Luna deep analysis — slate 20260910

Coverage receipt: COMPLETE · 9/8 sections; 5/5 games; 5/5 causes; 5/6 sources

1. Evidence receipt and gaps

Sources received

All seven source_manifest entries were checked against their declared status:

All five expected games were reviewed:

1. COL@NYY
2. HOU@PHI
3. PIT@CHW
4. TB@ATL
5. TEX@SEA

Coverage is complete for the five-game slate: canonical artifacts loaded 5/5, continuous-learning games 5/5, forensic deep-audit games 5/5, starter comparisons 5/5, and structural audits 5/5 (coverage_matrix).

Gaps and contradictions

1. Missing integrity revision audit. The source manifest explicitly reports audit_report_20260910_integrity_revision.html as missing. This prevents confirmation of the post-Luna immutable-revision proof, although the per-game structural audits otherwise pass.

1. Critical probability-lineage defect at PIT@CHW. The causal register identifies an unexplained calibrated-to-published delta. The lineage records:
2. calibrated probability: 0.5711
3. published home probability: 0.528284
4. delta: -0.042816
5. unexplained_material_delta: true
6. transformation: "no recorded transformation explains the publication delta"

The register correctly treats this as critical and says promotion must be blocked until the missing transformation is traced. The data does not establish that the governor was bypassed; it establishes only that the final publication transformation is not documented.

1. Starter-feed inconsistency at PIT@CHW. The settled per-player feed reports a missing pitching line for CHW starter Hagen Smith: projected ERA 1.93, reason "no pitching line for this player in the settled per-player feed". However, the game-level starter_lines still contains a projected line of 1.0 ER, 1.93 ERA, and 14 outs, while the actual line records 0 ER and 6 outs. This is not counted as a structural audit error, but it is a starter-data contract gap requiring reconciliation.

1. Probability-orientation complexity. Some fields are expressed as home probability, while the governor and diagnostic fields appear to be pick-side oriented. For example, PIT@CHW has an away pick and published home probability 0.528284, equivalent to an away pick probability of approximately 0.471716 in probability_reversions. The numerical values are reconcilable by orientation, but the lineage labels should explicitly identify side orientation at every step.

1. Score-stage and winner-stage behavior are not identical. The stage table shows historical_ml winner accuracy 0.6, variance_applied winner accuracy 0.4, and enhanced_prediction recovering to 0.6. A later recovery does not erase the intermediate regression.

1. Small-sample calibration. The slate contains only five settled games. Calibration buckets contain three and two games respectively. The cross-slate persistence evidence is therefore more informative than the current slate alone for parameter decisions.

2. Executive diagnosis

Overall result

The system went 3–2, with winner accuracy 0.600, versus the walk-forward baseline of 0.559444 and model holdout winner accuracy of 0.598152 (summary, self_assessment, model_validation). That is a modestly positive directional result, not evidence of good score forecasting.

Separate diagnoses

A correct winner does not imply a good prediction. PIT@CHW was a correct winner but had a team-run error of 5; COL@NYY was a correct winner but missed the home score by 2 and had a team-run absolute error of 3.

Causal issue register reconciliation

Critical: unexplained published probability transformation

• ID/title: unexplained_probability_publication_delta — “Published probability differs materially without a recorded transformation.”
• Severity: Critical
• Affected game: PIT@CHW
• Evidence: one game has an unexplained calibrated-to-published delta of at least two percentage points; actual lineage delta is -0.042816.
• Action: block promotion until the pick-side math is traced and the missing transformation is recorded.
• Do-not-infer guardrail: do not assume governor bypass until the pick-side math is traced.

This is a contract/evidence failure, not proof that the probability governor was bypassed.

High: intermediate winner-direction regression

• ID/title: pipeline_winner_instability — “An intermediate stage materially degraded winner direction.”
• Severity: High
• Affected game: TEX@SEA
• Evidence: historical_ml → variance_applied changed winner accuracy from 0.6 to 0.4; TEX@SEA changed SEA → TIE.
• Action: preserve before-stage and after-stage picks and list exact flips.
• Do-not-infer guardrail: later recovery does not make the unstable step harmless.

This is a material model/process risk, not a critical artifact failure.

High: weak validated run-model signal

• ID/title: weak_run_model_signal
• Severity: High
• Affected games: all five games
• Evidence: holdout run R² is 0.0118/0.0210/0.0207 for home/away/total.
• Action: improve features or target definition through isolated training backtests; do not tune score tails as if exact scores were reliable.
• Do-not-infer guardrail: small positive R² does not establish exact-score reliability.

