Sports picks for Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Suzuki against a left-hander is a different hitter than Suzuki against everybody else — a .991 OPS against lefties this season, and he's shown that form all month, fourteen hits in his last fifty at-bats with three home runs in that stretch. He's even better at home than on the road, which matters on a Wrigley afternoon. Eric Lauer's four-seamer, which he throws almost half the time, is allowing a .374 expected mark, and that's exactly the pitch Suzuki has feasted on from left-handers all year. A hit, a run scored, or a run driven in is about the lowest bar this board offers for a bat this hot, in a lineup that already touched this rotation for ten runs two nights ago. I don't need him to do anything more than that.

Hoerner doesn't need to hit one out to have a good day, he just needs to keep doing what he's done for two weeks — eighteen hits in his last fifty-four at-bats, and he already went deep against this pitching staff last night. He's a contact-first hitter from the right side facing a left-hander who's allowed a .731 OPS and sixteen home runs to right-handed bats already this season, mostly off a fastball that gets barreled more than a big-league arm can afford. Getting Hoerner on base with a single in a game he's locked into like this one is close to a formality, and the price still pays close to even money for it.

Bradford hasn't thrown a big league pitch since September of 2024. The elbow reconstruction cost him all of last year, and a rehab setback pushed this return even further back than the original plan. He built up to fifty-six pitches in his final rehab start, and Texas has already signaled they're not letting him past that kind of workload his first time back against real competition. Thirteen and a half outs works out to four and a third innings — nothing for a healthy, established starter, but a real stretch for a pitcher two years removed from his last major league inning working on a hard pitch count. Whatever his stuff looks like early, the number on the pitch count is what ends his night.

Three of Whisenhunt's last four starts didn't reach this number, including his most recent, where he was out after three and a third having already allowed seven hits and six runs. The problem isn't matchup-specific bad luck — hitters are squaring him up at a rate well above league norm all season, and tonight he draws a Rangers lineup that's six right-handed bats deep against the exact pitch, his four-seamer, that righties have hit at a .500 clip against him this year. A pitcher who can't keep the ball off the barrel doesn't get stretched out by his manager, he gets pulled once the line starts filling up. Five and a third innings is a reasonable ask for a healthy, established arm — it hasn't been the norm for him lately.

Taillon's Blue Jays debut comes nine days removed from getting designated for assignment by the Cubs, and the tape explains why: his last three starts have produced nine and a third innings, twelve earned runs, an 11.57 ERA. He hasn't reached fourteen outs in any of them — his longest was four and a third innings. His cutter is getting hunted for a .746 expected weighted-on-base against and his fastball sits under 92, both pitches he's had to lean on all year. Now he walks into Daikin Park with the roof shut against a lineup that put seven runs on his new team a night ago, with Jeremy Peña and Yordan Alvarez both scorching hot at the top of the order. There's no reason for Schneider to let this rope play out past the fifth if it starts unraveling early, and recent history says it usually does.

Alvarez hits .351 with a 1.161 OPS against right-handers this year, and Taillon throws right-handed with a fastball and cutter that have both been hit hard all season. At home, Alvarez is at .386 with nineteen homers; over his last two weeks he's at .370. He bats second in front of Altuve, Varsho, Trammell and Walker, so the RBI chances are there most nights, and this offense scores enough that the runs follow. Two and a half combined hits, runs and RBIs at plus money is a below-average night for the best hitter in this game against a pitcher carrying an 11.57 ERA over his last three trips to the mound.

Mesa Jr. is 1-for-18 over his last seven games and 4-for-29 over his last fifteen — a .138 average with nothing hit hard in that stretch. He's leading off, so he'll see his at-bats, but at-bats haven't found him a barrel lately. He's had a multi-hit game once in his last fifteen tries. I'm not betting on a cold streak this defined to suddenly produce someone's best game of the month. Under.

Martinez doesn't miss bats. Sixty-nine strikeouts in 123 innings this season is a 5.0 mark per nine, and his last six starts read 2, 5, 0, 1, 3, 3 — one outing above this number in six tries. He works off soft contact and a changeup that's been nearly unhittable at .143 against, not swing-and-miss stuff off the fastball or cutter. Coors Field also saps bite off breaking pitches at altitude, which works against the shape of stuff he'd need for a spike. This isn't a park-specific fade — it's who he is every fifth day, and tonight doesn't change that.

Moniak's season splits point one direction and tonight sits right in it. Fifteen home runs and a 1.029 OPS at home against four home runs and a .690 OPS on the road. Seventeen home runs and a .960 OPS against right-handers against two and a .615 mark against lefties. Martinez throws right-handed, this is Coors, and Moniak's own damage this year has come against the sinker and four-seamer — the two pitches Martinez throws most. He's also running hot, four home runs in his last fifteen days with a barrel rate over 13 percent on recent contact. The setup lines up about as clean as this board offers, even if it still takes one swing to cash it.

