MLB DFS Live Before Lock Picks: June 25, 2026

Thursday's MLB DFS Live Before Lock was a sprint. Just six games on the main DraftKings slate, but a deep one at pitcher, and host Eric Lindquist spent the show working a single problem through the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims: the best pitcher on the board is also the most expensive and the most owned, so where do you get away from him? That tension is the slate. Here is how the Sims answered it.

In Summary

• Top Pitcher: Cam Schlittler. The host's highest-owned arm and the most likely 30-point game on the slate, drawing a thin Boston lineup with his stuff trending back up.
• The Chalk To Fade: Cristopher Sanchez ($11,500). Elite, but the most-owned pitcher on a small slate at a steep price, so the host trimmed him under 10% to create leverage.
• The Two Best Tournament Stacks: The Arizona Diamondbacks And The New York Yankees. They graded one-two in the Sims at nearly identical simulated ROI, and the host carried 37%-plus exposure to each.
• The FanDuel Value Arm: Freddy Peralta ($7,600). A broken price tag, with only one cheaper pitcher on the FanDuel slate.
• The Favorite Cheap One-Off: Curtis Mead. The host's preferred way to get Washington exposure without stacking into Sanchez.

Watch The Video

Watch the full six-game breakdown, including every pitcher and stack read straight out of the Sims, on Thursday's MLB DFS Live Before Lock. Watch on YouTube.

The Pitchers: Schlittler On Top, Sanchez As The Chalk Trap

Nobody on this board is a clean, must-play ace. The most-projected arm carries a price and an ownership tag that make him a trap, which is exactly why the host built the slate around getting off him.

Cam Schlittler · Top tier · Yankees @ Red Sox

The host's favorite arm and his highest-owned pitcher. The case is the matchup and the trend.

• Draws a Boston lineup the host called a sieve, with an especially weak bottom third (six through nine).
• The stuff is back: 105 Stuff+ over his last two starts after a dip earlier in the month, with the fastball velocity holding.
• Over the full season he sits at 111 Stuff+ and 114 Pitching+, third-best among the arms going Thursday.
• The most likely "30-burger" on the slate, and the host is getting him at lower ownership than Sanchez.

Cristopher Sanchez ($11,500) · Phillies vs. Nationals

One of the host's favorite pitchers in baseball, and the trap of the slate. His changeup is one of the best pitches in the sport, and he would be a Cy Young contender in most seasons. The problem is not the arm, it is the math.

• He is the most-owned pitcher on the slate, and on a six-game board that ownership concentrates hard in the Sims.
• At $11,500 he has to pay off the price, and he draws a Washington lineup at a 121 wRC+ that hits left-handed pitching. The game even carries an 8.5 total, a lot of respect for a Sanchez start.
• The host's response: trim him to under 10% exposure. He is still good; the bet is that the field is too concentrated on one expensive arm.

This is the read the Sims are built to make. Simulate the slate tens of thousands of times and you can see exactly where one chalk pitcher concentrates the field, then spread your own pitching across cheaper arms nobody is on. Get the same toolkit the show runs on for 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL.

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Below the top two, the value the Sims kept pushing toward:

Tatsuya Imai is the mid-price leverage arm against the chalk. He has a walk problem, but he is also unpopular on this slate, and that is the point: he is the host's second-highest exposure pitcher behind Schlittler, and the Schlittler-Imai pairing was his preferred single-entry pitching combo. Asked to choose between Imai and Peralta in one lineup, the host took Imai for the extra ceiling, though on FanDuel he still leans Peralta. If you want a refresher on building around ownership like this, our MLB DFS contrarian strategy guide walks through the framework.

FanDuel: Freddy Peralta Is The Whole Board

FanDuel prices this slate softer, and one arm stands out so far that the host was blunt about it: play Freddy Peralta ($7,600) in spades in tournaments. There is only one cheaper pitcher on the entire FanDuel slate, and his fantasy projection at that tag is a "broken price." He is not without risk, carrying a .473 wOBA to left-handers and leaning on his fastball more than half the time, but the changeup is still nasty, he is only around 16% owned, and the salary relief is too large to pass up. The host ran a sim in the background and landed near 35% exposure on him. The arms to skip on FanDuel: Kevin Gausman ($9,000), where the host sits below the field, and McGreevy, in whom he has zero interest.