Informational: complete audit coverage

• Severity: Info
• Evidence: 5/5 games structurally audited.
• Action: retain the per-game audit receipt.
• Guardrail: complete coverage does not cancel findings inside audited games.

Informational: simulation inert on this slate

• Severity: Info on this slate, but escalated across slates
• Evidence: zero flip candidates and zero published flips.
• Action: measure simulation contribution over rolling slates, separating score realization from winner intervention.
• Guardrail: zero winner flips is not itself a defect and does not prove no score reconciliation occurred.

The cross-slate evidence changes the operational status of this finding from single-slate information to an established persistent code/diagnostic problem; see Sections 7 and 8.

3. Every game

COL@NYY — correct winner, imperfect score

• Predicted: COL 4, NYY 8; winner NYY.
• Actual: COL 3, NYY 10; winner NYY.
• Published pick probability: NYY 0.580.
• System confidence edge: home-minus-away +0.16; diagnostic labels this moderate, not a near coin flip.
• Conviction: Moderate.
• Brier score: 0.1764.
• Team-run absolute error: 3.
• Total-run bias: -1 — total forecast 12 versus actual 13.
• Correct-winner/wrong-score: Yes. The winner was correct, but the published score was not exact.

Starter projection versus actual

Starter projections were broadly accurate in earned runs. The largest score miss came from offense and game realization rather than a major starter ER miss.

Edges and controls

• Season edge: NYY +1.720.
• Recent edge: NYY +1.254.
• Pitcher edge: NYY +0.092.
• Composite edge: NYY +2.183.
• Season quality edge: +1.7195; recent quality edge +0.904.
• Pitcher adjustment applied: away factor 0.9943, home factor 1.0867.
• Starter-experience shrinkage: not applied; both starters had established histories.
• Recency guardrail: applied.
• Score-volatility action: supported_blowout_margin_expansion.
• Confidence path reached 0.6858 before publication/recency controls; published probability was 0.580.

Score path and player adjustments

The supplied trace does not provide the full score-evolution array for this game, but it records a high-margin pick and a large Savant run-environment swing. Important player deviations included:

• Anthony Volpe: 3-for-4, HR, 5 RBI versus projected 1 hit and 0 HR; run impact +1.54 in the player audit and +1.54/+1.54-class contribution in the forensic records.
• Hunter Goodman: 0-for-5 versus projected hit/HR; run impact -1.40.
• Ezequiel Tovar: 2-for-3 versus a projected 0 hits; impact +1.27.
• Ben Rice: below projection; impact -1.26.
• Jake McCarthy: above projection; impact +1.09.

The player-level diagnostic says the saved forecast artifact was clean and was not responsible for a miss; this game was a hit.

Audit and causes

• Structural audit: PASS; 0 critical, 0 error, 0 warning, 101 good, 8 info.
• Primary cause: none assigned.
• Secondary cause: none assigned.
• Interpretation: strong directional call with acceptable starter projections, but exact scoring remained uncertain. The high-margin action helped recognize the seven-run actual margin, though it still underpredicted the margin by three runs.

HOU@PHI — wrong winner and large score miss

• Predicted: HOU 4, PHI 5; winner PHI.
• Actual: HOU 2, PHI 1; winner HOU.
• Published pick probability: PHI 0.566859 (approximately 0.567).
• System confidence edge: home-minus-away +0.1337; moderate, not near-coin-flip language.
• Conviction: Moderate.
• Brier score: 0.321329.
• Team-run absolute error: 6.
• Total-run bias: +6 — forecast total 9, actual total 3.
• Correct-winner/wrong-score: No; both winner and score were wrong.

Starter projection versus actual

The starting-pitcher projection was the primary miss driver. Both starters substantially outperformed their projected ER lines, especially Javier.

Edges and controls

• Season edge: PHI +0.429.
• Recent edge: PHI +0.068.
• Pitcher edge: PHI +0.020.
• Composite edge: PHI +0.476.
• Recent-form run differential: HOU +5, PHI +11; both teams had a 0.600 recent win percentage.
• Pitcher adjustments: HOU-side run factor 0.967, PHI-side 0.9868.
• Starter-experience shrinkage: not applied; both histories were treated as established.
• Recency guardrail: applied.
• Score-volatility action: no_change.
• Confidence path: governed pick probability 0.6031; published PHI probability 0.566859.
• The published commitment was only a 0.13 edge, so this was a moderate commitment rather than a high-certainty call.