Rogers has been a different pitcher since June — 2.05 ERA that month, 2.37 in July, and across his last three starts he's walked one batter total in 19.1 innings. He's allowed three earned runs or more exactly once in his last eight starts, and that one came in a 10-9 shootout at Detroit where Baltimore's whole bullpen got roughed up behind him, not just Rogers. The lineup he's facing tonight has scored 2.9 a game over its last ten and 2.2 over its last five, and it's doing that with Jo Adell traded out of the middle of that order, not in it. Camden Yards plays neutral, so the park isn't bailing this line out either way. I'll take the arm that's thrown like this for two straight months over an offense that's gone cold and gotten thinner. Trevor Rogers under 2.5 earned runs.

Grissom's been the best hitter in this lineup not named Trout, and it isn't close — 13-for-46 with 10 RBI over his last fifteen games, and he picked up a double and an RBI in the series opener last night. He's right-handed, and Trevor Rogers has pitched like a different pitcher against righties than lefties all year: a .278 average and .761 OPS allowed to right-handed bats against .183 and .536 to lefties. Grissom chases more than he should and it'll cost him a strikeout some nights, but it hasn't touched the production, and hitting cleanup means he's getting at-bats with runners in front of him. Two combined hits, runs, and RBI has landed in eleven of his last fifteen games. I like it again tonight. Vaughn Grissom over 1.5 hits, runs, and RBIs.

De La Cruz has walked in eleven of his last fifteen games. That's not a small sample fluke, that's a switch-hitter seeing the ball well from both sides of the plate right now. The pitcher on the mound tonight has issued forty-two walks in seventy innings this season — 5.4 per nine — and that number didn't correct itself even during his best recent outings; his last three starts covered fourteen and two-thirds innings and he still walked eight hitters. Command problems don't fix themselves against a patient hitter on a hot on-base stretch. I'll take the walk.

Stewart has sixteen RBIs and four home runs over his last fifteen games — a legitimately hot bat — and he's driven in a run in ten of those fifteen. He hits second behind Elly De La Cruz, who's reaching base at a high clip right now, and he's facing a pitcher that right-handed hitters have torched for a .890 OPS and ten home runs across 201 at-bats this season. Stewart bats right-handed. The lineup slot, the man on base in front of him, the arm on the mound — it all lines up. The price is treating this like he drives in a run less than half the time. His last two weeks say otherwise.

Christian Scott has punched out twenty hitters across his last fifteen and a third innings, better than a strikeout an inning, and his whiff rates over that stretch have sat in the mid-20s to low-30s on the fastball and sweeper both. He's cleared this number in six of his last eight starts. Nobody in Cleveland's lineup tonight has ever faced him — not a single at-bat of history in that dugout — and the middle of their order is stacked with left-handed bats he's handled all year. A short pitch count caps his innings, not his swing-and-miss rate per inning. I'll lay the plus money and take the over.

Steven Kwan doesn't need to solve anything about Christian Scott, he just needs to keep doing what he's done for two weeks — put the bat on the ball. He's hitting .391 over his last fifteen games and .500 over his last week, and the plate-discipline numbers behind that are exactly the profile you want against a swing-and-miss arm: a twelve percent whiff rate and a chase rate under a quarter of pitches out of the zone. Scott has been tough on left-handed bats as a group all year, but that number is built on hitters who expand the zone against him, and Kwan simply doesn't do that. This total has gone over in nine of his last fifteen games. At plus money, that's underpriced.

Irvin's last time out in Atlanta lasted five innings and cost him five earned runs on two home runs, and that's not an outlier — it's fourteen innings and seven earned runs across his last three starts total, on a pitcher who's still finding his rhythm after a shoulder issue kept him out for two-plus months. Tonight he's facing a Phillies lineup that has hit him at a .317 clip with four home runs in the at-bats they've logged against him, and his two most-used secondary pitches are the problem: the sinker is getting hit at a .519 expected weighted on-base average and a .319 average, and the cutter hasn't drawn a single swinging strike from anybody all season. Philadelphia is scoring 4.5 runs a game over its last ten and just added Luis Arraez to lengthen an order that already runs through Schwarber, Turner and Harper, in a ballpark playing hitter-friendly tonight with the wind blowing out to left. I think Irvin gives up three or more earned runs before this one's over.

Turner is doing whatever he wants at the plate right now — 11 hits in his last 25 at-bats, two home runs, an OPS over 1.100, and three more hits already logged in this series. The pitcher across from him tonight is throwing a sinker that opponents are hitting at a .519 expected weighted on-base average and a .319 batting average, and a cutter that hasn't produced a single swing-and-miss all season. Irvin's last start ended with two homers and five runs allowed in Atlanta on a short pitch count. A hitter running this hot against pitches this hittable, in a park where the wind is blowing out to left tonight, gets to two total bases more often than not.

Lindor's the best number on the board for me tonight. He's carrying real momentum into this one — three home runs and nine RBI over his last fifteen games, an OPS pushing .900 in that stretch, so this isn't a name I'm picking on reputation alone. He's a switch-hitter, which means he sees Tanner Bibee from the left side, and that's exactly the side Bibee has struggled with this season — fourteen home runs allowed to left-handed hitters, well ahead of what he's given up to righties. Put a hot bat on the side of the plate where a pitcher has already shown he's hittable, and I like my chances. The board agrees too — this is the shortest homer price on the entire Mets roster tonight, and I don't need to fight the market to make a case here. I'm in.

