The Dodgers roll into Citi Field as a primetime road favorite with the highest team total on the board — which turns the captain decision into a leverage question. Here are the top 5 captains, the top 5 flex, the game scripts that decide it, how to attack the $11 48-max vs a single-entry, and how to actually win a large-field GPP.
The game: LAD @ NYM, total 9.0 — one of the higher marks on the slate. Los Angeles is the -136 favorite (implied 5.3 runs); the Mets sit at 3.8. The mound is the story: Roki Sasaki (RHP) takes the ball for LA against Mets lefty Sean Manaea — and both matchups tilt the platoons hard. Manaea being left-handed pushes the value onto the Dodgers' right-handed bats (Pages, Betts, Teoscar) and Sasaki being right-handed hands the edge to New York's lefties (Soto, Benge, Ewing). This is a primetime, nationally watched spot with a stacked LA lineup — a 9.0 total with a 5.3 road-favorite total is a shootout-adjacent number, not a duel. That, plus a Mets side almost nobody will captain, is the whole edge.
Top 5 captains & top 5 flex with the why, the game scripts, the $11 48-max vs single-entry attack plan, and a full large-field GPP strategy.
You captain the script, not the name. Three ways this plays out:
Los Angeles is the safe side; the Mets bats are the winning side; the aces are the equalizer. Which one you lean depends entirely on your contest — that's the rest of this playbook.
| # | Captain | Sal (util) | CPT Sal | Proj | Ceil | Own | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shohei Ohtani LAD 1B/OF chalk | $10,600 | $15,900 | 9.9 | 17.4 | 42% | Highest ceiling on the slate and leadoff for the top implied team. Same-side vs Manaea barely matters — he's the one bat that transcends the platoon. The default, and defensible in every format. |
| 2 | Andy Pages LAD OF leverage | $8,200 | $12,300 | 9.5 | 16.7 | 20% | The best value CPT on the board: a righty with the platoon edge over lefty Manaea, hitting in the top third, at 20% owned. Captaining him frees $3,600 vs an Ohtani CPT to load studs underneath. |
| 3 | Roki Sasaki LAD P safety | $11,200 | $16,800 | 11.1 | 16.7 | 35% | The highest projection of any single spot and the only captain with strikeout floor. In the pitchers-hold script he's the winning CPT; even in a shootout his K's keep him relevant. The safe-ceiling captain. |
| 4 | Mookie Betts LAD SS leverage | $8,000 | $12,000 | 8.2 | 14.4 | 22% | Righty bat, platoon edge on Manaea, elite contact and the cheapest of the LA stars. A leverage CPT that still projects like a top-tier bat — the field over-captains Ohtani and Freeman and skips Mookie. |
| 5 | Juan Soto NYM OF contrarian | $9,600 | $14,400 | 10.8 | 19.0 | 30% | The tournament-winning contrarian: a lefty with the platoon edge on RHP Sasaki, and the only Mets bat with a real captain ceiling. If New York keeps it close, a Soto CPT is where the top of the leaderboard lives because the field is 90% Dodgers. |
Value CPT dart: Tommy Edman (LAD, $7,600 / $11,400 CPT, 10.1 proj, 17.7 ceil, 18% owned) — switch-hitter batting near the bottom with a 17-point ceiling. Captaining him is the cheapest way to fit five other starters and still leverage off the Ohtani/Freeman chalk.
| # | Flex | Sal | Proj | Ceil | Own | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roki Sasaki LAD P chalk | $11,200 | 11.1 | 16.7 | 35% | The arm. In any LA-leaning build he's the anchor — the win equity of a -136 favorite plus strikeout upside. Pair him with his own offense; a pitcher stacked with his team's bats correlates in a blowout. |
| 2 | Shohei Ohtani LAD 1B/OF | $10,600 | 9.9 | 17.4 | 42% | If he isn't your captain, he's a mandatory flex. Highest raw ceiling in the game and the engine of the top-implied lineup. |
| 3 | Andy Pages LAD OF value | $8,200 | 9.5 | 16.7 | 20% | Platoon edge on Manaea, mid-price, under-owned. The best salary-to-ceiling bat in the middle tier — he fits in essentially every build. |
| 4 | Teoscar Hernandez LAD OF value | $6,800 | 6.7 | 11.8 | 16% | Righty with the platoon edge, sub-$7K, 15-point ceiling. The salary reliever that lets you fit two studs plus the ace. |
| 5 | Jared Young NYM 1B punt | $3,800 | 6.5 | 11.4 | 10% | $3,800 lefty bat with the Sasaki platoon edge — the cheapest legitimate Mets bring-back. Rostering him is how a five-stud build fits under the cap. |
Also live: Miguel Rojas ($3,400, LAD punt value), Freddie Freeman ($9,000, LAD — great bat, tough L/L spot), Francisco Lindor ($6,400, NYM switch, leadoff-adjacent), Carson Benge ($6,600, NYM lefty w/ platoon edge), A.J. Ewing ($5,800, NYM leadoff lefty), Dalton Rushing ($6,000, LAD punt catcher). Fade: Kyle Tucker (L/L vs Manaea, mid-price with a capped ceiling), and don't chase Freeman/Alvarez chalk in a same-side spot.