Score path

The forecast evolved as follows:

1. Historical ML: HOU 4.0108, PHI 5.9834.
2. Variance applied: HOU 4, PHI 6.
3. Enhanced prediction: HOU 4, PHI 5.
4. Savant run environment: HOU remained 4, PHI 5; adjustments were -0.487 HOU and +0.1663 PHI.
5. Fundamental review, cap, and simulation: HOU 4, PHI 5.

The model never moved toward the actual low-scoring HOU win. The no_change volatility decision left a nine-run forecast against a three-run game.

Player-level adjustments

Material player changes were recorded for 24 players/metrics. Important deviations included:

• Cam Smith: 2-for-3, HR, RBI versus projected 1 hit and 0 HR; impact +1.73 for HOU.
• Yordan Alvarez: 0-for-3 versus projected hit/HR; impact -1.40.
• Kyle Schwarber: 0-for-3 versus projected hit/HR; impact -1.40.
• Daulton Varsho: 0-for-4 versus projected hit; impact -0.80.
• Bryce Harper: 0-for-3 versus projected hit; impact -0.80.

The slate player audit found only 11/37 material deviations were supported by the hitter's own season contact quality (29.7%), so most player-level deviations should not be overfit.

Audit and causes

• Structural audit: PASS; 0 critical, 0 error, 0 warning, 102 good, 7 info.
• Primary cause: starter_projection.
• Secondary cause: run_environment_over.
• Starter synthesis specifically identifies Javier's credible venue split as a possible underweighted signal: away ERA 9.947 versus 5.704 on the other side, despite his actual one-run performance.
• The artifact was structurally clean; this was a model-input/weighting and realization failure, not a presentation failure.

PIT@CHW — correct winner, materially wrong score, critical lineage defect

• Predicted: PIT 4, CHW 3; winner PIT.
• Actual: PIT 2, CHW 0; winner PIT.
• Published pick probability: away PIT approximately 0.471716; published home probability 0.528284.
• System confidence edge: home-minus-away -0.0566, equivalent to a modest away lean; diagnostic rounds this to a 0.06 edge.
• Conviction: Lean.
• Brier score: 0.222516.
• Team-run absolute error: 5.
• Total-run bias: +5 — forecast total 7, actual total 2.
• Correct-winner/wrong-score: Yes.

The edge is not a near coin flip in the sense of the report's explicit guardrail: a 0.12 home-away confidence edge is moderate, not a near coin flip. This game was lower conviction than HOU@PHI but still a directional lean.

Starter projection versus actual

The game-level breakdown labels Hagen Smith's starter line as missing from the settled per-player feed. Therefore the CHW starter comparison is not fully contract-clean even though the structural audit passed.

Edges and controls

• Season edge: PIT -0.231 home-minus-away.
• Recent edge: PIT -1.150.
• Pitcher edge: home +0.042.
• Composite edge: PIT -0.503.
• Pitcher adjustment: away 1.000, home 1.0417.
• Starter-experience shrinkage: applied; probability was shrunk toward 0.5 because of an inexperienced/thin-history starter, with shrink factor 0.8917; winner unchanged.
• Recency guardrail: not applied.
• Score-volatility action: no_change.
• Confidence path: raw model home probability 0.585524; governed value 0.5711; diagnostic says the pipeline reached 0.571 before controls, while published home probability was 0.528284.

Score path and players

The forecast path is not given as a full score-evolution array, but the published target was PIT 4, CHW 3.

Important player outcomes:

• Oneil Cruz: 3-for-4, HR, 2 RBI versus projected 1 hit, 1 RBI; impact +1.54.
• Munetaka Murakami: 0-for-4 versus projected hit/HR; impact -1.73.
• Brandon Lowe: 0-for-4 versus projected hit/HR; impact -1.40.
• Bryan Reynolds: 0-for-4 versus projected hit; impact -1.11.
• Jared Triolo: above projection; impact +0.80.

Both lineups scored three runs below their respective projections. The forensic conclusion calls Jones's shutout an outlier start and says no credible venue, opponent, or experience signal explains it.

Audit and causes

• Structural audit: PASS; 0 critical, 0 error, 0 warning, 100 good, 8 info.
• Primary/secondary causal labels: none assigned.
• Forensic interpretation: correct winner, wrong score; starter overperformance and low run environment drove the score miss.
• Critical artifact/contract issue: undocumented calibrated-to-published probability transformation. The result being a hit does not reduce the severity of the lineage defect.

