FanDuel MLB DFS Cheat Sheet For August 4: Projections, Ownership, And Stacks

Tonight's FanDuel MLB DFS cheat sheet is the most concentrated board I've opened in weeks: eleven games on the main slate, first pitch 7:05 p.m. ET, and the same five names cycling through almost every panel. That concentration is the story of Tuesday, August 4. The Stokastic Sims keep landing on one park, one leverage bat, and a pitcher decision between two aces who are both wearing new uniforms. A slate like this doesn't reward running from the consensus. It rewards picking your spots inside it, and the sheet tells you exactly where those spots are. The loudest one involves altitude, and I'll get to it in the stack section.

Tarik Skubal — one of the featured players on today's slate.

The Quick Answer

For August 4 FanDuel lineups, the cheat sheet's headline plays are Tarik Skubal (37.14 projected FanDuel points, now in Dodger blue against the Cubs), Junior Caminero as the slate's top leverage bat (+28.7% Lev) and the Rays' four-stack at Coors Field as the top stack (16.0%). MacKenzie Gore is the field's favorite arm at 24.7% projected ownership, and the Sims still want more of him. The full panel-by-panel board, the Skubal-or-Gore decision, and the Coors worked example are below.

Tonight's Board At A Glance

Every number here is tonight's, straight from the free FanDuel cheat sheet the Stokastic Sims print each day. The Sims play the slate out tens of thousands of times with hitters modeled as correlated groups and ownership projected as a distribution, then rank the resulting lineup pool by simulated ROI.

Read across that table, not down it, and one thing jumps out: Gore shows up on five of the six panels, and Ohtani, Carroll, Caminero and Seager keep repeating right behind him. When the value, exposure and leverage panels agree on the same short list, the Sims are telling you the slate has a spine, and your edge comes from how you assemble it, not from avoiding it.

The Pitcher Decision: Skubal Or Gore

FanDuel rosters a single pitcher, so this is the one slot where you can't hedge, and tonight it's a true two-horse race. Tarik Skubal, making his home in the Dodgers' rotation now, leads the entire board at 37.14 projected FanDuel points against Javier Assad and the Cubs. MacKenzie Gore sits second at 33.94, starting for Texas at home against Blade Tidwell and the Giants.

Here's the wrinkle the sheet exposes: the field has made Gore the slate's biggest chalk at 24.7% projected ownership, while Skubal, the higher projection, sits at just 16.0%. And the Sims haven't blinked at Gore's popularity. He leads the top-150 exposure panel at 52.7%, meaning more than half of the 150 highest sim-ROI lineups still roster him, and he carries +27.3% leverage anyway. Chalk and leverage are not opposites; when the optimal number sits that far above even a 24.7% field, the crowd is under-invested, not over-invested.

My read: both arms are playable, and the honest separator is what you do with the rest of the roster. Skubal at 16.0% is the projection leader at a discount in popularity, which is rare. Gore is the arm the ROI-ranked pool keeps building around, and as I'll show below he unlocks a full arm-plus-stack double-up the Skubal side can't quite match. Behind them, Logan Henderson (32.04, Milwaukee against Pittsburgh), Ryan Weathers (30.58, now starting for the Yankees against St. Louis) and Joe Ryan (29.98, Minnesota at Kansas City) give the panel real depth if you'd rather spend down and load up on bats.

The sheet is the free printout — the Sims are the machine. The full Stokastic MLB Sims let you run tonight's slate yourself, control exposures, and build from the same ROI-ranked lineup pool these exposure numbers come from. Code CHEAT takes 15% off your first week or month of a Stokastic MLB DFS package.

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The Bats: Ohtani, Carroll And The Value Column

The ownership panel says the field's favorite hitter tonight is Shohei Ohtani at 20.6%, and for once the Sims agree with the crowd. Ohtani is second in value at 3.95 points per $1,000, third in top-150 exposure at 43.3%, and still carries +22.4% leverage. On FanDuel that convergence matters more than it would on DraftKings, because FanDuel's flatter hitter scoring (a walk pays 3 points, exactly what a single pays) compresses the gap between chalk and contrarian bats. You don't need to force an Ohtani fade to be different tonight; the four-batter stack cap and your one-off choices will separate you on their own. There's also a quiet correlation kicker: Ohtani and Skubal are teammates now, so an Ohtani-plus-Skubal pairing rises and falls with the same Dodgers win.

Corbin Carroll is the board's stealth play. He tops the value panel at 3.96, appears in 32.7% of the top-150 builds, holds +19.7% leverage, and the field is only at 12.3%. Arizona hosts San Diego and right-hander Randy Vásquez tonight, and the Diamondbacks' four-stack makes the stack panel at 8.7%, so Carroll is the rare bat you can play as chalk-quality equity at single-digit-adjacent ownership.

The rest of the value column is how you fund whichever ace you picked. Randal Grichuk (3.91) draws left-hander Patrick Sandoval in Boston, and the platoon case is real: Grichuk is hitting .284 with a .914 OPS and seven home runs against left-handed pitching this season, and Cal Raleigh (3.87) gets a Seattle home date against a Tigers starter who was still unannounced when the Sims ran. Value on FanDuel is what pays for the pitcher slot; those two are tonight's enablers, not the ceiling plays.

