Pitchers Won Sunday. Our Overs Did Not.

Sunday gave us fifteen games and a reminder that baseball does not care about your narrative. We went 1-2 on totals, no moneyline plays graded, and the throughline across the whole slate was pretty simple: pitchers dominated, offenses were quiet, and we called it right exactly once. The Cardinals-Blue Jays game came in well under the number. The other two — the ones we leaned over on — ended up being pitcher duels that nobody asked for but everybody got. That's the game. Three totals, one win, two losses, and a DFS card that had real highs and real lows sitting right next to each other.

Three totals published. Here's how they landed.

• STL @ TOR — Under 9 — WIN. Final: STL 5, TOR 1. Six total runs against a nine-run number is about as clean as an under gets. We liked the pitching environment in this one, the game played exactly that way, and we'll take it.
• NYY @ CHC — Over 6.5 — LOSS. Final: NYY 2, CHC 1. Three runs. On a 6.5 total. Both offenses essentially went on vacation at the same time. The number wasn't even asking for much, and they still couldn't clear it. Painful one.
• MIL @ LAA — Over 7.5 — LOSS. Final: MIL 0, LAA 3. Three runs again. The Brewers were shut out entirely. When you're leaning over 7.5 and one team scores zero, there's really nothing to discuss. The game had other ideas.

Day's record: 1-2 on totals. No moneyline plays. The one win was crisp. The two losses were the kind where the final score tells the whole story and the story isn't flattering.

Four hundred thirty-six players scored on Sunday. We had projections on 179 of them. Let's go through the names that actually mattered.

Top Scorers

• Kyle Freeland, Colorado Rockies — 36.5 DK points. Nine innings, eight strikeouts, one earned run. Our projection: 11 points. That gap is uncomfortable to look at. A complete game from Freeland, which in 2026 is already a story in itself, and our model had him at roughly a third of what he actually produced. When a pitcher goes the distance, all the late-inning multipliers pile up in ways that are genuinely hard to forecast, but 11 versus 36.5 is the kind of miss you just own.
• Gavin Williams, Cleveland Guardians — 35.5 DK points. 5.7 innings, ten strikeouts, zero earned runs. Our projection: 15.43 points. Also a significant beat over projection, but this one we get credit for — Williams is in the best-calls section, and we'll come back to him there.
• Chase Burns, Cincinnati Reds — 30.5 DK points. Six innings, nine strikeouts, one earned run. Our projection: 18.98 points. Another strong beat over projection, another name in the best-calls column.
• Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee Brewers — 29.9 DK points. Seven innings, ten strikeouts, two earned runs. Our projection: 27.96 points. This is the one where we actually got close — less than two points of separation. Seven innings of ten-K ball with two runs is right in line with what we thought we were getting, even if the Brewers offense couldn't help him out (see: MIL 0 in the totals section above).
• Walbert Urena, Los Angeles Angels — 27.9 DK points. Six innings, seven strikeouts, zero earned runs. Our projection: 12.12 points. A shutout effort that nearly doubled our number. Credit to Urena for the outing; we left a lot of value on the table here.

Where We Hit

• Gavin Williams — Projected 15.43, scored 35.5. More than doubled the projection, which sounds like a miss, but the direction was right and the floor we set was reasonable. A zero-ER, ten-K outing is the kind of thing that rewards the people who were on him.
• Chase Burns — Projected 18.98, scored 30.5. A salary of $10,500 and he outperformed that number cleanly. We had him in the right neighborhood even if the ceiling opened up further than we drew it.
• Kyle Freeland — Listed here because he was our top scorer, but honestly the projection miss is too large to call this a true hit. We had the right pitcher in the conversation. The nine-inning outcome was not in the model.

Where We Missed

• Kyle Bradish, Baltimore Orioles — Projected 17.7, scored 6.3. Three innings, three strikeouts, two earned runs. He didn't make it through four innings and our projection had him as a viable mid-tier arm. That's a rough one.
• Taj Bradley, Minnesota Twins — Projected 15.11, scored 4.9. Six innings but only two strikeouts and three earned runs allowed. The strikeout rate fell off a cliff, and without the Ks, the DK scoring just isn't there for a pitcher regardless of the innings.
• Emmet Sheehan, Los Angeles Dodgers — Projected 14.99, scored negative 0.8. Two and two-thirds innings, five earned runs. Negative DK points. Not much to add there. He was out before the fifth inning with a blowup line, and we had him projected as a usable option. That one stings.

The honest takeaway from Sunday is that pitching was the story across the whole slate and we were only partially positioned for it. We got the under right in St. Louis-Toronto. We missed the outing Freeland was going to have in Coors — and if there's a place you don't expect a nine-inning, one-run gem, it's Colorado. But baseball has been known to make you look foolish for your assumptions about ballparks.

The two over losses in New York-Chicago and Milwaukee-Anaheim came down to offense simply not showing up. Three runs in each game, two different matchups, same result. When multiple pitching staffs across the slate are this dominant on the same afternoon, the lesson isn't that we need better over models — it's that run environments can cluster in ways that punish the over side in bunches. That's part of the game. Worth noting going into the next card.

On the DFS side, the projection misses on Bradish, Bradley, and Sheehan were real and we're not going to explain them away. Short outings and suppressed strikeout numbers will break pitcher projections every time. The hits on Williams and Burns show the model is finding the right arms. The Freeland gap is a separate conversation about how you model complete-game upside — which, in the modern game, is genuinely difficult to price. We'll keep working on it.

1-2 on Sunday. On to Monday.