TB@ATL — wrong winner, largest score miss

• Predicted: TB 6, ATL 5; winner TB.
• Actual: TB 1, ATL 3; winner ATL.
• Published pick probability: away TB approximately 0.505802; published home probability 0.494198.
• System confidence edge: home-minus-away -0.0116; diagnostic rounds to 0.01.
• Conviction: Toss-up.
• Brier score: 0.255836.
• Team-run absolute error: 7.
• Total-run bias: +7 — forecast total 11, actual total 4.
• Correct-winner/wrong-score: No.

Starter projection versus actual

Both starters outperformed their ER projections, but the game was primarily lost through the extreme low-scoring environment and a bullpen failure.

Edges and controls

• Season edge: ATL +0.058.
• Recent edge: TB -0.766.
• Pitcher edge: TB -0.025.
• Composite edge: TB -0.215.
• Recent form: TB had +5 run differential and 0.600 win percentage; ATL had -8 and 0.400.
• Head-to-head inputs favored TB: TB won the two previous games by 7–2 and 7–1.
• Pitcher adjustments: TB 1.0156, ATL 0.9904.
• Starter-experience shrinkage: not applied.
• Recency guardrail: applied.
• Score-volatility action: no_change, despite a low-score probability of 0.7515.
• Confidence path: governed home probability 0.508; published home probability 0.494198.

Score path

1. Historical ML: TB 4.217, ATL 4.677; slight ATL direction.
2. Variance applied: TB 4, ATL 5; ATL direction.
3. Enhanced prediction: TB 5, ATL 4; first wrong-direction flip toward TB.
4. Savant environment: TB 5, ATL 5; tie.
5. Fundamental review: TB 6, ATL 5.
6. Capped and simulation stages: TB 6, ATL 5.

The enhanced stage moved away from the actual ATL winner. The later stages preserved or reinforced the wrong TB direction. No simulation winner intervention corrected it.

Player-level adjustments

• Austin Riley: positive projection adjustment, largest RBI change +2.51.
• Lane Thomas: material adjustment, largest hit change +2.48.
• Junior Caminero: below projection, impact -1.40.
• Nick Madrigal: below projection, impact -0.80.
• Ronald Acuña Jr.: below projection, impact -0.80.
• Ha-Seong Kim produced 2-for-3 with 2 RBI against a zero-hit projection, impact +0.94.

The actual TB bullpen allowed 3 ER in one out through Kevin Kelly, while ATL's bullpen allowed one run. The lineups also underperformed: TB lineup delta -4, ATL -3.

Audit and causes

• Structural audit: PASS; 0 critical, 0 error, 0 warning, 101 good, 7 info.
• Primary cause: run_environment_over.
• Secondary cause: toss_up_variance.
• Starter synthesis says both starter shutouts were outlier performances and does not warrant a starter-model change for this individual game.
• The low-confidence/toss-up classification was appropriate; the loss should not be treated as evidence that a strong directional edge failed.

TEX@SEA — correct winner with intermediate winner regression

• Predicted: TEX 4, SEA 5; winner SEA.
• Actual: TEX 3, SEA 4; winner SEA.
• Published pick probability: SEA 0.527296.
• System confidence edge: home-minus-away +0.0546; diagnostic rounds to 0.05.
• Conviction: Lean.
• Brier score: 0.223449.
• Team-run absolute error: 2.
• Total-run bias: +2 — forecast total 9, actual total 7.
• Correct-winner/wrong-score: No in the strict score-quality sense; it was a solid correct call, with each team one run above or below the forecast.

Starter projection versus actual

Starter ER projections were accurate or conservative.

Edges and controls

• Season edge: TEX -0.371.
• Recent edge: TEX -0.610.
• Pitcher edge: TEX -0.031.
• Composite edge: TEX -0.245; all directional evidence favored TEX, yet published pick favored SEA.
• Pitcher adjustments: TEX-side 0.9648, SEA-side 0.9336.
• Starter-experience shrinkage: not applied.
• Recency guardrail: applied.
• Score-volatility action: high_total_environment_lift.
• Confidence path: governed SEA probability 0.5378; published 0.527296.

Score path

The stage table explicitly records:

• historical_ml: SEA direction.
• variance_applied: SEA became TIE; this was a winner-direction regression because it removed the correct SEA direction.
• enhanced_prediction: TIE became SEA, recovering the correct direction.
• Later stages retained SEA.
• Published final winner accuracy remained correct.

This game is the affected game in the high-severity pipeline-instability register. The later recovery is not evidence that the variance stage was safe.