Leverage And The Coors Stack: The Caminero Read

Here's the payoff I promised in the opening. The Rays' four-stack against Colorado leads the stack panel at 16.0%, and that game is at Coors Field, the best hitting environment in baseball. Tampa Bay at altitude against Gabriel Hughes is exactly the kind of spot the Sims are built to find, because correlated bats rise and fall together and a Coors eruption scores in bunches.

Junior Caminero is the face of that read, and his row is tonight's worked example. Walk it across the panels: 17.3% projected ownership, 46.0% top-150 exposure, +28.7% leverage: the biggest leverage number on the entire slate. The Sims want Caminero in nearly half of their best builds while the field is set to roster him at well under half that rate. That gap is where tournaments are actually won.

So here's the roster decision that row makes for tonight, step by step:

1. Anchor the primary stack in Tampa Bay. FanDuel caps you at four batters per team, which is why this sheet prints a 4-stacks panel, and the Rays at 16.0% are the clear top build. Caminero is the required seat; the free sheet names the anchor, and the full board in the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub is where I fill the other three Rays seats rather than guessing.
2. Use the freed-up slots on a mini-stack. Four batters max means four hitter slots left after the primary. Texas at 8.0% is my favorite second story: Corey Seager is fourth in top-150 exposure at 34.7% with +22.8% leverage, and the Rangers' opponent is Blade Tidwell.
3. Pair the pitcher with the mini-stack. If you land on Gore at pitcher, your Texas bats and your arm now win together: the win bonus and the run support come from the same game script. That's the double-up Skubal builds can't replicate as cleanly, since the Dodgers' stack didn't crack tonight's panel; an Ohtani one-off gets a Skubal build part of the way there, but not the four-bat version.
4. Spend the last bat on leverage, not floor. Carroll at 12.3% ownership or an Ohtani one-off both fit; the stacking guide covers the 4-3-1 shape this produces, which is the standard FanDuel tournament build for a reason.

One honest caveat: a 16.0% stack rate is conviction, not a promise. Coors giveth and Coors taketh, the best sim-ROI lineup loses plenty of nights, and nothing here is a forecast of a final score. This is leverage analysis — where the field is light relative to what the simulations want — and it should be sized like it.

How To Read Tonight's Panels If You're New Here

One paragraph of translation, using tonight's own numbers. Proj FP is the median projected FanDuel score, so Skubal's 37.14 means half his simulated starts clear that bar. Own% is projected field ownership; Gore's 24.7% means roughly one lineup in four rosters him tonight. Value is projected points per $1,000 of salary, which is how Carroll's 3.96 crowns him the board's best price. Top-150 exposure (Exp%) is how often a player appears in the 150 highest sim-ROI lineups, the panel where Gore's 52.7% outruns even his chalky ownership. Lev% is optimal exposure minus field ownership, and Caminero's +28.7% is tonight's widest gap. The 4-stacks panel counts the team stacks the Sims build most often at FanDuel's four-batter cap, which is how Tampa Bay's 16.0% tops the board. Every term on the sheet also lives in the MLB DFS glossary, and the Sims walkthrough shows the full pre-lock routine. Lineups move all evening, so check the sheet again close to 7:05; the numbers here reflect the Sims' latest run as of writing.

FanDuel MLB DFS Cheat Sheet FAQ For August 4

Who Should I Stack On FanDuel Tonight?

Tampa Bay is the board's top four-stack at 16.0%, playing at Coors Field, with Junior Caminero (+28.7% leverage) as the anchor. Toronto against Hayden Wesneski (12.0%) and Minnesota against Kansas City (10.0%) are the next builds if you want to be different from the sheet's own chalk: the Twins stack pairs naturally with Joe Ryan, the same arm-plus-bats trick the Gore-Texas build runs.

Is MacKenzie Gore Worth His Ownership?

Per the Sims, yes. Even at 24.7% projected ownership, the highest number on tonight's board, Gore leads top-150 exposure at 52.7% and still shows +27.3% leverage, which means the optimal number sits well above what the field will roster. Chalk you're getting at a discount to optimal isn't really chalk.

Which Value Play Funds The Build?

Corbin Carroll tops the value panel at 3.96 points per $1,000 and is the best combination of price efficiency and upside on the board. Randal Grichuk (3.91, facing lefty Patrick Sandoval) and Cal Raleigh (3.87) are the purer salary-savers if you're paying all the way up for Skubal.

Should I Fade Shohei Ohtani At 20.6%?

Not on principle. FanDuel's flat scoring compresses the chalk-versus-contrarian gap, and Ohtani still carries +22.4% leverage despite being the field's top bat. If you roster Skubal, an Ohtani pairing adds same-team correlation for free.

The Bottom Line For Tonight's Slate

August 4 is a spine slate: Skubal or Gore in the one pitcher slot, Rays bats at altitude, and a short list of hitters the value, exposure and leverage panels all agree on. The free cheat sheet gives you tonight's anchors; the machine that produced it fills in everything else, from the other three Rays seats to your exposure caps across 150 entries. You can try the Sims free to see the ROI-ranked pool these numbers come from, and when you're ready for the full engine, code CHEAT takes 15% off your first week or month of a Stokastic MLB DFS package. Nothing on this page is a promised outcome; it's the same set of numbers I build my own entries from. 21+ only; play responsibly.

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