Abrams has gone deep six times in his last fifteen games. That kind of stretch usually means the swing decisions and the contact quality are lining up, not just a couple of fly balls carrying out. He went quiet this past week, but power hitters do that between bursts — it doesn't erase what the month has looked like. What sells me on tonight is the pitcher. Andrew Painter has been genuinely hittable by left-handed batters all season — a full year of lefties running a real OPS advantage against him with home runs to show for it, not a one-start blip. Abrams hits left-handed, leads off, and is guaranteed multiple looks at exactly the version of Painter that's given lefties trouble, before Philadelphia's bullpen ever factors in. The ballpark plays small too. That's a lot lining up in one direction for plus-money.

Carson Benge is swinging a hot bat right now, and he's already proven it in this exact building. He hit a ball 451 feet off this Guardians pitching staff on Tuesday night — the longest home run at Progressive Field all season — and he's carried that into a .346 average and a .909 OPS over his last week. That's not a one-swing fluke, that's a rookie seeing the ball well right now. He's left-handed, and Bibee's numbers against lefties this year are the softer half of his platoon split. I like a hot hand walking back into the same park where he just did it, against a pitcher who's had trouble keeping the ball in the yard against that side.

Look past the batting average and look at how hard Harper's been hitting the ball. His recent exit velocity is the best of anyone on this board, and the barrel rate backs it up — that's squared-up, line-drive contact, the kind that turns into homers more often than not. Three home runs in his last fifteen games actually undersells how well he's swinging it right now. He just moved back to right field for the first time in years, but that's a storyline, not a scouting report — nothing about the swing changed with the glove. He's a left-handed bat against a rookie right-hander who's been hit hard by hitters from both sides all season, in a park that's rewarded well-struck fly balls all year. This is the shortest price on the board, and it should be — he's the best pure power threat in the building tonight.

Pete Crow-Armstrong has been the best bat in either dugout for two weeks running — a .308 average and better than an 1.100 OPS over his last fifteen games, three home runs, twelve driven in, and the underlying contact backs it up: two barrels and twelve hard-hit balls across his last nineteen balls in play, with a whiff rate sitting at a manageable 21 percent. He isn't chasing his way into this — a 28 percent chase rate is nothing alarming — he's finding pitches to drive. Counsell slid him out of center and into the DH spot today to save the legs on getaway day, but he's still leading off, still getting his looks at the top of the order. He's a left-handed bat against a left-handed arm in Eric Lauer, and look past the raw home run column — Lauer's actually been hit harder by lefties than righties this year, a .785 OPS allowed against them versus .731 against the other side. Add the wind blowing out to center at Wrigley, and a hitter this locked in at plus-330 for one home run is a number worth taking. Pete Crow-Armstrong, home run, plus-330.

O'Neill left the yard last night on a pinch-hit swing, and now he's in the lineup batting cleanup instead of coming off the bench late. That's the difference between getting one at-bat as a power threat and getting four or five. Over his last fifteen team games he's gone deep three times despite barely playing every day, which tells me the swing is doing exactly what it's supposed to do whenever he gets a look. Detmers is a lefty who lives with a low-90s heater that's gotten hit hard all year, and O'Neill is a righty who does his damage pulling the ball. Camden isn't the launching pad it used to be down the left-field line, but a bat this hot doesn't need much help. I'll take the swing rhythm and the bigger role together.

Alonso is who he is, a hitter who's led the league in homers more than once, and I'm not going to talk myself out of a proven power bat just because he's the shortest price on this board. What I like beyond the name is how he's actually squaring the ball up right now: three barreled balls in his last nineteen in play is a real rate, not a fluke game. Two homers and five RBI over his last fifteen games says the underlying contact is translating into results, not just sitting there as a nice number. Detmers has been touchable by both sides of the plate all season, and Alonso doesn't need a platoon edge to do damage, he just needs a mistake, and he's seeing enough of the ball right now to find one.

Stewart's carrying real thunder into this one — four home runs and 16 RBI over his last 15 days, a .938 OPS in the last week, and the exit-velo readings back it up: 91.7 mph average, two barrels on his last 15 balls in play. He's hitting second tonight, so he's getting full run through the lineup and more looks than a bottom-of-the-order bat gets. The matchup points the same way. Jacob Lopez has been a different pitcher to right-handers than to lefties this season — righties are hitting .294 with an .890 OPS and ten home runs in 201 at-bats against him, more than triple his homer rate against left-handed hitters. Stewart bats right-handed. Lopez's cutter and changeup are also the two pitches getting hurt hardest by opposing hitters this year, both giving up extra-base contact at a high rate. Great American Ball Park plays small with the ball carrying well, which only helps a right-handed pull hitter. The price is +310, needing this to land a little better than one in four. Stewart's cleared that bar close to one in three times over his last two weeks. I'll take that gap.

Chase DeLauter's underlying swing has looked good beyond just the box score lately — his average exit velocity has been sitting near 94 miles an hour over his recent stretch, and his whiff and chase numbers say he's controlling the zone, not just running hot off mistakes. He's left-handed, and Christian Scott's actual split this year cuts against his overall polish — Scott's been considerably tougher on right-handed hitters than lefties, and most of the home runs he's allowed have come from the left side of the plate. DeLauter fits that profile, he's seeing the ball well right now, and I think that combination is worth the price.