Player-level adjustments

• Julio Rodríguez: HR and 3 RBI against a projected zero-HR line; impact +0.62.
• Corey Seager: 0-for-4 versus projected hit; impact -1.11.
• Dominic Canzone and J.P. Crawford were below projection.
• TEX bullpen allowed 4 ER, including Jakob Junis allowing four earned runs without recording an out; SEA bullpen allowed zero.

Audit and causes

• Structural audit: PASS; 0 critical, 0 error, 0 warning, 102 good, 7 info.
• Primary/secondary causal labels: none assigned.
• Interpretation: correct winner and relatively good score forecast, but the historical_ml → variance_applied transition temporarily moved the winner toward a tie. This is a process risk independent of the correct final outcome.

4. Miss reconstruction

HOU@PHI

Earliest wrong-direction stage

The earliest wrong result was already present at historical_ml: HOU 4.01, PHI 5.98, favoring PHI, the eventual wrong winner. variance_applied retained that direction at 4–6; enhanced_prediction reduced PHI to 5 but did not correct the side. Savant and later stages retained the wrong PHI direction.

Error classification

• Bad input: No structural artifact error. However, the starter prior/venue information appears insufficiently represented, especially Javier's away split.
• Bad weighting: Likely. The model heavily penalized Javier's projected away performance despite actual one-run performance. The forensic recommendation is to validate a higher context.venue_adjustment_weight.
• Calibration: The published PHI probability 0.566859 was too strong relative to the outcome, but the primary problem was not merely probability calibration; the directional model selected PHI.
• Starter error: Major. Javier projected 5 ER and allowed 1; Wheeler projected 3 ER and allowed 1.
• Offense/bullpen miss: Both lineups underperformed, and PHI's offense scored zero. HOU's bullpen allowed zero, PHI's allowed one.
• Run-environment miss: Major. Nine projected total runs versus three actual, a +6 total bias.
• Irreducible variance: Present, particularly the extreme starter outcomes, but the large projection miss also exposes model-weighting risk.

TB@ATL

Earliest wrong-direction stage

The earliest wrong-direction movement occurred at enhanced_prediction, where the score changed from TB 4, ATL 5 to TB 5, ATL 4. The historical and variance stages favored ATL, but enhancement reversed the winner toward TB. This is the earliest model-stage regression toward the wrong result.

The transition evidence records:

• historical_ml → variance_applied: no winner flip for TB@ATL.
• variance_applied → enhanced_prediction: ATL → TB; regressed game.
• enhanced_prediction → embedded_savant_run_environment: TB → TIE.
• embedded_savant_run_environment → fundamental_edge_target_review: TIE → TB.
• Final stages retained TB.

Error classification

• Bad input: Recent head-to-head data strongly favored TB, but it was not representative of the actual low-scoring game. No structural input defect is proven.
• Bad weighting: Possible. Recent form and head-to-head inputs overrode the modest season/pitcher evidence and the low-score probability.
• Calibration: The published TB probability was only approximately 0.506; this was not a high-confidence calibration failure. The toss-up label was appropriate.
• Starter error: Both starters beat ER projections by two runs, but the forensic assessment calls these outliers and recommends no individual starter change.
• Offense/bullpen miss: Major. TB scored one run and its bullpen allowed three; the lineup was four runs below projection.
• Run-environment miss: Major. Eleven projected runs versus four actual, a +7 total bias.
• Irreducible variance: Substantial. The game was correctly classified as a toss-up and both starters produced shutouts.

Pipeline-stage audit across all stages and transitions

Important transitions:

• Historical → variance: winner accuracy fell by 0.200; TEX@SEA changed SEA → TIE; this is the registered high-severity instability.
• Variance → enhanced: winner accuracy recovered by 0.200; PIT@CHW changed CHW → PIT and TEX@SEA TIE → SEA, helping both; TB@ATL changed ATL → TB, hurting that game.
• Enhanced → Savant: TB@ATL moved TB → TIE but winner accuracy did not change; margin MAE improved by 0.4, while team-run MAE was unchanged.
• Savant → fundamental review: TB@ATL moved TIE → TB; margin MAE worsened by 0.2, team-run MAE worsened by 0.1.
• All later transitions were inert.

The correct final slate result does not erase the intermediate winner-direction regressions.