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:
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:
Everything above gets you a good lineup. Winning a large-field GPP (thousands of entries, top-heavy payout) is a different problem: you're not trying to be right, you're trying to be right and different from the 5,000 people who were also right. Here's the framework.
In a large field, the chalk captain (Ohtani here, ~40%+) will be correct fairly often — and when it is, you split the top prize with a huge chunk of the field, which is a losing outcome even when you "hit." Your job is to find the spots where a slightly-lower-probability outcome pays off in a nearly-empty room. Product of ownership matters most at captain: a 20%-owned CPT that hits leaves you sharing with a quarter of the players a 42%-owned CPT would. Target a captain the field is under on relative to its true ceiling — Pages, Betts, and Soto all qualify here.
The captain slot is 1.5× the points and, in showdown, the single biggest source of duplication. Two lineups with the same six players but different captains are effectively different tickets. So spend your uniqueness budget there: it is far better to run the chalk five-man core under a contrarian captain than to run a chalk captain with three "clever" flex swaps. If you only change one thing about your build to win a big GPP, change the captain.
Showdown scoring rewards innings that snowball: when a team hits, three or four of its bats score together. So the winning structure is almost always a 4-1 or 5-1 team stack (four or five bats from one side plus one bring-back), or a pitcher + his own offense (the arm wins in a game his team controls). Avoid "balanced" 3-3 builds — they win the median and never win the tournament. Pick the team you think erupts, captain a bat inside that stack, and bring back exactly one high-ceiling opponent (Soto or Ohtani) to cover the back-and-forth.
Take the contrarian captain (here: Soto, or a punt like Young/Ewing) when three things are true: the field is lopsided onto one side (it is — heavily LA), the contrarian side has a realistic path to the game's biggest score (Soto/Mets lefties vs RHP Sasaki, in a 9.0-total game), and the payout is top-heavy enough that a unique winning lineup is worth the added variance. In a flat-paying or small field, take the higher-probability captain; in a top-heavy large field, the contrarian captain is how you turn a 1-in-5,000 outcome into a first-place finish nobody else has.
Large-field GPPs are high-variance — treat them as the aggressive slice of a bankroll, not the whole thing. Keep single-game GPP exposure to a small percentage of your roll and put the majority in cash/single-entry where edges compound steadily. If you're multi-entering a large field, build a portfolio: 50–60% of entries on your primary read (LA stack, rotating Ohtani/Pages/Sasaki captains), 25–30% on the contrarian Soto/Mets stack, and 10–15% on pure dart captains (Edman, Young). Cap your exposure to any single captain around 30–35% of entries so no one outcome sinks the whole set. The goal isn't 200 slightly-different lineups; it's a handful of structurally distinct tickets, each built to win a different script.
Each is one CPT at 1.5× salary + five FLEX, validated under the $50,000 cap.
| Slot | Player | Salary | Proj |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPT | Shohei Ohtani (LAD) | $15,900 | 14.9 |
| FLEX | Andy Pages (LAD) | $8,200 | 9.5 |
| FLEX | Tommy Edman (LAD) | $7,600 | 10.1 |
| FLEX | Teoscar Hernandez (LAD) | $6,800 | 6.7 |
| FLEX | Dalton Rushing (LAD) | $6,000 | 6.9 |
| FLEX | Jared Young (NYM) | $3,800 | 6.5 |
| Total | $48,300 | 54.7 | |
Five Dodgers (four with the platoon edge or elite bats) + one cheap Mets bring-back. The chalk-adjacent core play — high floor, wins the blowout.
| Slot | Player | Salary | Proj |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPT | Juan Soto (NYM) | $14,400 | 16.3 |
| FLEX | Francisco Lindor (NYM) | $6,400 | 8.9 |
| FLEX | Carson Benge (NYM) | $6,600 | 8.2 |
| FLEX | A.J. Ewing (NYM) | $5,800 | 9.3 |
| FLEX | Francisco Alvarez (NYM) | $5,400 | 6.9 |
| FLEX | Shohei Ohtani (LAD) | $10,600 | 9.9 |
| Total | $49,200 | 59.4 | |
A 5-1 Mets stack behind the contrarian Soto captain, with Ohtani as the mandatory bring-back. The verified projections actually grade this as the top-scoring of the three builds — yet it's the ticket almost nobody has, because the field is 90% Dodgers. If New York's lefties get to Sasaki, this is the large-field GPP winner.
| Slot | Player | Salary | Proj |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPT | Roki Sasaki (LAD) | $16,800 | 16.7 |
| FLEX | Andy Pages (LAD) | $8,200 | 9.5 |
| FLEX | Tommy Edman (LAD) | $7,600 | 10.1 |
| FLEX | Teoscar Hernandez (LAD) | $6,800 | 6.7 |
| FLEX | Dalton Rushing (LAD) | $6,000 | 6.9 |
| FLEX | Jared Young (NYM) | $3,800 | 6.5 |
| Total | $49,200 | 56.5 | |
The captained ace stacked with his own offense — correlated for the LA-controls-the-game script and near-unbeatable if Sasaki misses bats. Highest projection of the three.