DraftKings MLB DFS Cheat Sheet: Aug. 25 Picks And Stacks

Today's free MLB DFS cheat sheet has one player at the top of four different panels. Gavin Williams leads projections, ownership, top-150 exposure and leverage on the August 25 DraftKings slate, beating every hitter on the last two. The most-owned player is rarely also the top leverage play, and tonight he is, so the tournament comes down to the second arm and the bats, where a lefty in Sacramento decides my stack.

The Quick Answer

Play Gavin Williams at 42.2% ownership anyway: the Sims put him in 80.0% of the top-150 Sim ROI lineups, a 37.8% leverage gap, and no other player's leverage clears 31% (Byron Buxton is next at 30.2%). The second arm is Matthew Liberatore if St. Louis posts him (no Cardinals starter is listed yet; he last pitched Aug. 19), and the bats are five Twins against Athletics lefty Gage Jump. The top-five board and the Twins build are below.

Today's Board

Every panel comes out of the Stokastic Sims, which run this slate tens of thousands of times; 5-Stack% is how often the Sims build that team's five-batter stack.

The player who complicates my second pitcher is Carlos Narvaez. The Orioles catcher is second in value at 2.92, Baltimore is the third 5-stack at 8.0%, and both would face Liberatore, the Sims' favorite second arm. Every run Narvaez drives in comes out of Liberatore's line, so he is my catcher only when I pivot to deGrom.

Two Pitchers, One Obvious And One Under-Owned

DraftKings rosters two pitchers. Williams's 11.7 strikeouts per nine (11 punchouts on Aug. 20) make him my first pitcher in nearly every build, his 22.2 projection nearly four clear of deGrom, who projects 18.4 at 22.5% ownership with 26.0% exposure, no edge either way. Liberatore is the pivot: 13.5% owned, 37.3% of the pool. That number is only usable if the Cardinals confirm him, so check at lock in the two-pitcher format or fall back to deGrom.

More on this:

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Worked Example: Five Twins Against Jump

I take Byron Buxton's row, 42.0% top-150 exposure against 30.2% leverage, and walk it to a build:

1. Start with Williams; add Liberatore once confirmed, deGrom if not.
2. Stack five Twins. Buxton, Luke Keaschall (27.4% leverage) and Kaelen Culpepper (17.2%) are the core, all right-handed against Jump, who has 88 strikeouts and 40 walks in 82 innings: he misses bats, but the traffic is there. Minnesota is the board's top stack at 12.7% and I still take it, because one rally pays every slot; the last two Twins are where I get off the field's version, and with outfield, shortstop, second base and catcher filled below, they are whoever Minnesota posts at first and third, checked against the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub.
3. Add a Giants mini. Nate Furman (3.10, the slate's top value) and Turner Hill (2.78) are left-handed bats against Reds righty Brady Singer. If DraftKings lists Keaschall at outfield (46 outfield starts this year), he slides over and Furman, a second baseman, holds that spot; check both positions at lock.
4. Austin Wells is the catcher, not a Yankees stack. Wells at 2.84 faces Ethan Pecko, who has one big-league start. The 8.7% NYY stack is real, but five Twins and two Giants leave it no room, so Wells comes alone.

The Sims build the stack together, not bat by bat: ownership projections enter as a distribution, a Twins rally scores the whole stack at once, and the top-150 ROI pool ranks what survives; that 37.8% Williams gap is the pool talking. The cheat sheet stays free; code CHEAT takes 15% off your first week or month of the paid Stokastic MLB packages the Sims live in.

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