The number that jumps off the page here is exit velocity, his recent balls in play are averaging over 96 miles an hour, the loudest contact of anybody in this lineup on either side tonight. His expected slugging is sitting well above his actual slugging this year, which tells me the results haven't fully caught up to how hard he's actually been hitting the ball. Two homers in his last twelve games is a solid recent rate on its own, and Detmers doesn't have a real platoon advantage against right-handed hitters to lean on as a save. At this price I'm betting the contact quality catches up to the results tonight.

Jameson Taillon didn't land in Toronto because he was pitching well. The Cubs designated him for assignment nine days ago, and it's easy to see why: nine home runs allowed across his last six starts, an ERA that topped eleven in July and sits at 6.75 through his brief August. Both of his top two pitches are getting hit hard right now — a .490 expected wOBA against the four-seamer, .746 against the cutter — and a 15.7 percent barrel rate allowed is a real problem, not noise. He's a fly-ball pitcher walking into a park with a 315-foot porch in left built for right-handed pull power. Against right-handed hitters this year he's allowed 11 home runs in 146 at-bats, an extreme number for a starter, and in seven career appearances against this Houston lineup they've hit .277 off him. Altuve hasn't gone deep in his last fifteen games, and he's at zero barrels on twenty-five batted balls this week — I'm not going to pretend that's nothing. But the timing is there: nine hits in his last twenty-four at-bats, a .375 average, a whiff rate under ten percent. That's a hitter squaring up the ball consistently who just hasn't lifted one out yet, not a hitter who's lost anything. Against a pitcher this hittable, in the one ballpark built for exactly his swing, with Toronto's bullpen already thin behind him — Chad Dallas got torched for 74 pitches in three innings yesterday and was optioned to Buffalo this morning — I like the contact catching up to the power tonight.

Lile has three home runs in his last seven games, and that's the number I care about more than his fifteen-day line — this is a hot week, not something I'm chasing after the fact. The contact quality behind it holds up too; he's getting the ball in the air and finding barrels, not just getting a couple of fly balls to carry. He's a left-handed bat walking into the same matchup that has me on Abrams tonight — Painter has had a real problem with left-handed hitters all season, and Lile is swinging it well from exactly that side. He chases more than I'd like, which keeps this below my top spot on the board, but the power's been real for a week and the price is long enough to make it worth the swing.

The flags at Wrigley are standing straight out to center this afternoon, and on a day like that this ballpark turns from a canyon into a coin box. Muncy's box score the last week won't turn heads — four hits in twenty at-bats, a batting average that reads like a slump. Strip that away and look at the contact underneath it: 94 miles an hour off the bat on average in his recent sample, the hardest number in this whole Dodgers lineup, and three home runs already sitting in his last fifteen games despite the cold stretch on paper. That's a hitter mis-hitting balls into gloves, not a hitter losing bat speed. He drops to seventh in the order today — a lineup shuffle, nothing more, he's still getting his hacks. Eric Lauer is a fly-ball pitcher with an 11.2 percent barrel rate allowed and a fastball sitting 91 that both lineups have squared up all series. Plus-300 for a hitter hitting the ball this hard, with the wind pushing out today, is a number I want on the board. Max Muncy, home run, plus-300.

Nimmo leads off, which puts him first in line for whatever Whisenhunt brings, and lately what he brings is a 92.8 mph fastball that hitters are batting .500 against with a .583 expected wOBA — a pitch he goes to more than a third of the time and the one his own arsenal gets the fewest swings and misses on. Nimmo's in the best stretch of his season right now, a .961 OPS over his last fifteen games with eight hits in his last twenty-five at-bats. He's not walking in cold, and the arm he's facing has a primary pitch that keeps getting hit hard by whoever's in the box. The one thing pulling the other way: in his small sample against left-handed hitters this year, Whisenhunt hasn't allowed a home run in fourteen at-bats, against four homers and a .989 OPS from the right side in sixty at-bats. That's a same-side matchup working against Nimmo on paper. But fourteen at-bats isn't enough to hang a conclusion on, especially against a fastball getting hit hard across the board, from a pitcher who's shown he can lose the zone and lose his hook fast — his last start lasted three innings and cost him six runs on seven hits. Nimmo isn't running hot on barrels at the moment, so I'm not pretending this is a sure thing, but between the at-bats he's going to get and a fastball that keeps getting squared up, +520 is a number I'll take a swing at.

This one is about the matchup more than a hot streak. Rogers has been two different pitchers depending on which side of the plate is hitting, right-handers are slugging well above his numbers against lefties, and nine of the home runs he's allowed this year have come from the right side. Siri's average hasn't been pretty lately, but a .436 slugging mark says the power is legitimate even when the hits aren't falling. He's an everyday piece in this lineup, he's on the favorable side of a real split, and I think the barrel shows up tonight.

