DraftKings MLB DFS Cheat Sheet For August 10: Projections, Ownership, And Stacks

DraftKings makes you answer the pitcher question twice, and on tonight's MLB DFS cheat sheet the field has already filled in both blanks the same way: Tarik Skubal (LAD) at 46.6% projected ownership, Reid Detmers (LAA) at 26.8%. Ten games on the Monday, August 10 main slate, first pitch 7:07 p.m. ET in Toronto, and the two-pitcher format means those two decisions carry more of your build than any bat you click. The Stokastic Sims agree with exactly one of the field's answers. What they do with the other one is the story of this board, and the loudest number on the whole sheet belongs to a hitter who bats against it. I will show you his row when we get to the leverage panel.

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

The Quick Answer

Pay for Tarik Skubal (21.9 projected DraftKings points, 46.6% ownership); the Sims lead their own exposure panel with him at 49.3%, so this is endorsed chalk. Spend your second pitcher slot on Michael Soroka (ARI), not Reid Detmers: 48.0% of the top-150 sim lineups against 20.6% ownership, a 27.4% leverage gap that is the biggest arm edge printed today. Then attack Detmers directly with the board's number one leverage play, Wyatt Langford (TEX) at 32.4%, inside a Texas Rangers five-stack. Tampa Bay at 14.0% is the top stack against a struggling Athletics lefty, and Baltimore at 12.7% draws the slate's most homer-prone arm. The full six-panel board, the case for each row, and a worked Langford build are below.

Today's Board: Ten Games, Six Panels

Every number in this article is pulled from tonight's free DraftKings cheat sheet, which the Stokastic Sims print fresh each day. Nothing here is a season-long ranking: the engine simulated this specific ten-game slate, with its specific pitchers and its own ownership distribution, and these six panels are what fell out.

Reading the panels takes four definitions. Proj FP is a median projection in DraftKings scoring. Own% is what share of the field the engine expects on each player. Value divides projected points by salary, per $1K. Top-150 exposure counts how often a player shows up in the 150 highest sim-ROI lineups, and Lev% subtracts field ownership from that optimal exposure; positive gaps are the whole reason to enter a tournament, as the tournament strategy guide lays out.

Notice what the projection panel is made of: all five leaders are arms, which is what a two-pitcher site does to a board. The engine has also already picked which of those arms it wants to double, and the tell is the exposure panel's second row, where Michael Soroka shows up in 48.0% of the best sim lineups against just 20.6% ownership.

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The First Pitcher Slot Is Already Solved

On DraftKings you roster two pitchers and eight hitters, so pitching carries roughly double the roster weight it does on a one-arm site, and the scoring leans the same direction: 2.25 points per inning and 2 per strikeout reward exactly one profile, the high-strikeout starter who works deep. Skubal is that profile at its ceiling. A 2.81 ERA and 0.92 WHIP with 122 strikeouts against 16 walks in 102.2 innings, at home for the Dodgers against Kansas City. The field's 46.6% is heavy, but the Sims' own pool carries him at 49.3%, slightly above the crowd. When the engine holds the chalk at or above its ownership, that is the sheet telling you not to get clever. Skubal is the SP1 in cash and in most of my tournament builds, and the MLB DFS Sims guide covers why an endorsed favorite is a different animal from a faded one.

The second slot is where Monday's slate is actually decided, because the field's answer and the engine's answer split.

Slot Two Splits The Room: Soroka Over Detmers

The field's SP2 is Detmers at 26.8%, and the surface case is fine: second in projection at 18.6, a 10.47 K/9 that nearly matches Skubal's rate, hosting Texas at 9:38 p.m. ET. But he is the only one of the top four projected arms missing from the exposure panel, which means his top-150 exposure sits somewhere below Yandy Díaz (TB) 37.3% cutoff. The sheet does not print the exact number. What it prints instead is louder, and it is two Rangers on the leverage panel.

The arm the Sims actually double is Soroka: third in projection at 18.0, 48.0% exposure, 27.4% leverage. Arizona's righty carries a 3.07 ERA and gives up just 0.66 home runs per nine, and tonight he draws the Rockies away from Coors at Chase Field. Colorado remains the matchup every pitcher wants once the altitude is gone. MacKenzie Gore (TEX) is the board's other quiet overweight: 41.3% exposure against 22.2% ownership, third in both, a step behind Soroka's gap but still nearly double the field's read on him, facing the Angels as Detmers' opposite number. Logan Henderson (MIL) is the punt the panel respects at 14.8 projected points, a second-year righty with a 2.70 ERA and 11.16 K/9 taking the ball in San Diego. Full pitcher projections and ownership for all ten games live in the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub.

