MLB DFS Afternoon Slate Picks: Top Plays, Stacks & Values

Small slates are where chalk gets dangerous. The DraftKings afternoon board on June 21 is just three games (Mariners at Red Sox, Orioles at Dodgers, Angels at Athletics), and on a board this tight the field piles onto the same two or three names. That is exactly the spot where the Stokastic MLB Sims earn their keep: every projected point, projected ownership figure, and stack below comes straight out of the simulations, and the edge on a six-team slate is almost always knowing which chalk to keep and which to leave behind.

In Summary

• Top pitcher: Logan Gilbert (SEA, $9,500) projects for a slate-best 19.2 points, but at 53.3% projected ownership he is the chalk everyone will share.
• The leverage arm: Reid Detmers (LAA, $8,700) projects 16.9 at just 36.8% owned, and Jack Perkins (ATH, $5,300) is a 15.1-point punt at $5,300 that frees real salary for bats.
• The headline stack: the Dodgers, at home against Brandon Young, post the top team total on the board (47.7 projected points across their top five) and Young draws only 8.3% ownership for a reason.
• Best value bat: Jo Adell (LAA, $4,100) projects 8.6 points, the rare sub-$4,500 bat with stack-anchor upside.
• The read: keep one ace, get different on the second arm and inside the Dodgers stack, and in tournaments let the Contest Sims build the GPP pool around win probability (for cash, build the highest-floor lineup straight off the projections instead).

Pitching: One Ace, Then Get Different

Logan Gilbert is the obvious arm. At $9,500 he carries the highest projection on the slate at 19.2 points against a Red Sox lineup, and the Sims have him in more than half the optimal builds. There is nothing wrong with rostering him. The problem is that 53.3% projected ownership means half the field has the exact same anchor, so Gilbert alone does not move you up the standings. He keeps pace; he does not create separation.

That is why the second pitcher slot is where this slate is won. Two ways to get off the crowd:

• Pay down to Reid Detmers ($8,700). He projects 16.9 points against the Athletics, less than two points behind Gilbert, at 36.8% ownership. Nearly the same projection, roughly two-thirds the ownership. On a three-game slate that is the cleanest leverage on the board.
• Punt to Jack Perkins ($5,300). Perkins projects 15.1 points at $5,300 and 24.8% ownership. Rostering a cheap arm with a real projection is how you afford to pay up for the Dodgers bats below without gutting the rest of your lineup.

Emmet Sheehan ($7,800, 18.0 projected) is the other legitimate top arm, but at 42.8% ownership he is closer to a second piece of chalk than a pivot. The shape I want in a tournament is one of the studs plus the cheaper, lower-owned arm, not two popular pitchers I share with the field.

Today's Top Projected Plays

Here is the top of the board by Sims projection, with salary and projected ownership. Read it the way I do: projection tells you the ceiling, ownership tells you how much of that ceiling you actually get to keep.

Player	Team / Pos	Salary	Proj Pts	Proj Own
Logan Gilbert	SEA SP	$9,500	19.2	53.3%
Emmet Sheehan	LAD SP	$7,800	18.0	42.8%
Payton Tolle	BOS SP	$8,900	17.0	34.0%
Reid Detmers	LAA SP	$8,700	16.9	36.8%
Jack Perkins	ATH RP	$5,300	15.1	24.8%
Shohei Ohtani	LAD 1B/OF	$6,800	12.6	46.6%
Zach Neto	LAA SS	$5,600	9.8	27.5%
Kyle Tucker	LAD OF	$5,100	9.2	24.5%
Nick Kurtz	ATH 1B	$6,400	9.1	18.9%
Freddie Freeman	LAD 1B	$5,300	9.1	19.4%

Shohei Ohtani is the one bat with pitcher-level projection, and at 46.6% ownership he is the position-player equivalent of Gilbert: a fine play that the whole field already has. Kyle Tucker at $5,100 and Freddie Freeman at $5,300 are the more interesting Dodgers, because they bring most of Ohtani's matchup at less than half the ownership.

The Top Stack: Dodgers Against Brandon Young

The single best offensive spot on the slate is the Dodgers at home. Their top five bats project for 47.7 points combined, the highest team total on the board, and the reason is the man on the mound for Baltimore. Brandon Young projects just 9.6 points and draws only 8.3% ownership, the lowest of any starter here, which is the Sims' way of telling you the model expects the Dodgers to do damage.

The Dodgers core, with exact DraftKings salaries:

Dodgers bat	Pos	Salary	Proj Pts	Proj Own
Shohei Ohtani	1B/OF	$6,800	12.6	46.6%
Kyle Tucker	OF	$5,100	9.2	24.5%
Freddie Freeman	1B	$5,300	9.1	19.4%
Andy Pages	OF	$5,500	8.8	22.6%
Mookie Betts	SS	$4,900	8.0	23.3%
Max Muncy	3B	$4,800	8.0	24.2%

The stacking decision here is less about whether to roster the Dodgers and more about how to build the stack so it does not look like everyone else's. Ohtani will be in most Dodgers stacks by default. If you want the same matchup with leverage, anchor on the cheaper bats: a Tucker, Freeman, Betts, Muncy four-stack costs $20,100 and carries materially lower ownership than the Ohtani-led version, which is the kind of contrarian angle that pays off when the chalk stack busts.