Burleson already showed you what he can do to this pitching staff — three balls into the right-field seats Monday night. I'm not chasing the home run number off one big game, but the total bases line is a different animal, because that outburst isn't sitting on nothing. His expected slugging this year is .541 against an actual .480 — the quality of contact has been ahead of the results, and Monday was the results catching up. He's 9 for 24 with three homers over his last week, he's left-handed, and he's walking into a right-field porch that's 314 feet away against a right-hander who has already surrendered ten home runs to lefties this season and gets hit hard when he does — 41.8 percent hard-contact allowed. Warren's sinker in particular has been hit at a .299 clip. One extra-base hit clears this number, and Burleson is squarely the hitter and the matchup to expect it from tonight.

New uniform, same swing. Garcia Jr. came over from Washington at the deadline and has been the best bat in this lineup since — seventeen hits in his last fifty-three at-bats, four home runs, an OPS over 1.000 in that stretch, with a six percent whiff rate that tells you the contact is real and not just balls finding grass. He's left-handed, he's staring at a porch in right that's built for exactly his swing, and the pitcher on the mound tonight has a real hole for it — left-handed hitters have touched Pallante for a .731 OPS and six home runs this year, close to double what right-handers have done against him. Pallante will get his outs tonight, I think, mostly off the other seven hitters in this lineup. Garcia Jr. is the one I'd expect to make him pay somewhere along the way.

Tristan Peters hasn't squared up a baseball in two weeks. Three hits in his last fifteen games, a .079 average, zero barreled balls across his last fourteen in play, and an average exit velocity sitting at 82.5 — that's a bat that isn't finding the sweet spot right now, not once in a while, essentially never. He's hitting seventh for a reason tonight. Sonny Gray has had a rough three-start stretch by his own standard, but his sweeper still gets a swing and miss better than four times in ten, and hitters chase his curveball out of the zone more than half the time — exactly the kind of stuff a pitcher leans on against a light-contact bottom-of-the-order bat. Gray's also sharper at home than on the road, a 2.72 mark at Fenway against 3.14 everywhere else. The board still makes him a favorite to get a hit tonight. The last two weeks of contact quality say that's generous. I'll take the hitless side.

Burke has struck out six or more hitters in seven of his last eight starts, and the stuff behind it is real — a fastball sitting just under 95 with a whiff rate near 29 percent, a knuckle curve that gets a swing and a miss a third of the time, a slider working at almost the same clip. Twenty-five strikeouts against four walks over his last three outings alone, and he's going deep enough to get there — six innings or more in five of his last six starts, so this isn't a bullpen-shortened look. Boston's lineup has been scorching the ball for two weeks, but scorching contact and making contact aren't the same skill, and this is a group doing its damage by driving the ball, not shortening up — that approach comes with swing-and-miss risk against three real strikeout pitches. I like Burke to get to six again.

Pérez has thrown too hard for too long this year for 5.5 to hold up at plus money. He's cleared this number in five of his last six starts, including a nine-strikeout night against Milwaukee and eight strikeouts across seven perfect innings against Oakland before his own club pulled him to manage the workload. The stuff explains why — a slider missing bats at a 42 percent clip, a sweeper missing at 39 percent, a changeup at nearly 40 percent, on top of a fastball that still sits 98. That's four different bat-missing pitches, not one trick a lineup can sit on. Two of the hitters he'll see most often in the middle of Atlanta's order, Acuña and Riley, are chasing at close to a third of their swings out of the zone right now. I don't need Pérez to be perfect, I need six innings of him being himself.

Elder has cleared 4.5 strikeouts in two of his last eight starts. That's not a small-sample blip, that's what he is right now — a pitcher living off contact management rather than swing-and-miss, with a whiff rate that's sat in the high teens and low twenties his last several times out. Look at who's in Miami's lineup tonight: Otto López, Jakob Marsee, Xavier Edwards and Javier Sanoja are all putting the bat on the ball more often than not, whiffing in the mid-teens or lower. This is a lineup built to foul off and slap singles, not chase Elder out of the zone, and he hasn't shown the stuff this year to force the issue. Plus money for a number he's missed six times in eight tries is the price I want.

The recent numbers on Garrett Mitchell are about as cold as they get — two hits in his last twenty-one at-bats, a .095 average over the last week, and a whiff rate that's climbed to 42 percent over his last two weeks of games. He's gone hitless in eleven of his last fifteen games. Now he draws Paul Skenes, who's held left-handed hitters to a .220 average this season behind a fastball still sitting at 97 and secondaries drawing whiffs above 30 percent. Nothing about this matchup says tonight is where that turns around, and I'm not paying to find out.

Whatever's gone sideways for Paul Skenes this year, missing bats was never part of it. Set aside the 3.90 ERA and the rough July — his whiff rate over his last three starts reads 31, 41, 29 percent, and even in his two shortest outings of the last six weeks, both just four innings, he still struck out seven and five. This Brewers lineup has hit .151 against him for his career and isn't built to be the one that changes that tonight: Garrett Mitchell is running a 42 percent whiff rate over his last two weeks, Cooper Pratt sits at 35, and even the hitters running hot like Turang and Chourio are missing close to a quarter of their swings. His sweeper and changeup are both missing bats above 30 percent on the season, and a fastball still sitting at 97 doesn't care what the ERA says. Six and a half is a number he's cleared in six of his last eight starts, and I don't see tonight as the exception.