Tonight's pitcher call: Skubal plus Soroka is the Sims' pairing, at combined ownership the field will not replicate. Skubal plus Detmers is the field's pairing, and it concedes the biggest leverage number on the board to everyone who read the next section.

The Leverage Panel Attacks The Field's Second Pitcher

Here is the number I promised in the opening. Wyatt Langford, 32.4% leverage, a gap no other row on tonight's sheet comes near, built from 40.0% top-150 exposure against a projected ownership you can back out to roughly 8%. Langford is a right-handed bat who keeps essentially his full .479 slugging mark when a lefty is on the mound (.467 against them this season), and the lefty he faces tonight is Reid Detmers, the same arm 26.8% of the field is rostering. Jake Burger (TEX) closes the panel at 19.1% leverage and makes it a theme: he slugs .489 against lefties, comfortably ahead of his overall .417 mark. The Sims are not neutral on the Angels' starter. They are betting against him with Rangers, and the Texas five-stack at 10.0% is the shape that bet takes.

That creates the one pairing rule that matters tonight: never put Detmers in front of Texas bats. A Langford stack cashes by knocking out the pitcher a quarter of the field is paying for, which is exactly the kind of correlated, field-beating position the correlation strategy guide is about. Run Texas with Gore, their own starter, or with the Skubal-Soroka pairing, and let the field's SP2 be your stack's target rather than your roster's anchor.

The Stack Board: Tampa Bay Leads, Baltimore Brings The Outlier

DraftKings allows five batters from one team, which is why this sheet prints five-stacks and why the classic DraftKings tournament build is a five-man primary plus a three-man mini. The board's top primary is Tampa Bay at 14.0%, and the case reads clean:

• The Opposing Arm: Jacob Lopez (ATH), a lefty at a 5.64 ERA and 1.63 WHIP, 43 walks in 75 innings, 1.56 homers allowed per nine. Walks plus fly balls is the profile stacks feed on.
• The Platoon Fit: the Rays' core takes him on from the right side. Junior Caminero (TB) is a .278 hitter with 33 homers and a .546 slug, fourth in leverage at 20.4%; Yandy Diaz bats .298 and is the only hitter to crack both the ownership and exposure panels; Carson Williams (TB), the value panel's top row, swings righty as well.
• The Caveat: Sutter Health Park in Sacramento trims home runs a touch, so you are stacking against the pitcher here, not renting the ballpark.

One row down sits the matchup I would argue is better than the ranking it got. Baltimore at 12.7% draws Minnesota's Dean Kremer, who has allowed 2.63 homers per nine with a 5.93 ERA in 41 innings this season, the most homer-prone arm this sheet puts in front of any stack. Two Orioles on the value panel are the echo of that number: Colton Cowser (BAL) at 2.86, a lefty swinging with the platoon edge, and Tyler O'Neill (BAL) at 2.79 with ten homers in 222 plate appearances. Cheap power pointed at the sheet's most generous home-run matchup, at 12.7% field usage, is the row I keep coming back to tonight.

Arizona at 6.7% is the quiet way to double a game: stack the Diamondbacks against Colorado's Gabriel Hughes while Soroka pitches the other half, one ticket on Arizona winning big from both sides. And the Angels at 4.7% are the counter-stack on the Detmers game; just keep them out of any build that rosters Gore, for the same reason Texas stays away from Detmers. Which side of that game you stack is a fork: the Sims lean Texas by a wide margin, and the callback is the ownership panel, where the field's money sits on the arms in that game rather than the bats.

The Value Panel Is A Salary Column, Not A Rankings List

Value is projected points per $1K of salary, and at the bottom of the salary pool the denominator does most of the work, so read this panel for roles, not talent. Carson Williams leads at 3.33 while hitting .091 through 36 plate appearances with zero homers. What that row actually communicates: a near-minimum shortstop on the one team the engine most wants stacked, whose real job is paying for the second premium arm a two-pitcher site forces you to buy. Inside a Rays five-stack that job matters; as a one-off it does not exist. Apply the same discipline to Toronto's Brett Bateman at 2.81 and Minnesota's Kaelen Culpepper at 2.79, both of whom debuted in the majors on August 7, three days before this slate. Neither the Blue Jays nor the Twins own a row on the stack panel, so those two are pure salary relief, and call-ups that fresh demand a confirmed lineup before you click them.

