3.44 ERA and 1.01 WHIP in Texas with a 23% K-BB%. So I think you can definitely fire him up for tournaments, the constant letdowns from Gore should keep his ownership down.
Grant Holmes ($7,000) vs. BAL
The O’s hit righties better than lefties. Holmes has a sub-10% K-BB%, his Stuff+ is trending down, and he’s cracked 90 pitches just three times all year. He threw 74 last time.
The projection likes him at this price, but I don’t really see the appeal of it.
Dustin May ($7,800) vs. CIN
The Reds have been awful this year, and especially since June 1st.
Dustin May is hard to trust. He doesn’t get many strikeouts, typically, and the command is spotty at best. It can go either way. The one thing he does not do much is given up the homer (seven all year), and this game is in Busch Stadium which is a boost for him. He’s given up just one homer at home all year.
But you’d be betting on a bounce-back by playing him. His four July starts haven’t been good (7.53 ERA, 2.02 WHIP). It’s an 11% K-BB% with no homers given up in these four, the big problem has been the walks and the BABIP. But this is definitely a spot to play the guy in, at home against the hapless Reds.
Trey Yesavage ($8,000) vs. BOS
Up against the buzzsaw Red Sox. But the Sox stil aren’t a great lineup, we shouldn’t start thinking that just because of a couple of hot weeks. Yesavage was awesome last time out with nine strikeouts. He has five of six pretty good outings for an $8K tag.
But he can’t be considered in cash. He’s tourneys-only. He has two seven-walk starts on his resume this year. Tread carefully.
Shane McClanahan ($9,000) vs. CLE
Jose Ramirez is back, which makes quite a big difference on this lineup. It’s still beatable, but McClanahan at $9K with his 22% K% doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, and the projection doesn’t like the price at all either. He’s one of the lowest values on the board.
Spencer Arrighetti ($8,200) vs. CWS
The model is funky here. Or maybe it’s just onto something, I guess we’ll find out. Arrighetti has 5, 1, 6, and four walks in his last four starts as his Ball% is 40.4% for the year. He’s very bad. I don’t know why he’s priced like this and I don’t know why my projection is above 15 points.
Let’s look at the values.
Not much to like. You could argue that the prices are a little bit too low on G-Rod, Holmes, Lopez, and Manaea. And I’d definitely mix in all of those guys in a 150 lineup situation. Somebody there will probably grab 15+ points and smash at the cost, but if we’re talking about cash or single entry, they aren’t good enough.
Let’s look at this JACOB LOPEZ situation, because the slate has a lot to do with him. The Twins are the top projected ownership stack on the board. Lopez just recently went to the minors and then came back, and he came back as a different guy.
Pitch | Usage Before | Usage After
FF | 34% | 44%
SL | 30% | 42%
FC | 20% | 9%
CH | 10% | 4%
SI | 6% | 1%
So he comes back and has thrown more than 85% four-seamers and slider. I think the point is to highlight the slider, or maybe he tweaked it. The Stuff+ is up on that pitch since he came back, and it has a massive 22.7% SwStr% on 66 pitches.
His last outing was 4.1 innings with two hits, two runs, six strikeouts, and two walks. So it was fine.
The point here is that we’re dealing with a different kind of pitcher than what he was the first three months. I’m not sure if the changes will be for the better, but they are changes, and I think Twins chalk might be a bad idea in tourneys tonight. And I think a Jacob Lopez K prop looks pretty good!
I could see Sean Manaea doing fine in this spot against the Dodgers. He’s not super good, and this is a tough matchup obviously, but for $6.5K I think it’s fine in tourneys.
On the other side of Manaea is Roki Sasaki ($7.3K), who is certainly a tourney shot play after he flashed 101 (average) on the fastball last time out against the Yankees. Dodgers are on a wicked long road trip here. Will the fastball velo stick? I don’t know. But we discovered this yesterday in the pitcher breakouts article:
When fastball averages more than 98mph:
3.70 ERA, 27.6% K%, 6.7% BB%When fastball averages less than 98mph:
5.81 ERA, 20.0% K%, 10.4% BB%
What are the chances Sasaki ramped up the heater +2mph just for one outing? I guess it’s not zero… but it seems to me like a good bet he’ll be throwing hard in this one again, and he can have some huge games when he’s doing that.
Zebby Matthews ($6,800) projects horribly (11.45 points), but does get one of the best matchups in baseball with the Athletics on the road. Still no Kurtz, and this is a team which has been pathetically bad away from the minor league park in Sacramento. The Bat X projects him even worse than I do, which is pretty wild. We’re both around 11 points. I wouldn’t be shocked if he posts 18 though!
CASH OPTIONS: BRYCE MILLER, LOGAN WEBB, DUSTIN MAY
GPP OPTIONS: ALL THE ABOVE, GORE, YESAVAGE, TREVOR ROGERS, SASAKI, MANAEA, HOLMES, CANTILLO
Hitters
So the Mariners are the top projected offense in my model.
That’s weird because the model also kinda likes Gore. Gore is the kind of pitcher that can give up points to hitters while scoring some for himself too. He can strike out the side but squeeze a walk and a homer in there, too. So we see weird stuff when weird pitchers are pitching.
The 2-3-4 stack is surely in play with the three high-upside righties crammed together all under $5K. You have to like that JRod price, don’t you?
I’m not sure if I want to stack the Mets like the projections are suggesting because of the velo thing going with Sasaki.
We also are projecting the Athletics pretty well against Zebby and his badness. But I’d rather be on the Zebby side of the road Athletics rather than those mostly low-upside bats.
I think the Twins and Dodgers are bad chalk.
