FanDuel MLB DFS Cheat Sheet For August 19: Projections, Ownership, And Stacks

Tonight's free FanDuel MLB DFS cheat sheet says the August 19 field is on the right names, just not hard enough. Shohei Ohtani is the board's most-owned player and its biggest leverage play, and I will walk that row into a full roster below.

The Quick Answer

Play Ohtani at Coors above the field: the Stokastic Sims put him in 58.0% of top-150 lineups against 32.0% projected ownership, the widest leverage gap on the board. Parker Messick (34.13 Proj FP) is pitcher chalk still worth eating, the Dodgers lead the 4-stacks at 20.7%, and Junior Caminero and Bobby Witt Jr. are the pivots. The build is below.

Today's Board For August 19

The Sims play this slate tens of thousands of times with correlation intact, Stokastic's Ownership Projections enter as a distribution, and Exp% is the top-150 slice of the ROI-ranked lineup pool (Lev% = Exp% minus Own%). Top three per panel, in the board's own order:

The exposure row is the loudest: Ohtani's 58.0% sits more than 20 points clear of anyone else on a night every projection leader is a starting pitcher — so solve the pitcher slot first.

The Pitcher Slot Decides The Build

FanDuel rosters one pitcher, so the arm carries most of a lineup's variance. Messick (Cleveland, at home against San Francisco) pairs the board's top projection with 22.9% ownership and still shows +6.1% leverage: the field is right, just light. Logan Gilbert (33.97) misses the ownership panel and shares the Milwaukee game with Dustin May (28.99); one slot means picking a side. Matt Wilkinson, the Giants' arm opposite Messick, leads the value panel at 4.50 with 18.7% exposure, the Sims' way of funding bats with the cheap arm.

Fund them toward Coors. The Dodgers' 20.7% doubles second-place Tampa Bay, with Andy Pages (+6.9% leverage), Mookie Betts, and Tommy Edman crowding the ownership panel behind Ohtani and Messick. FanDuel caps stacks at four batters and gives you one arm instead of two to separate with, which shrinks the payoff for fading chalk, a core FanDuel-versus-DraftKings difference. Out-own the field in the obvious game, then differentiate with the freed slots: Caminero (+21.1%, against Max Scherzer) and Witt (+20.9%) are the one-off bats, and the full builds live in the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub.

More on this: MLB DFS Hub: Every Live Stokastic MLB Page · FanDuel MLB DFS Cheat Sheet: Projections, Ownership & Stacks · DraftKings MLB DFS Cheat Sheet: Projections, Ownership & Stacks For August 3 · FanDuel NFL DFS Cheat Sheet: Week 1 Picks And Stacks · FanDuel MLB DFS Cheat Sheet: Sept. 15 Picks And Stacks

Worked Example: Ohtani To A Full Roster

1. Lock Ohtani, then finish the Dodgers 4-stack with Pages, Betts, and Edman, the correlated core the Sims build 20.7% of the time.
2. Give two open bat slots to a Rays mini-stack: Caminero plus Chandler Simpson (4.02 value, 20.0% Exp) against Scherzer.
3. Take Messick if salary allows, Wilkinson if not. Same game, either arm, and neither fights your bats, per the pairing logic in the MLB DFS Sims guide.
4. Spend the last two bat slots on one-off leverage, Witt (+20.9%) first, and confirm lineups at lock; a benched leverage bat scores zero.