Unders Did the Work. The Pitchers Did Not.

Fifteen games on a Sunday, which means fifteen different ways for the baseball to humble you. The good news: we finished the day with a winning totals card — 2-1 — and no moneyline positions to stress over. The run environments behaved more often than not, the pitching mostly cooperated in two of our three spots, and one game reminded us that baseball will always find a way to blow up a number that looked reasonable at first glance.

Net on the day: totals 2-1, moneyline 0-0-0. No home runs from the ML side of the ledger, which is fine — not every Sunday needs a hero. Sometimes a clean, honest card is its own kind of win.

Three totals published. Here is exactly what happened.

• OAK @ BOS — Under 10.5 — WIN. Final: Oakland Athletics 4, Boston Red Sox 3. Seven total runs against a number of 10.5. That is not a close call — that is the under doing what you hope it does, quietly and without drama. Three runs of margin. Good pitching, or good enough pitching, or some combination of both. The ledger does not ask for explanations on wins like this.
• CHC @ KC — Under 10 — LOSS. Final: Chicago Cubs 10, Kansas City Royals 2. Twelve total runs. The Cubs scored ten of them, which is a lot of runs in one direction and probably means someone's bullpen had a rough afternoon in Kansas City. We were wrong. The number was 10, the game produced 12, and there is nothing to dress up about that. A clean loss.
• TB @ SEA — Under 7.5 — WIN. Final: Tampa Bay Rays 4, Seattle Mariners 1. Five total runs against a line of 7.5. Another comfortable cover — two and a half runs of daylight. T-Mobile Park is not known for offensive explosions to begin with, and Sunday it played to type.

Day total: 2-1 on totals. Nothing on the moneyline side published, nothing to grade there. That is the card as we called it.

457 players scored across the Sunday slate. Our model matched projections to 254 of them. Here is where the day actually lived.

Top Scorers

• Kyle Schwarber, Philadelphia Phillies — 43.0 DraftKings points. The line: 2-for-3, 2 home runs, 4 RBI, 1 stolen base. Our projection: 12.57. He was at $6,300 on DraftKings and produced at a number more than three times what we projected. That is not a miss on our end — 12.57 is a reasonable expectation for a mid-priced hitter. Schwarber just went and had an extraordinary game, the kind where you either had him or you are explaining to your lineup why you did not.
• Pete Alonso, Baltimore Orioles — 41.0 DraftKings points. The line: 3-for-3, 2 home runs, 4 RBI. Our projection: 8.43 at a $5,000 salary. A perfect day at the plate — three at-bats, three hits, two of them leaving the yard. Value plays that go 3-for-3 with a pair of home runs are why people play DFS in the first place.
• Sean Manaea, New York Mets — 37.4 DraftKings points. Seven innings, 11 strikeouts, 1 earned run. Our projection: 13.18 at $7,200. A very good day from a left-hander who earned his salary and then some.
• Cam Schlittler, New York Yankees — 34.0 DraftKings points. Seven innings, 11 strikeouts, 1 earned run. Our projection: 17.24 at $11,700. The highest projection of the group, and Schlittler delivered a legitimately excellent start — just one that came in at roughly double the projected points for a pitcher at that price who was expected to be the anchor of expensive stacks.
• Bo Bichette, New York Mets — 33.0 DraftKings points. Five-for-five at the plate, 3 RBI. Our projection: 8.45 at $4,300. A perfect game — literally five for five — at a salary that made him one of the great value plays on the board. Bichette at $4,300 going 5-for-5 is the kind of outcome that wins tournaments.

Where We Hit

• Kyle Schwarber — projected 12.57, actual 43.0. We had the direction right and he obliterated the ceiling. Not a miss; a monster game.
• Pete Alonso — projected 8.43, actual 41.0. Same story. We had him on the board as a value option and he turned in a premium performance.
• Sean Manaea — projected 13.18, actual 37.4. We liked Manaea and the result backed it. Good call on a pitcher who delivered a genuine quality start with strikeout upside.

Where We Missed

Now for the part where we own it, because that is what we do.

• Joey Cantillo, Cleveland Guardians — projected 15.09, actual 4.5. One inning, three strikeouts, one earned run. He did not make it through the first inning with any real authority. We had him as a viable starting pitcher option. He was not one on Sunday.
• Justin Wrobleski, Los Angeles Dodgers — projected 14.6, actual 2.1. Three and one-third innings, three strikeouts, three earned runs. An outing that ended early and went badly. We missed.
• Davis Martin, Chicago White Sox — projected 14.37, actual 0.5. One inning, one strikeout, one earned run. A half-point. That is about as far from a projection as you can land. We were wrong on Martin, plainly and completely.

The through-line on the worst calls: starting pitchers who could not get through the early innings. That is a brutal DFS outcome — when the projection assumes length and the pitcher gives you none, the ceiling evaporates immediately. Three of those in one day is a rough afternoon on the pitching side of the model.

The totals model is in a decent place right now. Two clean under wins with comfortable margins suggest the run environment calls are tracking, even when a loss like Chicago-Kansas City reminds you that offense can appear from nowhere on any given afternoon.

The harder conversation is the starting pitchers. Three projections between 14 and 16 points, three ceilings that collapsed in the first inning or two — Cantillo, Wrobleski, and Martin. That is not a rounding error; that is a pattern worth sitting with. Short-duration risk on lower-floor starters is real, and on a slate with 15 games, the temptation to load up on pitching value is always there. We will be more careful about the floor, not just the projection, when we are dealing with pitchers who carry genuine early-exit risk.

The good news: when the hitters hit, the model had them in the right direction. Schwarber and Alonso both exceeded projections by a significant margin, but they were on the board. Bichette at $4,300 going five-for-five is the kind of find that matters in tournament construction. We will take those, keep grading honestly, and come back Monday with a cleaner look at the pitching side of the ledger.