5. Cross-game counterfactuals

Lever tension 1: score.variance_multiplier / score.variance_floor

• Helps: HOU@PHI, where the model lost a moderate-confidence pick and overprojected the total by six runs. Wider distributions could reduce overconfidence and improve Brier/calibration behavior.
• Hurts: No hurt game is listed in the supplied tension record.
• Net evidence: 1 helped vs 0 hurt; supports a small bounded widening, not a large change.
• Guardrail: This lever cannot fix the near-zero run-model signal. It changes dispersion and calibration, not the underlying mean prediction.

Lever tension 2: player.pitcher.v4 form weights / player.pitcher_prior_games

• Helps: HOU@PHI, where Javier was four ER better than projected; PIT@CHW, where Jones was three ER better than projected.
• Hurts: COL@NYY and TEX@SEA, where starter ER projections were already accurate within one run; reweighting could disturb those calls.
• Net evidence: 2 helped vs 2 hurt; no directional parameter change is supported from this slate.
• Guardrail: Do not generalize two extreme starter outcomes into a global pitcher-weight increase or decrease.

Lever tension 3: recent.* / season.* run-mean weighting

• Helps: HOU@PHI, team-run error 6; PIT@CHW, error 5; TB@ATL, error 7.
• Hurts: TEX@SEA, where team-run error was only 2; reweighting could damage an already accurate score forecast.
• Net evidence: 3 helped vs 1 hurt; this is the strongest slate-level score lever signal, but it conflicts with the persistent finding that the run model's features explain almost no holdout variance.
• Guardrail: Do not make a large nightly mean-weight change. The evidence supports isolated feature/target work, not blind recency or season reweighting.

Tempting one-game fixes that should not be made

1. Do not globally increase venue-split weighting solely because of Javier. HOU@PHI supports it, but COL@NYY and TEX@SEA had accurate starter projections, and the cross-slate starter ERA bias is explicitly nonpersistent: only 6/11 slates share the sign, with z=1.11.

1. Do not treat PIT@CHW's missing probability transformation as evidence to change the governor. First trace the pick-side math. The register explicitly prohibits inferring a governor bypass.

1. Do not tune the model to Oneil Cruz, Cam Smith, or individual player deviations. Only 11/37 material deviations were supported by season contact quality; the remaining deviations are primarily noise.

1. Do not force simulation winner intervention based on the zero-flip slate alone. The cross-slate streak makes simulation a code/diagnostic issue, not evidence for a score-mean or confidence parameter move.

1. Do not reduce confidence caps solely because TB@ATL lost. It was a classified toss-up with published probability near 0.50; its loss is not a high-confidence calibration failure.

6. Data and contract defects

Critical findings

1. Unexplained probability publication delta — PIT@CHW

This is the only registered critical finding:

• Calibrated pick probability: 0.5711
• Published home probability: 0.528284
• Difference: -0.042816
• No recorded transformation
• unexplained_material_delta: true

Required action: reconstruct the complete pick-side path and block promotion until the transformation is recorded and reconciled.

2. Missing integrity revision audit artifact

The manifest reports the immutable revision audit as missing. This is an evidence/contract gap even though no per-game structural audit failed.

Error findings

No structural audit reported an error. Each of the five games had error: 0; the slate-level structural summary also reports critical: 0, error: 0, warning: 0.

That does not negate the critical probability-lineage issue, because the causal register captures a contract defect not surfaced as a per-game structural error.

Warning findings

No warning findings were reported. This is a coverage result, not proof that the system is defect-free.

Informational findings

• Per-game informational findings totaled 37 across the five structural audits.
• All five games received structural QA.
• Simulation had zero flip candidates and zero published flips.
• The PIT@CHW settled per-player feed lacked a complete CHW starter pitching line.
• Several game diagnostics identify score volatility, recency, starter, or player-level context that is useful for interpretation but not necessarily a contract failure.

Prediction-model defects versus presentation/artifact defects

Prediction/model/process defects

1. Near-zero run-model signal: holdout R² of 0.011791 home, 0.021038 away, and 0.020666 total.
2. Simulation is persistently inert: no winner intervention for 11 consecutive slates; self-assessment identifies early-exit and selected-draw construction as the root cause.
3. Intermediate winner instability: variance application reduced slate winner accuracy from 0.600 to 0.400.
4. Starter projection failure in HOU@PHI: especially Javier's 11.25 projected ERA versus 1.50 actual.
5. Overdispersed/high run means on this slate: average lineup delta -1.7 across ten sides; total overprediction on both losses.

Presentation/artifact/contract defects

1. PIT@CHW probability lineage is incomplete.
2. Missing integrity revision audit file.
3. PIT@CHW settled starter-feed line is incomplete.
4. Per-game forecast files themselves were reported clean: every game's diagnostic says the saved artifact had zero defects and was not why the prediction missed.

