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The Brier score is the number that decides our leaderboard, and it is the reason one model can pick more winners than another and still finish below it. This walks through what it actually measures, in plain English, using real calls from our own board rather than made up examples.

ATH @ BOS · 7:10 PM ET · O/U 8.5

Every model is on Boston and at an average 69 percent this is the most confident board of the night, which is probably the right read on the teams and the wrong read on the price. Boston was 32-46 on June 24 and has gone 31-5 since, the best 36 game stretch in the franchise since 1901, and it happens to match the 2002 Athletics on the night the Athletics walk into Fenway. They arrive 1-9, freshly swept at home by Cincinnati, scoring 3.08 runs a game over the last fortnight against Boston's 6.00, and they hand the ball to Jack Perkins and his 6.72 ERA against Payton Tolle at 3.30. The catch is the number: Boston is 28-29 at home this year and the market wants -265, which needs a 72.6 percent win rate to break even. Our board says 69.

CIN @ WSH · 6:45 PM ET · O/U 9

The only genuinely split board tonight, eight models on Washington and three on Cincinnati, and the disagreement is easy to explain once you see the two rosters. Cincinnati is running a bullpen game, with Chase Petty opening on 30 innings for the season and no outing longer than two and a third since June 4, because Hunter Greene went on the injured list Wednesday with soreness in a surgically repaired elbow and is probably done for the year. Washington answers with Cade Cavalli at a 3.52 ERA and 9.8 strikeouts per nine. Except the Nationals have lost their two best bats inside three days, James Wood to an oblique strain and Luis Garcia Jr to the Yankees at the deadline, and they are 2-8 off a 1-7 road trip while Cincinnati has won four in a row. The models are not arguing about which team is better. They are arguing about whether a bullpen game beats a good starter, or a gutted lineup beats a hot one.

BAL @ TEX · 8:15 PM ET · O/U 7.5

Unanimous on Texas, and not one model means it. At 52 percent this is the softest agreement anywhere on the board, and that reads about right for two teams one game apart in the standings, both under .500, both scoring under 3.9 runs a game over the last fortnight, both chasing a third wild card with six clubs inside a game and a half of it. The strange part is the pitching. Shane Baz carries the better ERA into this one, 3.86 against Nathan Eovaldi's 4.31, and he has given up five earned runs across his last 20.1 innings, yet Baltimore is 6-16 in his 22 starts this season. On August 2 he held Philadelphia to a single run over six and a third and lost 5-0, because his offense managed three hits. Texas at -139 implies 58 percent and our board sits at 52, so this is eleven models agreeing on a direction while quietly saying the market has overpriced it.