Perez is swinging a hot bat into a pitcher with nowhere to hide him — three home runs and six RBIs over his last fifteen games, one night after Kansas City raised the flag on his three-hundred-eighteenth career home run. Kremer's better platoon split is still an .842 OPS and five home runs allowed in fifty-eight at-bats to right-handed hitters, which is what Perez is, so there's no soft matchup being sold here, that's just where the search for a safe spot against this lineup runs out of road. He's already picked up extra bases in ten of his last fifteen games, and sliding over to first base tonight to cover for Pasquantino doesn't touch his bat. Plus money on two total bases from a hitter this hot, against a pitcher this hittable, is the kind of number I want on the card.

This is the same matchup that had me on Kansas City tonight, just running through his stat line instead of the scoreboard. Kremer's first start in a Twins uniform lands against a lineup built to attack exactly what's gone wrong with him all year: over his last three outings he's allowed eight hits, then eight again, then four, and the pitch getting hurt worst is his sinker, a .546 expected-weighted-on-base mark against it. Left-handed hitters are slugging .963 against him this season with seven home runs in just eighty-two at-bats, and Kansas City is sending Jensen, Caglianone, Massey, Rave, and Isbel up from the left side, with Isaac Collins able to hit that way too — that's the bulk of the order matching his one clear weakness. New team, new catcher, a staff he's never thrown to before, and I don't need him to get shelled for runs to like this number, I just need the ball finding grass, which is the one thing this matchup all but guarantees. Getting plus money on it is how I want in.

Rafaela is the hottest hand in this lineup by a distance. He homered in three straight games against the Dodgers last weekend, including a two-homer night on August 1st, then came back to Fenway Tuesday and kept the line moving with a two-run double instead of a homer — four home runs in his last four games played, six home runs in his last fifteen. He's a right-handed bat, so he isn't getting the platoon lift against Burke the way the lefties in this lineup are, but a swing running this hot doesn't need the platoon angle to matter. The flag's blowing out to center at Fenway tonight, and nobody on this roster has hit the ball harder or more often over the last week than Rafaela has. Eight hundred is a number worth taking on that kind of form.

Abreu has a home run in each of his last two games played — one in the four-homer barrage at Dodger Stadium on August 2nd, when four different Red Sox left the yard in the same game, and two more, both solo shots, in Tuesday's rout of this same White Sox club. That matters against Sean Burke specifically. Burke lives up in the zone and has a real split this season — nine home runs allowed to left-handed hitters in 277 at-bats against just four to right-handers in almost as many chances. Boston's power surge over the last two weeks has run through this side of the plate, and Abreu is currently the hottest of that group. Getting close to six-to-one on a left-handed bat in this kind of form, against a pitcher with this specific a hole in his profile, is a price I'll take.

Royce Lewis is the one Twins bat that has actually been locked in during a stretch where almost nothing else has gone right for this club — hitting .382 over his last nine games, and the underlying contact backs it up: a 97.6 mph average exit velocity and four barrels across his last nineteen balls in play, both near the top of either lineup card tonight. He's only turned that into two home runs over his last fifteen games, but the quality of contact says that number is behind where it should be. Noah Cameron takes the mound at the one park where his own numbers say he's most vulnerable this year — a 5.76 ERA at Kauffman against a 3.54 mark everywhere else — and a fastball sitting in the low-90s doesn't have much margin against a hitter squaring the ball up this hard right now.

Whenever this one gets underway tonight, Burleson steps in with the loudest recent history in the building — two nights ago, in this same ballpark, he put three balls into the right-field seats and drove in six. Strip away the header number and the process backs it up: a .541 expected slugging mark that's actually about sixty points higher than what he's produced, a .385 expected wOBA, 93.7 mph average exit velocity with three barrels in his last eighteen balls in play. The one thing that tempers the hot-streak read is that all three of those homers landed in a single game, so by games-with-a-homer he's only cleared this number once in his last fifteen — the counting stat undersells how consistently hard he's been hitting the ball. He's left-handed, and Will Warren has given up ten home runs to lefties against five to righties with a .782 OPS, his sinker and sweeper both getting hit for expected numbers a starter can't live with. Burleson swings from exactly the side Warren is most exposed to. I'll take the number.

Duran is part of the same recent story as Abreu — a left-handed bat with a home run in each of his last two games, one in the four-homer outburst at Dodger Stadium on August 2nd, another in Tuesday's rout of Chicago. He's not the primary power threat in this lineup, but Burke's split against lefties is real this season — nine homers allowed to left-handed bats against four to righties — and it isn't picky about which left-handed hitter is standing in the box. Fenway's got the wind blowing out to center tonight, which doesn't hurt a hitter who has shown over his last two games he can turn on one when Burke's fastball or sinker catches too much of the plate. I like this price on the recent form and the matchup together.