Complete probability-lineage audit

The required path is raw model → calibrated → governor → score coherence/recency → published.

A bypass should be called only when a material delta has no recorded transformation. That condition is met for PIT@CHW, but the evidence does not prove that the governor itself was bypassed.

7. Cross-slate persistence

A single slate is noisy, but several findings have explicit persistence evidence.

Escalated findings

These are established failures, not single-slate noise.

simulation_inert_on_slate

• Consecutive slates: 11
• Present now: Yes
• Incidence: 11/11 in the window
• Target metric: team_run_maE, total_run_maE
• Target lever listed: simulation.allow_score
• Parameter actionable: No
• Direction: confirm the simulation module is running and not silently no-oping.
• Root cause from self-assessment: the same selected draws are used for target realization and distribution estimation; the loop early-exits after approximately two draws, making the resulting win rate statistically meaningless.

This is a code/diagnostic failure, not a reason to force a parameter change.

weak_run_model_signal

• Consecutive slates: 11
• Present now: Yes
• Incidence: 11/11
• Target metrics: team_run_mae, total_run_mae
• Target levers listed: training.xgb.n_estimators, training.xgb.max_depth, training.xgb.learning_rate
• Parameter actionable: No
• Direction: investigate features and target through an isolated training backtest.

The self-assessment correctly states that no bounded nightly knob can reliably fix near-zero holdout R². The recommended action is feature-contract and training-target work.

Finding streaks

The escalation_streak value is 3, but the individual escalated finding records independently show 11 consecutive slates. The latter is the relevant streak for each finding.

Metric-trend directions

• Margin bias: improving. Mean -1.6984; the series improves toward less negative values in aggregate.
• Mean team-run error on losses: regressing. Mean 6.1631; losses remain associated with large team-run misses.
• Weighted calibration error: improving. Mean 0.1604; current slate 0.1171, better than several earlier slates.
• Winner accuracy: flat. Mean 0.5751; current 0.600 is not evidence of a sustained directional improvement.

Top-confidence-pick loss streak

• Current top-confidence-pick loss streak: 0.
• The last three slates, September 8–10, were hits.
• Prior losses occurred on September 1–3 and September 6–7, but they were interrupted by hits.
• Therefore there is no current top-pick loss streak to remediate.

Other persistent cross-slate evidence

The cross_slate_bias section does not support changing starter opponent-strength weighting or score variance floor from the available 11-slate tests:

• Starter ERA error: positive mean 0.418, same-sign share 0.545, z=1.11; status hold.
• Lineup run delta: mean 0.0, same-sign share 0.364, z=0.0; status hold.

These nonpersistent findings should not override the two explicitly escalated persistent failures.

8. Adjustments for today

Recommendations are ranked by persistence and evidence strength. These are bounded recommendations or shadow experiments only; no files or parameters are being changed here.

1. Fix the persistent inert simulation path — highest priority

• Target: simulation.allow_score is registered, but the finding is explicitly non-parameter-actionable.
• Change: do not toggle the parameter blindly. Implement the registered code/diagnostic action:
• separate target-realization search from independent win-probability estimation;
• use an independent unsteered batch of approximately 200–500 draws or a closed-form Poisson/Skellam difference;
• remove the early exit from the probability-estimation loop;
• register the batch size;
• feed the independent win rate into _distribution_agreement.
• Expected metric: better-informed simulation contribution, improved team_run_mae and total_run_mae, and measurable nonzero winner-intervention diagnostics.
• Affected games: this slate's simulation did not alter any winner, so no individual game can demonstrate benefit; structurally it is relevant to all five.
• Lever tension: no direct one-game hurt is established; the principal risk is computational cost or introducing a new simulation calibration error.
• Rollback monitor: compare independent-simulation win rates, flip-candidate frequency, Brier score, team-run MAE, and total-run MAE against the current inert baseline.

2. Address persistent weak run-model signal — code and training diagnostic

• Target levers: registered as training.xgb.n_estimators, training.xgb.max_depth, and training.xgb.learning_rate, but the finding is marked param_actionable: false.
• Change: do not make a nightly hyperparameter move. Add and validate the prescribed feature/target changes:
• source-labelled no-vig market probability where available;
• park/weather run environment;
• bullpen rest and fatigue;
• platoon-adjusted lineup quality;
• isolated same-fingerprint walk-forward backtest;
• bump model schema version when feature semantics change.
• Expected metric: increase holdout home/away/total R² and reduce team-run and total-run MAE.
• Affected games: especially HOU@PHI, PIT@CHW, and TB@ATL, which had team-run errors of 6, 5, and 7; TEX@SEA is the principal regression-risk comparison because its error was only 2.
• Lever tension: the slate's recent/season run-mean lever helped three games and hurt one, but this does not justify changing it before feature/target validation.
• Rollback monitor: require improvement in holdout R² and out-of-sample run MAE, not merely improvement on this five-game slate.

