Milwaukee is a heavy home favorite in a bullpen game — which sets up a very specific captain decision. Here are the top 5 captains, the top 5 flex, the game scripts that decide it, and how to attack the $11 48-max vs a single-entry showdown.
Game Scripts — how this game gets won
You captain the script, not the name. Three ways this plays out:
- MIL runs away (chalk script). The favorite does favorite things. Captain a Brewers bat — Chourio, Turang, or Mitchell — and stack MIL 4-1 with a cheap COL bring-back. Safest, but the field is here too.
- Shootout (the GPP script). Drohan's a bullpen game and Sugano is hittable — both offenses score. This is where Colorado's bats (Goodman, McCarthy) at 10–15% owned win you the tournament, because almost nobody captained the road dog in a game MIL was supposed to dominate.
- COL keeps it close / steals it. Coors bats travel; McCarthy leads off with speed, Goodman brings the power. A low-owned COL captain here is pure leverage.
Milwaukee is the safe side. Colorado is the winning side. Which one you lean depends entirely on your contest — that's the rest of this playbook.
Top 5 Captains (1.5×)
| # | Captain | Sal | Ceil | Own | Why |
|---|
| 1 | Hunter Goodman COL C leverage | $9,600 | 25.0 | 15% | Highest ceiling on the slate, catcher-scarce power. The best raw-ceiling CPT and he's on the leverage side. |
| 2 | Jake McCarthy COL OF leverage | $8,200 | 22.2 | 11% | Leads off = extra PAs + speed. 22 ceiling at 11% owned is the tournament-winning CPT in a shootout. |
| 3 | Cole Carrigg COL OF value | $7,400 | 17.4 | 12% | Value CPT — frees salary to load 5 studs in flex while keeping COL leverage. |
| 4 | Garrett Mitchell MIL OF chalk | $6,600 | 15.8 | 65% | The MIL-blowout CPT. If Milwaukee runs away he's in the middle of it — but the whole field is on him. |
| 5 | Joey Ortiz MIL 3B salary saver | $3,800 | 16.5 | 25% | Cheapest CPT with a real ceiling — captain him and you can afford 5 studs underneath. Punt-CPT leverage. |
Ultra-leverage dart: Mickey Moniak (COL, $8,800, 17.1 ceil, 2.5% owned) — if you want a captain almost no one in the field has, this is it.
Top 5 Flex (UTIL)
| # | Flex | Sal | Proj | Own | Why |
|---|
| 1 | Shane Drohan MIL P chalk | $11,600 | 14.6 | 51% | The arm. In any MIL-leaning build he's the anchor — strikeouts + the win equity of a -300 favorite. |
| 2 | Jackson Chourio MIL OF | $9,200 | 9.4 | 56% | MIL's best all-around bat, hits 2nd. The core of the chalk stack. |
| 3 | Hunter Goodman COL C | $9,600 | 9.8 | 15% | If he's not your captain, flex the ceiling anyway — he's the COL bring-back that pays a shootout. |
| 4 | Kyle Karros COL 3B value | $5,600 | 8.2 | 53% | Cheap COL bat with pop, popular for a reason — salary relief that still has a 16 ceiling. |
| 5 | Joey Ortiz MIL 3B value | $3,800 | 7.7 | 25% | $3,800 with a 16.5 ceiling — the salary that makes a 5-stud build fit. |
Also live: Brice Turang ($9,000, MIL), Christian Yelich ($8,600, MIL leadoff), Jake McCarthy ($8,200, COL), Ezequiel Tovar ($6,000, COL leverage). Fade: William Contreras (51% owned, 8.4 ceiling — chalk with the lowest ceiling of the pricey bats).
How to Play the $11 48-Max GPP
A 48-entry-max GPP is a small-field multi-entry — between single-entry and 150-max. You get volume, but not so much that pure spray wins. The plan:
- Rotate 3–4 captains across your entries: Goodman, McCarthy, and Carrigg as your leverage swings, plus one MIL captain (Chourio or Mitchell) to cover the blowout script.
- Correlate each build: 3–4 bats from the captain's team + a one-bat bring-back from the other side. Own the inning, not scattered names.
- Lean the leverage: because 48-max is small-field, you can push the COL captains harder than in cash — the field is heavy MIL, so your Colorado tickets are where the top of the leaderboard lives.
- Anchor most builds with Drohan (the arm) and one cheap salary-saver (Ortiz) so you can afford the studs.
How to Play a Single-Entry Showdown
One bullet — it has to be defensible and have a ceiling. Pick the single most likely winning script and build the most correlated version of it:
- Captain: if you want to win it, Jake McCarthy or Hunter Goodman (COL leverage, ceiling + differentiation). If you want the safer route, Chourio or Mitchell on the MIL side.
- Flex: 3–4 correlated bats from your captain's team + one bring-back (e.g., CPT Goodman → flex McCarthy, Carrigg, Moniak + Chourio bring-back + Drohan or a value bat).
- Max the cap ($49.5K+), confirm lineups, and make sure your six players tell one story about how this game ends.
Build & simulate it: load this game in the
CourtEdge Showdown Lab — pick your
contest type (Cash / SE / 20-Max / 150-Max) and
field size, hit Optimize, and it builds cap-legal captain-and-flex lineups and simulates them against a field of that size. Enter the $11 48-max as a small-field GPP.