The Marlins are a good stack. That might be a path I take. The Padres have that nasty bullpen, but with German Marquez on the mound - it’s not as big of a worry. The thing about stacking offenses is that if the stack hits early on in the game, they usually don’t see the good relievers anyways. If it’s 7-2 Marlins in the 6th, the Padres aren’t going to waste their big arms for the rest of that game.
So I like these guys against Marquez, and it especially helps that this game isn’t in San Diego.
Those prices! That’s a cheap, cheap stack with plenty of home run upside with Stowers/Hernandez/Hicks/Conine.
Here are your top projections for each team’s 1-5 hitters:
My favorites I think are Seattle and Miami. But it does seem more like a mini-stack kind of day to me at this point with no offense in a fantastic spot.
Catchers
We haven’t seen any signs of life from Cal Raleigh. Since June 1st:
It’s all bad. But the model won’t soon forget his numbers from 2024-2025, so it’ll continue to project him pretty well.
Shea Langeliers at $5,300 on the road is usually not very appealing. Good spot against fly ball Zebby though. I just don’t think it’s optimal with the value showing there.
Ryan Jeffers ($5,200) is one of the top Twins bats to use if you’re mini-stacking them. A 1-2-3 stack in Minnesota makes sense with Buxton in there. But he’s probably too expensive for cash.
Alejandro Kirk ($2,900) once again has a nice projection for the price at a 2.6x value. Patrick Sandoval is going for the Red Sox. We haven’t seen much of him in the bigs the last couple years, but he’s not someone you have to worry about. He’s a lefty, which benefits Kirk theoretically (Kirk has hit righties better this year but it’s just 116 PAs total), and Kirk is very good at getting balls in play and finding a way to score a handful of points.
CASH PLAY: KIRK
First Base
The Ohtani ownership on Wednesday night was absurd. It was a weird slate without many good options anywhere and lots of money to spend on hitters, but he was 80% in cash. Ohtani has just a .702 OPS in July. That could be random, or it could be this knee thing that’s bothering him. I’m really uninterested in him at $6,700 against Manaea.
Bryce Eldridge ($3,900) continues to pop with a 9.4-point projection and 2.4x value. One of the top value plays on the board. But back in San Fran, I’m not going out of my way to get him. He’s been swinging the bat well again, and has shown that he can get the ball out of AT&T Park, so it’s fine, and maybe a good move in cash against Grayson, but not an elite play.
I like Kyle Stowers ($4,000) a lot at this price, but that’s probably more of a tourney idea with his high K% and struggles this year.
Jared Young ($2,500) is a viable punt. But I think I’m liking Eldridge the best.
CASH PLAY: ELDRIDGE
Second Base
The Cardinals are a fine spot against Lowder, but that would be better if it were in Cincy. The model has Wetherholt at the top of the board, but the value isn’t popping off there.
Anthony Seigler ($3,100) is another one of the projections’ favorites. 2.7x here leading off against Yesavage, but I don’t really want to pick on Yesavage. When he’s bad, he’s just giving up two points at a time with walks. Not realy interested in the Sox tonight.
Tommy Edman ($4,700) projected to hit third against the lefty. That’s interesting. The value is bad as his price is surprisingly high, but he’s in play with Betts and Pages as a mini Dodgers RHB stack.
Davis Schneider ($2,000) is the top value at minimum price against the lefty (Sandoval). I think you can stack up some of these Blue Jays righties tonight:
Clement $3800
Vlad $3700
Okamoto $4200
Springer $3700
Kirk $2900
Schneider $2000
That’s a heavy righty attack IN BOSTON where those hits (lots of doubles) are easy to come by off the Green Monster.
CASH PLAY: WETHERHOLT
Third Base
Junior Caminero ($6,100) is not in the best spot. It’s Joey Cantillo and his changeups and curveballs for the Guards. I guess he could hang one and have his day ruined, but I don’t think it’s ideal for the big price on Caminero.
Sal Stewart is also priced up with very low odds of a homer against May. don’t love that.
Colton Montgomery ($4,600) and the White Sox take on Arrighetti, so that’s pretty appealing. The White Sox stack is certainly viable. Lots of lefties at the top of that lineup that can take what Arrighetti gives.
CASH PLAY: COLSON MONTGOMERY
Shortstop
JP Crawford ($2,800) eternally pops in my projections. I don’t know why, but I don’t really advise playing him other than a punt where you just need the cheap salary.
I think the left handed Orioles are in play against Holmes. He struggles with those lefties. But the Braves have a lockdown bullpen even with Suarez on the shelf. So you’re typically not scoring late on them, and the Orioles aren’t a very stackable offense overall. But I like Gunnar Henderson ($5,100)’s chances for a big swing tonight. He can at least hit homers against righties.
But I think the play is to go with the fish here and take Otto Lopez ($4,700) in cash.
Outfield
Top projections:
Top values:
My favorite plays:
Julio Rodriguez $4,400
Heriberto Hernandez $3,400
Yordan Alvarez $6,500
Tyler Soderstrom $4,600
Randy Arozarena $4,900
Byron Buxton $6,000
Austin Martin $3,200
Davis Schneider $2,000
Steven Kwan $3,000
After looking at everything, I think this is kind of the rough draft for cash:
And I think it’s a good night to just mini-stack a bunch of different lineups. There’s no clear five-man stacks with massive upside. So we’ll build a bunch of three-man correlation stacks (1-3 or 2-4 in the lineup are ideal).
Marlins vs. Marquez
Mariners vs. Gore
Twins vs Lopez
Cardinals vs. Lowder
Blue Jays vs. Sandoval
Those are my takes!