3. Apply one small shadow change for the strongest single-slate driver: widen score variance

• Registered parameter: score.variance_floor.
• Direction: increase slightly.
• Magnitude: bounded shadow increase of approximately +0.10 from the default 2.75 to 2.85; do not promote without a gate.
• Expected metric: lower overconfidence/Brier risk in moderate-confidence low-scoring misses and improve total-run calibration; team-run MAE may improve if the current distribution is too narrow, but the mean-model weakness limits expected gains.
• Games helped: HOU@PHI, where the model overprojected total runs by six; potentially TB@ATL, where it overprojected by seven; PIT@CHW, where it overprojected by five.
• Games hurt: TEX@SEA is the clearest risk because its team-run error was only two; COL@NYY had a reasonable total and a supported blowout expansion. The lever tension record lists HOU@PHI as helped and no explicit hurt game, but these risks remain operationally plausible.
• Rollback monitor: Brier score, weighted calibration error, total-run MAE, team-run MAE, and margin MAE over a rolling multi-slate shadow period.
• Why not a large change: the score model has persistent near-zero signal, so widening uncertainty must not be mistaken for fixing the mean.

4. Probability-lineage repair before promotion

• Target: no parameter move.
• Change: reconstruct PIT@CHW's side-oriented raw → calibrated → governor → score coherence/recency → published chain, including the exact transformation from 0.5711 to 0.528284 home probability.
• Expected metric: zero unexplained material deltas and a complete audit trail.
• Affected game: PIT@CHW directly; all future games through the publication contract.
• Rollback/gate: no promotion until the transformation is recorded and the missing integrity revision audit is restored or formally explained.

5. Do not change pitcher form weights today

• Registered lever: player.pitcher.v4 form weights / player.pitcher_prior_games.
• Direction: abstain.
• Reason: slate tension is exactly balanced, 2 helped vs 2 hurt; cross-slate starter bias is not persistent.
• Affected games: HOU@PHI and PIT@CHW support more adaptive treatment, but COL@NYY and TEX@SEA caution against a global change.
• Action: retain shadow diagnostics, particularly venue-split treatment, without changing the global weight.

6. Do not change confidence caps solely from this slate

The self-assessment proposes lowering confidence.base_cap and confidence.moderate_cap, but the actual slate had no high-confidence category and the top-pick loss streak is zero. A small calibration shadow could be reasonable, but it is lower priority than the persistent simulation and run-model defects. The current weighted calibration error is improving cross-slate.

9. Bottom line

Known

• The slate finished 3–2 with winner accuracy 0.600.
• COL@NYY, PIT@CHW, and TEX@SEA were correct winner calls; PIT@CHW was explicitly a correct-winner/wrong-score game.
• HOU@PHI was lost primarily through a severe starter projection error and an overprojected run environment.
• TB@ATL was lost in a toss-up after the enhanced stage flipped from the historically correct ATL direction to TB; both starters and the run environment then produced a very low-scoring game.
• Exact score quality is weak, supported by published total-run MAE 4.2 and holdout run R² near zero.
• Simulation inertness and weak run-model signal are established 11-slate persistent failures.
• The current top-confidence pick loss streak is zero.
• All five games received structural QA, and all per-game structural audits reported zero critical/error/warning findings.

Uncertain

• The correct interpretation of the PIT@CHW probability publication transformation remains unknown. The evidence proves an undocumented material delta, not a governor bypass.
• The degree to which venue-split weighting would improve starter projections is unresolved; cross-slate evidence does not separate that bias from noise.
• The magnitude of any beneficial score-variance change is uncertain because the run model itself has near-zero validated signal.
• Player-level deviations are mostly not learnable from this slate: only 11/37 material deviations were supported by underlying season contact quality.

Single safest next action

Repair and verify the probability-lineage and immutable-audit contract before promotion, while starting a shadow implementation of independent simulation win-probability estimation. This addresses the only critical evidence defect and the strongest persistent process failure without overfitting the two-game loss pattern or disturbing the balanced pitcher and recent/season weighting tradeoffs.