Salvador Perez has gone deep in four of his last fifteen games, tied for the best rate on the board tonight, and he's doing it the same week Kansas City raised a flag in right field with his name on it after he passed George Brett as the franchise's all-time home run leader. Dean Kremer, making his Twins debut, has been hit hard by everybody this year — a .383 opponent wOBA — and specifically against right-handed hitters like Perez he's already allowed five home runs in just 58 at-bats. His sinker has been the pitch getting hit hardest of anything he throws. Perez is a fastball-and-sinker hitter with pop to all fields, playing in front of a home crowd still buzzing from Tuesday's ceremony. I like the price and I like the moment.

Riley already showed what he's got tonight — a 433-foot two-run shot to left-center off Grant Holmes last night, and the underlying swing has looked like that all week. He's averaging 97.7 mph off the bat over his last seven games with two barreled balls in ten batted-ball events, which is not the profile of a guy scuffling. Eury Pérez is on the mound, and Pérez is a genuinely different pitcher depending on who's in the box — right-handed hitters have an .731 OPS and nine home runs in 163 at-bats against him, left-handed hitters a .591 mark. Riley is right-handed, hitting in the part of Atlanta's lineup built to do damage against this specific arm tonight. I'll take it.

Trevor Larnach has hit a home run in four of his last fifteen games, tied for the best rate on the entire board tonight, and he's not chasing his way into that power — a 19 percent chase rate is one of the more disciplined marks in either lineup, paired with a 94 mph average exit velocity. Noah Cameron's opponent OPS against left-handed hitters this year, .801, is actually higher than what he's shown against right-handers, .716, even though the raw home run count favors the other side simply because he faces so many more right-handed bats as a lefty. Larnach is exactly the patient, hard-contact left-handed swing built to take advantage of that split. At plus-700 for a hitter running this kind of power output lately, I like the number.

Jones has four barrels in his last seventeen balls in play and three home runs in his last seven games — the loudest contact-quality read on this whole board right now. He's still a hitter finding his level up here, chasing at a forty-four percent clip, and that swing-and-miss is real risk. But the ball is coming off his bat at 92.8 mph on average this past week, and a left-handed pull hitter with that kind of exit velocity plays well into this yard's short right-field corner. Pallante has otherwise been hard to square up — a 5.7 percent barrel rate against him is genuinely stingy, and he leans on a sinker-slider mix that keeps the ball on the ground. But his one real platoon leak is left-handed power: a .731 OPS and six home runs allowed to lefties against a .595 mark to right-handers. Jones is a lefty currently squaring up everything he touches. I like the number here.

Murakami is the hottest bat in the White Sox lineup right now, and not just by the count — four home runs over his last fifteen games, two of them in the last week, to go with a recent stretch averaging 93.4 miles an hour off the bat and three barreled balls out of his last fifteen in play. That's a twenty percent barrel rate, which is elite by any measure. He's left-handed, and Sonny Gray's two most-used pitches tonight, the four-seamer and the cutter, a combined 39 percent of his mix, have both been hit hard all season — a .377 expected weighted on-base against the fastball and .363 against the cutter, neither of which cares which side of the plate the hitter's standing on. Gray's ERA says ace; his last three starts, a 5.00 ERA with ten earned runs allowed over eighteen innings, say something closer to a pitcher living dangerously right now. Shortest price on the board tonight, but the underlying contact quality backs it up.

Stowers has been the hottest power bat in Miami's lineup for two weeks running — four home runs, a .949 OPS, averaging 96.2 mph off the bat with three barreled balls in his last eighteen batted-ball events. The Astros were reportedly calling about him before the deadline and Miami turned it down, which tells you where their own front office has him valued. Bryce Elder is tougher on left-handed hitters by batting average — .205 to .292 — but the power split is a lot closer than that, eleven homers allowed to lefties against eight to righties. Wind's blowing out to right field tonight, Stowers' pull side. He's the shortest price on Miami's side of this board and I think it's earned.

Kyle Harrison is walking back into this lineup off one low-minors rehab outing, and the version of him on the mound before the forearm sent him out wasn't right — 11.2 innings, eight earned runs, a 6.17 ERA over his last three turns. First start back, on a leash, and the platoon split that matters most tonight cuts against him hard: right-handed hitters have gone .218 with a .658 OPS and nine home runs in 225 at-bats off Harrison this season, a far worse number than what he's shown left-handed hitters. Endy Rodriguez swings from the right side against a left-hander, and he's already touched this Brewers staff for one — the ball he put into the seats off Henderson Tuesday night was part of a stretch where he's cashed this exact prop in three of his last fifteen games, sitting on a 93-plus mph average exit velocity in that window. That's not empty contact. A rusty arm working back from injury, a specific number he's leaked to right-handers all year, and a hitter who's actively hot against this pitching staff right now — I like the swing. **The play: Endy Rodriguez home runs — Over 0.5 (+700).**

Jac Caglianone is hitting .308 with an .885 OPS over the past week, and the underlying contact backs up the results — a 92.2 mph average exit velocity with thirteen hard-hit balls among his last twenty-three in play. He's a left-handed bat walking into about as favorable a pitching matchup as this board offers: Dean Kremer has been torched by left-handed hitters all season, a .963 OPS and seven home runs allowed in just 82 at-bats against them, and that's a full season's worth of damage, not a small-sample fluke. Caglianone's swing is built to expose exactly that kind of contact-heavy vulnerability. The price is short because the market is looking at the same matchup I am, but I still want a piece of it.

