The stars

• ★ gold card = confirmed star pick: the model's strongest profile (top tier, great zone matchup, real season power) and he's officially in the lineup batting 1st–4th. Roughly 1 in 5 of these homers — that's what elite looks like in this game.
• ☆ dashed card = provisional: same profile, lineup not posted yet. Research these in the morning; by ~4:30 they turn solid gold (confirmed) or disappear. Only confirmed ★ picks count in the record.

The numbers

• The big % — calibrated chance he homers tonight. 20% ≈ elite. Honest: when it says 16%, about 16% actually do.
• 🔥 hot — 10-day contact quality (barrels, exit velo), not a count of recent homers. Last 5 — hits-for-at-bats each game, oldest → newest; green = homered that game.

The tags

• zone matchup! — the starter throws to exactly the spots this batter punishes. Best signal on the board.
• ice cold — no HR in 2 weeks, contact way down (hidden by default).
• bad HR weather — cold/wind-in games really do suppress homers.
• HR-prone SP (trap!) — bad pitcher, but picking batters because of a bad pitcher loses (5.6% hit rate). Tiebreaker, never the reason.

The Edge report

• The Edge tab runs the hand-research process automatically: each starter's vulnerable pitches from his last 3 starts (by batter hand, with usage drift), crossed with every opposing batter's last-10 batted-ball events vs those exact pitch types, plus bullpen fatigue and the directional HR-carry strip.
• Badges on batter cards: TAKE = 2+ HR in his last 5 batted balls vs a vulnerable pitch. STANDOUT = sees the pitch 30%+ and crushes it. Grey EDGE = a lighter note. Red MUST-THROW = he crushes the starter's #1 pitch to his side and it comes 35%+ of the time — the pitcher cannot avoid him. Open the card's "Edge report details" section for the per-pitch numbers and today's spray fit.
• Spray fit (×1.00 = neutral): how much today's wind and park boost the zones where HIS damage actually lands. ×1.5+ means the weather is working specifically for him.
• A ★ star and a TAKE badge = the model and the research method agree — the strongest play on the board.

The quality stats — wOBA/xwOBA and SLG/xSLG

• wOBA = what actually happened at the plate (like batting average, but weighting doubles/homers properly). xwOBA = what SHOULD have happened based on how hard and at what angle he hit the ball. Same idea for SLG (actual power results) vs xSLG (deserved power).
• The drawer's rolling 100-PA charts plot both: grey = actual, red = deserved, dashed line = league average. Red above grey = he's better than his results — buy before the box scores catch up. Grey above red = he's been lucky; trust the red line, not the surface stats.
• All four appear in the Season / Last 30 / Last 14 tabs so you can spot a quality surge (xSLG jumping in the L14) before the homers arrive — the same logic as barrels-over-results, at the stat-line level.

The record

The banner tracks every confirmed ★ pick since Aug 24 — hits and misses, no cherry-picking. Judge after ~150 picks, not one night.