MLB DFS Live Before Lock: June 18 Picks Recap

This is a recap of our June 18 MLB DFS Live Before Lock show. The slate it covers has already locked, so treat what follows as a record of how we read a tricky four-game board, not as live advice for tonight. If you want the same reads on the next slate, the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims run the exact process you'll see below. We covered a tiny four-game night slate with nuclear weather, almost no clean pitching, and most of the edge hiding in non-standard stacks. Here's everything we walked through.

In Summary

• Four-game night slate, brutal weather. Yankee Stadium and Sutter Health Park both had the wind howling out around 24 mph in 80-to-90-degree heat, and Citizens Bank Park projected nuclear too. The takeaway we kept coming back to: this was a board to mix in three- and four-man stacks, not just the usual five-man builds.
• Top pitcher: Gage Jump (DraftKings $7,800, FanDuel $10,000) for the Athletics against the Angels, on the strength of his slider-changeup combo and a 5.5-strikeout prop sitting around even money. Mike Trout landing on the IL right before lock only helped the spot.
• Leverage pitcher: Sean Manaea (DraftKings $6,500) for the Mets into a Phillies lineup stacked with left-handed bats, at muted ownership in a scary park.
• The chalk: Ryan Weathers (DraftKings ~45% projected ownership) for the Yankees against the White Sox; we played him, just under the field.
• Pitchers we faded: José Soriano (over-owned near 30%), Noah Cameron into a contact-heavy Cardinals lineup, and Sean Burke pitching behind an opener.
• Stacks that mattered: White Sox five-mans, a heavy lean into the Yankees, and a Cardinals group full of low-strikeout bats.

Watch the Video

Eric Lindquist hosted this MLB DFS Live Before Lock and built the slate live in the Stokastic Sims. The full 40-minute show is embedded above if you want the screen-share of every pitcher read and stack as it happened.

Watch on YouTube

Why This Slate Played Differently

Most nights we want a big board so we can sort through five-man stacks and hunt for leverage across a dozen games. This was the opposite: four games, eight starting pitchers, and a lot of roster overlap. With that little to work with, the read was to lean into other stack types, three- and four-man groups and individual one-off bats, rather than forcing five-mans everywhere.

The weather forced the issue. Three of the four parks projected as launching pads: Yankee Stadium with the wind blowing straight out around 24 mph in 90-degree heat (the best park in baseball for left-handed power), Sutter Health Park for the Angels-Athletics game with wind out near 13 mph, and Citizens Bank Park for Mets-Phillies. Even Kauffman Stadium, normally a tougher home-run park, projected to play up with the wind crossing out toward the fences. When the parks are this hot, runs come from everywhere, which is exactly why the leverage lived in unusual stack constructions instead of the obvious chalk.

Pitching: One Arm to Build Around

On a four-game slate there are only a handful of starters worth discussing, and one stood out clearly.

Gage Jump (Athletics, DraftKings $7,800 / FanDuel $10,000) was the top pitcher on the board for us. He throws a slider that pairs off a changeup with close to a 50% whiff rate, and his strikeout prop sat at 5.5 around even money (it had moved to roughly plus-122 on DraftKings sportsbook pricing in the lead-up). The matchup against the Angels graded well for strikeouts, and the Angels lost Mike Trout to the IL about 20 minutes before lock, which softened the lineup further. The Sims agreed with the read, so he was the one arm in essentially every build.

Ryan Weathers (Yankees) was the chalk, projecting around 45% ownership on DraftKings as the highest-projected pitcher against a White Sox lineup. We played him, just under the field rather than fading him. He's a capable arm in a difficult spot, and we liked stacking the White Sox bats against him at the same time.

Sean Manaea (Mets, DraftKings $6,500) was the leverage arm. The Phillies sent four left-handed bats out in their top seven, and Manaea has consistently posted strikeout rates in the high-20s to 30% against lefties across his career. Citizens Bank Park is dangerous and his ownership was muted near 23%, exactly the combination that makes a pitcher a tournament leverage play: real strikeout upside that the field is scared to roster.

Pitcher	Team	DK salary	Our take
Gage Jump	Athletics	$7,800	Top play; slider-changeup whiffs, soft Angels lineup
Ryan Weathers	Yankees	—	The chalk (~45%); played, just under the field
Sean Manaea	Mets	$6,500	Leverage; K upside vs lefty Phillies at low ownership
José Soriano	Angels	—	Fade; over-owned near 30%, undercut hard
Noah Cameron	Royals	—	Fade; contact-heavy Cardinals lineup
Sean Burke	White Sox	—	Fade; pitching behind an opener

We faded José Soriano heading toward 30% ownership, undercutting the field hard and treating him as the spot to pivot off of. Noah Cameron was a clear fade into a Cardinals lineup full of low-strikeout bats, and Sean Burke pitching behind an opener was the least interesting arm on the board, especially for FanDuel scoring where the quality start was off the table.