Other Stacks Worth a Look

A three-game slate does not give you many secondary stacks, but two are live:

• Athletics bats vs. LAA's Reid Detmers (40.0 projected). Nick Kurtz ($6,400, 9.1), Zack Gelof ($5,200, 8.3), Jacob Wilson ($3,800, 7.9), and Tyler Soderstrom ($5,700, 7.6) form a mid-priced group. Note this is the contrarian side of the matchup, since Detmers is a strong arm, so it is a tournament-only stack. Gelof's 33.1% ownership is high for the price, so Kurtz and Wilson are the lower-owned ways in.
• Angels (39.7 projected). Zach Neto ($5,600, 9.8) is the anchor, with Jo Adell ($4,100, 8.6) and Nolan Schanuel ($3,000, 7.5) giving you a cheap path to a second stack if you spend up on pitching.

I would treat the Dodgers as the primary stack in almost every tournament build and use one of these two as the secondary three- or four-man group, rather than splitting evenly across both sides of a game.

Value Bats to Round Out Your Lineup

The cheap bats are what let you fit a Gilbert or a full Dodgers stack. These are the values the projections like, with their projected ownership low enough to matter:

• Jo Adell (LAA OF, $4,100) projects 8.6 points, the best raw projection of any bat under $4,500 on the slate.
• Jacob Wilson (ATH SS, $3,800) projects 7.9 at 16.0% ownership, a near-punt price for a near-league-average projection.
• Nolan Schanuel (LAA 1B, $3,000) projects 7.5 at only 10.5% owned, the cheapest real bat on the board.
• Ceddanne Rafaela (BOS OF, $3,900) projects 7.2 and gives you exposure to the one offense not already in a popular stack.

Want the projections and ownership behind every play above on your own screen? The Stokastic MLB Sims simulate the full slate tens of thousands of times to produce the projected points, projected ownership, and Top Stacks this article is built on, then let you build lineups around win probability instead of one projected score. New users get a free 7-day trial, and code MLBDFS10 takes 10% off any Stokastic+ subscription. You can also run a slate first on the free Sims tier.

A Worked Example: How I'd Build the Afternoon Slate

Here is the process I run on a small slate like this, grounded in the numbers above. The point is the logic, not the exact roster, because your contest size should change the build.

1. Pick one ace, not two. I lock Gilbert ($9,500) in cash for the floor, but in a tournament I lean Detmers ($8,700) or Perkins ($5,300) so I am not sharing both arms with the field.
2. Anchor the Dodgers stack. Four to five bats against Brandon Young. For cash I want the highest-floor version (Ohtani, Freeman, Betts); for a GPP I shade toward the lower-owned configuration (Tucker, Freeman, Muncy, Betts) to get off the Ohtani chalk.
3. Fill with value. Adell ($4,100), Wilson ($3,800), and Schanuel ($3,000) open up the salary to afford the pitching and the stack at once.
4. Build the tournament pool in the Contest Sims, the cash lineup off the projections. For GPPs, take that core into the Contest Sims, set your exposures, and let the simulations construct the tournament pool around win probability across thousands of contest runs, with the batting-order correlation inside a stack handled for you. For cash games, skip the contest pool and build the single highest-floor lineup straight off the projections, because cash is about beating half the field rather than differentiating from it.

One reminder that the Sims drill into every slate: a small board is high variance, and the best pre-lock lineup can still finish near the bottom. Build for the long run, size your entries sensibly, and check the Live Before Lock read for any late lineup news before the 4:05 p.m. ET lock. The cash build and the tournament build should not be the same lineup.

FAQ

Who is the top projected pitcher on the afternoon slate? Logan Gilbert (SEA, $9,500) leads at 19.2 projected points by our Sims, but at 53.3% projected ownership he is the chalk. Reid Detmers ($8,700, 16.9) is the lower-owned pivot at 36.8%.

Who is the best stack on the afternoon slate? The Dodgers, at home against Brandon Young, post the top team total at 47.7 projected points across their top five bats. Young's 8.3% projected ownership is the lowest of any starter, which is the Sims flagging the matchup.

Who is the best value bat on the afternoon slate? Jo Adell (LAA, $4,100) projects 8.6 points, the best projection of any bat under $4,500. Jacob Wilson ($3,800) and Nolan Schanuel ($3,000) are the cheaper punts that open up salary for the stack.

Start Building With the Sims

Every number in this article, the projections, projected ownership, and Top Stacks, came out of the Stokastic MLB Sims in a couple of minutes, and they will do the same for your afternoon slate. Use code MLBDFS10 for 10% off any weekly, monthly, or All-Access Stokastic+ subscription, with the discount already applied at checkout: Start with the Stokastic MLB Sims. Want to try before you subscribe? The free Sims tier lets you run a slate first.