Garcia got traded from Washington to New York two days ago and hasn't cooled off for a second — seventeen hits in his last fifteen games, four of them home runs, an OPS over 1.000 in that stretch, and a six percent whiff rate that says he's barely missing anything he decides to swing at. He's left-handed, and Pallante's one real platoon leak is exactly that side of the plate — a .731 OPS and six homers allowed to lefties against a .595 mark to righties, with barrel and hard-hit numbers that otherwise say he's tough to square up. St. Louis is sending him out in front of a lineup with seven left-handed bats tonight, and Garcia is swinging as well as any of them right now. I want this number.

Acuña's batting line the last week is rough to look at — .154 — but the power hasn't gone anywhere: two home runs in his last seven games, three barreled balls in nineteen batted-ball events. He's expanding the zone more than usual and missing more than usual too, so the average is going to lag behind the damage when he connects. He's a right-handed bat walking into the same matchup Riley gets tonight — Eury Pérez, who's allowed a .731 OPS and nine home runs in 163 at-bats to right-handers against a .591 mark for lefties. The swing-and-miss stretch is real, but so is the pop, and tonight's matchup is built for it.

Josh Bell already left the yard against Kansas City on Tuesday, and the underlying contact says he can do it again — a 93.4 mph average exit velocity and three barrels on his last eighteen balls in play, with a 14 percent whiff rate that says he isn't missing the pitch he's looking for. Noah Cameron takes the mound tonight at the one park where his own numbers say he's most hittable — a 5.76 ERA at Kauffman against a 3.54 mark on the road this season. Bell's home run count, just once in his last fifteen games, hasn't caught up to how well he's been squaring the ball up. At plus-800, I don't need it to land every night for this to be worth playing.

Conine's contact quality the last two weeks is as loud as anyone's on this board — 97.8 mph average exit velocity, three barreled balls in his last thirteen batted-ball events. It's not empty contact either: his expected slugging on the year sits at .525 against an actual .535, so this isn't a guy running ahead of his real form. He's whiffing a lot — over 40% the last two weeks — but this is a power bet, not a contact bet. Bryce Elder's platoon split looks worse for lefties on the surface, but it's a batting-average gap more than a power one — he's actually allowed more home runs to left-handed hitters than right-handed ones this year. Wind's blowing out to right, which is Conine's pull side. I like the number.

Bryan Woo has allowed more than two earned runs in seven of his last eight starts, and the last three alone add up to sixteen innings and twelve earned runs. That's a pattern, not a bad week. The specific issue tonight is the one that's followed him all year: left-handed bats have accounted for nine of the thirteen home runs off him, a .713 OPS against a .593 mark from the right side, and his four-seamer — almost half of what he throws — is the pitch drawing that damage. Detroit runs five left-handed bats out there tonight, and McGonigle, Keith, Clark and McKinstry are all swinging it well right now. His expected numbers offer a little cover — an xERA nearly a run under his actual — but that gap has sat there all season while the ERA kept climbing anyway, and nothing about this matchup tells me tonight is where it closes. Woo over 1.5 earned runs.

Zach McKinstry is 15 for 39 over his last two weeks with a hit in ten of his last fifteen games, and the underlying contact backs the number up — 90.3 mph average exit velocity, ten hard-hit balls in twenty-one batted-ball events, and a whiff rate of just twelve percent. That's a bat making contact almost every time it swings. He's left-handed against a pitcher whose most-used pitch, the four-seamer, is the exact one that's given lefties the most trouble against Woo all season. There's no thump in this profile right now — zero barrels on those twenty-one balls in play — which is exactly why I want the hit number and not total bases. Any contact hitter can go quiet for a night, that's the real risk here, but the skill and the matchup both point the same direction. McKinstry over 0.5 hits.

Fifteen walks in twenty and two-thirds innings works out to something like six and a half free passes every nine, and it hasn't been trending toward correction — his last two starts produced five walks against Washington and four against Cleveland, his two highest single-game totals of the season. He's cleared one and a half walks in four of his five starts; the one time he didn't, he also only threw four and two-thirds innings. Whatever's improved about Bratt lately has been length — he's gone five innings in each of his last two outings — not command. He's a rookie the organization is still stretching out on a pitch count, and pitch counts get burned fast by three-ball counts. I'll take the over.

Mize has walked more than one batter in a start just twice in his last eight, and both came back in early July. Over his last six outings the walk totals read 1, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0 — nineteen walks in eighty-six and two-thirds innings on the season, a rate just under two per nine that puts him with the more disciplined arms in the league. Tonight he's in a new uniform, throwing to Luis Campusano for the first time, eleven days removed from his last start for Detroit. That's a real case for some rust. But rust in a pitcher built this way tends to show up as fastball command mistakes over the middle of the plate, not free passes off the edges of it — a guy who doesn't walk people generally still doesn't walk people even on an off night. Arizona's lineup has zero career at-bats against him, which cuts both ways, but nothing in the profile — not the season rate, not the six-start trend, not a splitter he can bury below the zone for chases — points to a sudden control problem. I'll take the under.