Cowser and O'Neill are the value plays with an actual argument attached, because their rows point at the Kremer matchup the stack panel already flagged. That overlap, value panel and stack panel agreeing on one game, is the panel-reading skill this sheet rewards, and it is a different skill from FanDuel's, where roster rules move the math; the FanDuel and DraftKings differences guide is the deeper read on why the same slate prints two different boards.

Worked Example: The Langford Build

Here is how one leverage row becomes an actual DraftKings roster. Langford: 40.0% exposure, 32.4% leverage, against a lefty he slugs .467 on.

1. Lock the two arms first: Skubal and Soroka. On a two-pitcher site the arms set the salary budget, so make the endorsed-chalk plus max-leverage decision before touching a bat. That pairing is first and second on the exposure panel for a reason.
2. Build the Texas five-stack around Langford. Langford and Burger are the two panel-named Rangers; fill the remaining three from the full stack order in the DataHub's MLB tables, keeping bats adjacent in the batting order. Five is the DraftKings cap, so this is the primary stack complete.
3. Add a three-man mini from the Kremer game. Cowser and O'Neill plus a third Oriole gives the build its power insurance against the slate's most homer-prone arm, and both come cheap enough to fit behind two premium pitchers.
4. Check the conflict map before you save. No Detmers anywhere near this build, and no Angels bats either, since Gore-against-LAA is not our position; the stack already bets the Texas side of that game.
5. Recheck the batting orders before the 7:07 p.m. ET lock. Monday rest days are real, and the thinner your player's track record, the less promised his spot: Bateman and Culpepper are three days into their careers, and Williams is a second-year bat hitting .091. Nothing on this page survives a scratch.

None of this analysis is possible from a static projection list. The Sims produce these panels by playing the August 10 slate tens of thousands of times with correlation built in, so when Langford doubles, the sim knows Burger is more likely to be standing on base. Stokastic's Ownership Projections feed the same engine as a distribution, not a point estimate, and that is the machinery under the leverage column; the exposure panel simply reports the 150 lineups that came out of it with the best simulated ROI, with Boom/Bust marking which plays got there on ceiling versus floor. All of that lives in the paid Stokastic MLB DFS packages. The cheat sheet is the free daily excerpt, and no code touches it because it costs nothing; CHEAT is for the tools underneath, 15% off your first week or month.

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FAQ: August 10 Slate Questions

Is Tarik Skubal worth 46.6% ownership on DraftKings tonight? Yes, and this is the rare chalk the Sims hold above its ownership. On a two-pitcher site the differentiation should come from your SP2 and your stacks, not from fading a 2.81-ERA arm the engine itself plays in half its pool.

Who should I stack on the August 10 slate? Tampa Bay at 14.0% is the top board against Jacob Lopez's 1.63 WHIP, Baltimore at 12.7% gets the most lopsided matchup stat this sheet points at in Kremer's 2.63 HR/9, and Texas at 10.0% is the leverage stack built around Langford. My tournament answer is Texas primary with a Baltimore mini; my safer answer flips those two.

Which pitcher is the leverage play tonight? Soroka, the only pitcher the leverage panel lists, at 27.4%. Henderson at 14.8 projected points is the deeper cut for large-field entries, an 11.16 K/9 arm the field is barely touching.

Should I play Reid Detmers at all? In builds without Rangers, he is defensible; second in projection is real. But the sheet spends its top leverage row betting against him, so I only roster Detmers where I have consciously taken the other side of that argument, and never alongside Texas bats.

Where I Land On The August 10 Slate

Monday's board makes one argument from six panels: the field has answered the two-pitcher question with the two most obvious names, and only the first answer survives the simulation. My builds pay for Skubal, pivot the second slot to Soroka, and spend the savings betting Rangers against the arm the field chose instead, with the Rays and Orioles carrying the stack rows behind them. Be clear-eyed about the failure mode, though: my SP2 pivot and my leverage stack are correlated bets on the same opinion, so a vintage Detmers start sinks both at once. That is what taking 32 points of leverage on one bat commits you to. If it hits, the quarter of the field that rostered him is buried; if it misses, I am. You must be 21+ to play. This page covers August 10 only; tomorrow's slate gets its own board and deserves its own read.