Sunday produced 15 games and, as the totals record makes clear, a lot of runs. We went 1-2 on graded totals and 0-0 on the moneyline side — no ML plays were on the board. The card itself had no staked plays; what we graded were tracked leans, which means no money moved either way. That context matters when reading the results below.

The underlying theme was pretty simple: starting pitchers struggled. Three of the five names in our worst DFS calls were starters who didn't make it out of the fourth inning, and the totals in Philadelphia and Minnesota both cleared their lines by meaningful margins. The one over we leaned into — Pittsburgh at Chicago — stayed honest with seven combined runs, which was enough to clear 6.5. Small slate, real pattern.

No money was staked on Sunday. Nothing made the card, so there is no official record to settle today. What we tracked were leans — edges we published and monitored, but did not bet. The distinction matters: the leans inform the model, they don't move the budget.

The Leans

• PHI @ ATL — Under 9 | Final: PHI 9, ATL 4 (13 total runs) — LOSS. The game ran 4 runs over the number. Philadelphia's offense and Atlanta's bullpen did not cooperate.
• CLE @ MIN — Under 7.75 | Final: CLE 9, MIN 2 (11 total runs) — LOSS. Cleveland scored 9 runs, which by itself exceeded the lean's line. The Guardians had other ideas entirely.
• PIT @ CHC — Over 6.5 | Final: PIT 4, CHC 3 (7 total runs) — WIN. Cleared by half a run. Not pretty, but it got there.

Leans finish 1-2 on Sunday. Worth noting that neither losing game was particularly close to the line — Philadelphia and Atlanta combined for 13, and Cleveland put up 9 on its own. When the unders miss by that margin, it's usually the starting pitching, and Sunday's DFS results confirm that read.

448 players scored on Sunday's DFS slate. We matched projections to 212 of them, which is where the honest accounting below comes from.

Top Scorers

• Randy Arozarena (Seattle Mariners) — 35.0 DK pts, 3-for-5. Our projection: 9.48. He tripled that. Salary was $6,100, which in retrospect looks like found money.
• Lawrence Butler (Athletics) — 34.0 DK pts, 2-for-4. Our projection: 7.74. Salary not available in our data. Another significant outperformance.
• Jonathan Aranda (Tampa Bay Rays) — 32.0 DK pts, 2-for-4. Our projection: 7.97. At $4,200, one of the better value outcomes of the day.
• Cam Schlittler (New York Yankees) — 31.7 DK pts, 6.0 IP, 8 K, 0 ER. Our projection: 20.85. This was the one top-five finish where our number pointed in the right direction — projected at nearly 21 points, he delivered just over 31. At $11,400 he was the day's most expensive arm among our top scorers, and he earned it.
• Travis Bazzana (Cleveland Guardians) — 30.0 DK pts, 2-for-4. Our projection: 6.66. At $4,200, another budget option that paid well above its price. Worth noting that Bazzana's Guardians were on the right side of that CLE @ MIN total.

Where We Were Right

Arozarena, Butler, and Aranda all significantly outperformed our projections, but the model had all three in positive territory heading in. The calls were directionally correct — we projected real point floors for each, and the actual outcomes ran well above them. That's a good problem to have when building lineups around these names.

Where We Missed

The worst calls were all starting pitchers, and each one was short and costly.

• Jacob Lopez (Athletics) — projected 14.72 DK pts, actual -1.15. He went 3.2 innings, struck out 3, and allowed 5 earned runs. The projection assumed a functional start; the game delivered the opposite.
• Hayden Wesneski (Houston Astros) — projected 13.85 DK pts, actual -0.05. Three innings, 2 strikeouts, 3 earned runs. Essentially a zero.
• Gabriel Hughes (Colorado Rockies) — projected 10.58 DK pts, actual -5.7. Two innings, 2 strikeouts, 5 earned runs. The worst single outcome of the slate, and a reminder that short outings in Colorado can do real damage to a DFS score.

Three starters projected between 10 and 15 points combined for roughly -7 actual DK points. That's the core of why Sunday was a mixed day even where hitters came through.

The starting pitcher projections need to sit alongside the game environment more carefully. Lopez, Wesneski, and Hughes all had reasonable expected lines on paper, but none of them made it through four innings. When three starters flame out that early, it tends to inflate run totals — which is exactly what happened in Philadelphia and Minnesota — and crater DFS pitcher values simultaneously. The two problems are connected.

The hitter side of the projection model held up reasonably well. Arozarena, Butler, and Aranda all finished among the slate's top scorers with projections that pointed the right direction, even if the magnitudes were well off. Schlittler was the standout: a $11,400 pitcher who was projected near 21 points and delivered just over 31. That's the kind of result that justifies the salary in cash games.

Going forward, days with soft starting-pitcher conditions probably warrant a closer look at the over side of totals — Sunday's two losing unders were each a function of early exits, not late-inning run explosions. That's a pattern worth tracking as September rotations get stretched.