Unders Went 4-2, and Chaparro Went Absolutely Haywire

Fifteen games on the Friday slate, no moneyline plays that cleared our bar, and six totals that did. Four of those six landed. That's not a perfect day — we'll get to the two that didn't — but as totals cards go, it was a good Friday. The run environments were mostly cooperative, the marquee game in New York played out like a pitcher's duel straight from central casting, and then Andres Chaparro went out and had one of those nights that makes you feel like you missed a fireworks show because you left early.

The overall shape of Friday: run suppression was mostly real, with one notable and ugly exception in Boston, and one in Kansas City that hurt. We'll take the 4-2 honestly and move on.

All six of Friday's published picks were totals, all leaning Under. Here's how each one graded out.

• TB @ BOS, Game 1 — Under 8.5 — LOSS. Final: Tampa Bay Rays 0, Boston Red Sox 10. Ten runs, shutout, nothing that suggests a quiet game. The Rays couldn't score, but Boston did enough for both teams. Ten total runs over an 8.5 line is a loss, and that's what it was. Hard to argue with the logic going in; the result just didn't cooperate.
• TB @ BOS, Game 2 — Under 8.5 — WIN. Final: Rays 3, Red Sox 5. Eight total runs, right at the number — and since the line was 8.5, eight goes Under. The second game of the doubleheader behaved the way we thought the first one would. WIN.
• LAD @ NYY — Under 9 — WIN. Final: Los Angeles Dodgers 2, New York Yankees 1. Three total runs. Three. That game was a clinic in run prevention, and anyone who watched it earned the right to feel smug. WIN, and not a close one.
• MIN @ CHC — Under 10.5 — WIN. Final: Minnesota Twins 5, Chicago Cubs 2. Seven total runs against a 10.5 line. Comfortable. WIN.
• SD @ KC — Under 10 — LOSS. Final: San Diego Padres 6, Kansas City Royals 7. Thirteen total runs, three over the number. The Royals walkoff situation or late offense pushed this one over the top. We liked the run suppression, the game had other ideas. LOSS.
• CIN @ COL — Under 12 — WIN. Final: Cincinnati Reds 7, Colorado Rockies 2. Nine total runs at Coors Field against a 12-run number — that's the kind of Under that feels like it should happen more often than it does at altitude. WIN.

Final totals record for Friday: 4-2. No moneyline plays published. That's the card, called straight.

418 players scored on Friday. Our model had projections matched to 258 of them. Here's what the slate actually produced, and where we were right, wrong, and spectacularly wrong.

Top Scorers

• Andres Chaparro, Washington Nationals — 52.0 DraftKings points. Line: 4-for-5, 2 home runs, 8 RBI. Our projection: 11.27. That is not a typo. Fifty-two points against an eleven-point projection. He went out and had one of those complete demolition jobs that you simply cannot model for — the kind of night where you check the box score twice because the numbers look like a video game setting on rookie mode. If you had him, you won your contest. If you didn't, well, nobody's projection said 52.
• Drake Baldwin, Atlanta Braves — 32.0 DK points. Line: 3-for-4, 1 home run, 5 RBI. Our projection: 9.49. Salary: $4,600. This one matters. At that price point, 32 points is the kind of value that wins cash games. The model liked him enough to project nearly 10 points at a salary that implied maybe eight or nine at best. He nearly tripled the projection and did it cheaply.
• Curtis Mead, Washington Nationals — 32.0 DK points. Line: 4-for-6, 3 RBI. Our projection: 12.08. Two Nationals in the top three. Mead went 4-for-6 and was part of what sounds like a very good Washington offensive night. Projection was 12; he more than doubled it.
• Chris Sale, Atlanta Braves — 30.6 DK points. Line: 7.0 IP, 6 strikeouts, 0 earned runs. Our projection: 20.32. Salary: $10,000. Sale at the top of the salary range delivered, going seven clean innings. The projection was 20 points; he cleared 30. At $10K you need that kind of performance to justify the salary, and he gave it.
• Wilyer Abreu, Boston Red Sox — 30.0 DK points. Line: 2-for-4, 2 home runs, 3 RBI. Our projection: 10.27. Salary: $4,200. Another low-salary, high-output performance — and notably, this came in the same Boston game that burned our Under. Abreu hitting two home runs in a 10-run Red Sox win is the detail that explains why that game went over. At $4,200, 30 DK points is a smash.

Best Calls

• Andres Chaparro — Projected 11.27, scored 52.0. Look, the model didn't project 52. Nobody projected 52. But the model identified him as a play worth making. That's the call we're crediting: the direction was right even if the ceiling was unknowable.
• Drake Baldwin — Projected 9.49, scored 32.0. This is a genuine model win. Low salary, identified as a value, delivered big. That's the DFS edge working the way it's supposed to.
• Curtis Mead — Projected 12.08, scored 32.0. Mead and Chaparro both from Washington, both called by the model, both going off. The Nationals were apparently very busy on Friday.

Worst Calls

• Mickey Moniak, Colorado Rockies — Projected 13.98, scored 0.0. Line: 0-for-3. The model had nearly 14 points projected; Moniak went 0-for-3 and put up a goose egg. At Coors, against a line that implied some offensive upside, this one stings. Zero DK points on a 14-point projection is a miss, and we'll own it.
• Griffin Jax, Tampa Bay Rays — Projected 13.55, scored 3.3. Line: 5.0 IP, 6 strikeouts, 7 earned runs. Seven earned runs. This one explains the Game 1 TB-BOS over. Jax went five innings, struck out six, and gave up seven runs — which is the kind of outing that's simultaneously impressive and catastrophic. The strikeout total was there; the damage wasn't containable. This is likely the single biggest reason that Under didn't work, and it's the same guy who torched the DFS projection. A bad night for Jax in two different ledgers.
• Hunter Goodman, Colorado Rockies — Projected 13.23, scored 0.0. Line: 0-for-4. Two Colorado hitters, two zeroes. The Reds held Goodman and Moniak to a combined 0-for-7 on a night we expected the Rockies to contribute offensively. The Under still hit easily because Colorado Rockies only scored two runs total, but these two being cold was a DFS miss we'll chalk up plainly.

A few honest takeaways from Friday.

First: doubleheaders are weird. The same matchup, the same two teams, and we went 1-1 on it. Both games finished under 9 runs. We lost one because the distribution of those runs was lopsided in Game 1, and won the other because it wasn't. That's baseball's particular brand of chaos, and it's worth remembering when you're parsing totals in split-squad situations.

Second: the Griffin Jax start is a useful reminder that a pitcher can miss badly enough in one direction to blow up both a totals pick and a DFS projection simultaneously. When a starter gives up 7 earned runs, the totals loss and the DFS miss are the same event. We don't double-count the pain, but we do note the single point of failure.

Third, and maybe most important: Andres Chaparro had a 52-point DraftKings night against an 11-point projection. That gap is not a model failure — it's a ceiling event that exists outside any reasonable projection range. What matters is that the model had him in the conversation. The DFS edge isn't predicting the 52-point game; it's being in the right spots often enough that when someone goes supernova, you have a chance to be holding the ticket. Baldwin at $4,600 going for 32 is the quieter version of the same principle, and arguably the more replicable one.

4-2 on totals. Own the two losses. Come back Saturday.