Build the slate yourself with our tools. New to Stokastic? The Stokastic MLB DFS Sims simulate the full contest tens of thousands of times, so you find the lineups that win money instead of just the highest-projected build, and the projections and ownership numbers behind every read above come from the same place. Code PERFECT25 takes 25% off your first month of Stokastic+ MLB: Start with PERFECT25.

Stacks and Bats: Where the Real Edge Lived

With the parks this hot, the bats were the point of the slate. We leaned on a few groups.

The Yankees were a heavy lean against the White Sox in the best left-handed power park in the game. Jazz Chisholm, Jasson Domínguez, Cody Bellinger, Ryan McMahon, and Ben Rice all stood out, and Spencer Jones at just $2,100 was the salary-saver that made several builds fit. Ben Rice was the standout one-off home-run play of the night, priced around plus-245 to plus-270 to go deep and still close to positive expected value at that number.

On the other side of the Ryan Weathers spot, the White Sox were the backbone of most of our five-man builds. Colson Montgomery was a favorite, and Miguel Vargas profiled well against a right-handed arm. We also liked stacking three of them into six-man groups across builds. (If you want the full case for why correlated team stacks beat scattered bats, see our MLB DFS stacking guide.)

The Cardinals were a stack we returned to against the left-handed Noah Cameron, leaning on their low-strikeout bats: Alec Burleson (a sub-10% strikeout rate against lefties with real power), Jordan Walker, and Iván Herrera. On the Athletics side, Zack Gelof leading off carried a long hitting streak, with Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Tyler Soderstrom, and Jacob Wilson all in the mix.

For one-off bats, Randal Grichuk was a favorite leverage play with a low break-even number, and Bobby Witt Jr. was a strong tournament shortstop play that the Sims kept surfacing. This kind of low-ownership, high-upside hunting is the same idea we lay out in our MLB DFS contrarian strategy breakdown.

How We Built It: A Worked Example

This was a 20-max and single-entry build, not a 150-max night, because the small slate created too much overlap to spread out safely. The process on the show was the standard Stokastic approach: build the full player pool, let the Contest Sims find the top lineups, then nudge exposure toward the leverage spots (more Gage Jump, more Manaea, a touch under the field on Ryan Weathers).

Concretely, a representative single-entry build paired Gage Jump on the mound with a Yankees core, Ben Rice, Jasson Domínguez, and Spencer Jones at $2,100 to open up salary, then filled around it with Bobby Witt Jr. at shortstop and a White Sox bat or two for the leverage off Ryan Weathers. The Sims kept surfacing that shape over the chalkier all-Yankees five-man, which is exactly the leverage we were after on a four-game board. For more on reading a slate like this from scratch, see our June 18 MLB DFS picks writeup.

Late news mattered, too. Trout's IL move came in minutes before lock and forced a re-run of the Sims and a rebuild of the lineups that had rostered him, a reminder that checking confirmed lineups and late swap right up to lock is the highest-value thing you can do in-slate. None of this is a promise of a result; MLB DFS is high-variance, and even the best pre-lock build can finish near the bottom. The point of the process is putting yourself in the best long-run spots and managing your bankroll around the swings.

FAQ

Who was the top pitcher on the June 18 slate? Gage Jump of the Athletics (DraftKings $7,800, FanDuel $10,000) against the Angels, on the back of his slider-changeup combo and a 5.5-strikeout prop near even money. Mike Trout's late scratch made the spot even better.

Who was the chalk pitcher, and did we play him? Ryan Weathers of the Yankees, projecting around 45% ownership against the White Sox. We played him, just slightly under the field, rather than fading the highest-projected arm outright.

What stacks did we like most? The Yankees against the White Sox in Yankee Stadium's left-handed power environment, White Sox five-mans against Ryan Weathers, and a low-strikeout Cardinals group against Noah Cameron.

Are these picks still live? No. This is a recap of an MLB DFS Live Before Lock show whose slate has already locked. Use it to see how we read the board, then run the next slate through the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims.

Run the Next Slate With the Sims

Stokastic+ MLB is the toolkit behind every read above: the Sims build and simulate your DraftKings and FanDuel lineups tens of thousands of times, the projections and ownership numbers drive the leverage calls, and Live Before Lock walks the slate with you before lock each day. Code PERFECT25 takes 25% off your first month of Stokastic+ MLB. Start with PERFECT25.