Monday gave us ten games and two totals leans on the board. Neither won. The moneyline card was blank — no sides cleared our bar — so the entire betting record for the day is 0-0 on moneylines and 0-2 on totals. That's the honest summary before we get into why.

The losses weren't close calls that broke the wrong way on a late swing. Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds combined for five runs against an over set at 7.5, finishing 4-1. Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs went the other direction — ten runs, one over the 9.5 under we were tracking. Both leans, same outcome: wrong.

The DFS slate was a different kind of evening: a legitimate top performer, a couple of pitchers who delivered well beyond projection, and three starters who fell apart in ways the model didn't anticipate. More on all of that below.

No money was down Monday. card_graded is null — nothing made the card, and that's worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. Our bar for a totals play is 10 points of model edge over the market. Both totals in the brief were tracked leans, not official plays. The distinction matters.

The Leans

• LAD @ CIN — Over 7.5: Final was LAD 4, CIN 1. Five total runs. The lean was for scoring; the pitching held it well under the number. LOSS.
• ATL @ CHC — Under 9.5: Final was ATL 3, CHC 7. Ten total runs, one past the line. The Cubs' offense was the culprit — or the beneficiary, depending on your seat. LOSS.

Two leans tracked, two leans lost. No units attached to either. The leans go on the board the same way wins do — accurately — and Monday's board reads 0-2 on totals. We'll carry that forward.

290 players scored Monday. We matched projections to 149 of them. Here's what the data says about how the day broke.

Top Scorers

• Pete Crow-Armstrong (Chicago Cubs): 36.0 DK pts, 4-for-5. Our projection: 9.6. He more than tripled it. That's the kind of line that wins tournaments.
• Tarik Skubal (Los Angeles Dodgers): 35.35 DK pts, 7.0 IP, 9 K, 0 ER. Our projection: 23.38. A genuine outlier performance — he cleared our number by over 12 points.
• Javier Sanoja (Miami Marlins): 33.0 DK pts, 2-for-4. Our projection: 5.98. At a $3,600 salary, that's the kind of value that shifts lineups.
• Quinn Mathews (St. Louis Cardinals): 29.4 DK pts, 6.2 IP, 8 K, 1 ER. Our projection: 14.09. More than doubled it.
• Miguel Vargas (Chicago White Sox): 28.0 DK pts, 2-for-4. Our projection: 7.32. Salary unavailable in the brief.

Where We Hit

Three projections tracked well against performance:

• Pete Crow-Armstrong was the best call directionally — we had him rated as a meaningful upside option at 9.6, and he delivered 36.0. We didn't project 36, but we identified the right player in the right spot.
• Tarik Skubal projected at 23.38 and finished at 35.35. Our number was already in the range that builds DFS cases; the actual performance was better still.
• Quinn Mathews projected at 14.09, finished at 29.4. A solid call on a pitcher who delivered a quality start and then some.

Where We Missed

Three pitchers came in well below expectation, and we should own that plainly:

• Kade Anderson (Seattle Mariners): projected 15.34, finished at 5.55. The line: 4.1 IP, 5 K, 5 ER. He allowed five earned runs and didn't make it through five innings. The projection assumed a more functional outing.
• Casey Mize (San Diego Padres): projected 15.22, finished at 5.25. The line: 5.0 IP, 0 K, 2 ER. Zero strikeouts over five innings is a hard way to accumulate DK points, whatever the ERA looks like.
• Corbin Burnes (Arizona Diamondbacks): projected 14.35, finished at 5.5. The line: 4.2 IP, 4 K, 5 ER. Burnes allowing five earned and failing to finish five innings is one the model didn't see coming.

All three missed badly. Each was projected in the 14–15 DK point range — reasonable starting pitcher targets — and each delivered under 6. That's a cluster worth examining in the pitching model assumptions.

The totals going 0-2 in opposite directions is the kind of result that's frustrating precisely because there's no clean lesson. One game ran under a modest total; one game barely cleared a high one. That's not a systematic error — it's variance, and it's useful to say so rather than manufacture a narrative around it.

The pitcher cluster is more instructive. Anderson, Mize, and Burnes were all projected in a tight range around 14–15 DK points, and all three came in under 6. When three pitchers at similar projection levels all miss badly in the same direction on the same day, that's worth a closer look at what inputs drove those numbers — whether it's opponent adjustments, recent form weighting, or something in the game-environment assumptions for Monday's slate.

On the upside: Crow-Armstrong at $3,600-equivalent value and Skubal's dominant line are reminders of why the DFS model tracks a wide player pool. Not every hit comes from the top of the salary range. Monday's best scores were spread across salary tiers and came from both position players and starters. The process is working in the right direction; the execution on pitching selection needs the review.