The Stacks: Arizona And The Yankees, One-Two In The Sims

This is where the slate's leverage lives. The host's two favorite tournament stacks graded essentially even in the Sims, with simulated ROIs around 36.2 and 36.8, and he carried more than 37% exposure to each in his own builds. For the difference between a cash and a tournament build, our MLB DFS stacking guide is the deeper read.

Arizona Diamondbacks vs. McGreevy. The host's words: "Boy, do I like Arizona for tournaments." The Perfect Lineup crew (Josh Engelman and Loughy) geared their build toward Arizona too. One thing to confirm before lock: the lineup shifted between the morning and the afternoon, with Gabriel Moreno and Nolan Arenado both out of it, which pushes Adrian Del Castillo into the catcher mix. Corbin Carroll ($5,500) is a top one-off the host loves against McGreevy, and Ketel Marte is a bat he plays "every single day."

New York Yankees vs. the Red Sox. The host has been a steady Yankees tournament backer all month, and the Sims agree, projecting the Boston starter to "pay for his sins" in good hitting weather at Fenway. The bats in play start at first base, where he keeps rotating Ben Rice and Paul Goldschmidt ($4,300) — he leans Goldschmidt, who "all he does is hit bombs," but holds north of 8% Ben Rice for the leverage on a slate where first base is otherwise clobbered. From there: Austin Wells (his highest-owned catcher behind Francisco Alvarez), Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm, and Jasson Dominguez, who the host noted can struggle against lefties but flashed power recently. He was torn between Arizona and the Yankees for his single-entry lineup.

Philadelphia Phillies vs. Cade Cavalli. Another heavier stand, mostly through the right-handed bats. The host is not playing Cavalli, whose knuckle curve plays up against lefties, with a .361 wOBA that has room to regress and a .166 expected ISO that says he has been getting lucky against righties. But he loves the Phillies bats against him. Kyle Schwarber is his favorite one-off on the entire slate, and the Schwarber plus Trea Turner ($5,400) two-man kept appearing in his builds alongside Alec Bohm.

The other stacks the host weighed:

• Texas Rangers against Kevin Gausman, headlined by Corey Seager and Wyatt Langford, two bats "the Sims are obsessed with." Langford is one of the host's favorite one-offs on the board.
• Toronto Blue Jays as a five-man stack against the Rangers: George Springer (popping as a one-off), Bo Bichette, Vlad Guerrero, Ernie Clement, and Alejandro Kirk to round it out. The host's rule of thumb on a six-plus game slate is to take the five-man over a partial stack plus a one-off, because the post-contest Sims reward the full correlation.
• St. Louis Cardinals, where Ivan Herrera, Wetherholt, and Jordan Walker are all pulling rising ownership, so the host expects the Cardinals to come in chalkier than projected.

One-Offs And Value

Fade Sanchez and you free up real salary, and the host's favorite place to spend it down was in Washington as one-offs rather than a full stack. Curtis Mead is the headliner: the host called him potentially the single best one-off on the slate, a guy "absolutely nobody is playing today." Dylan Crews is the other Nationals bat he is targeting, finally posting the numbers that let him stick in the order; the host held north of 10% of both. He passed on James Wood ($4,400) as a tougher path with too many outfield options, and CJ Abrams is out of the lineup, which deadens shortstop.

On the expensive side, Yordan Alvarez ($6,000) is the Astros one-off in play, though the host's Houston interest is light overall with a bullpen-adjacent game in the mix. He also singled out Jose Caballero as a one-off he loves for tournaments, where shortstop-outfield eligibility opens up lineup spots. Behind the plate, Francisco Alvarez of the Mets has homered in back-to-back games and is the host's top-projected catcher. For any DFS terms used throughout this recap, see our MLB DFS glossary.

The Through-Line: Sum Of The Lineup, Not The Best Pitcher

The whole show came back to one idea the Sims keep teaching: in DFS it is not price and probability, it is ownership and probability and the sum of the lineup. On the betting side the host actually likes the Phillies run line and is on the Detroit side, yet in DFS those reads invert, because what everyone else is doing matters as much as the matchup. Sanchez is good enough that the field will overload him, so the edge is being underweight there and reallocating to a Schlittler, a cheaper leverage arm, and a stack the field is light on. That is the leverage the Sims, Top Stacks, and Ownership projections are built to surface. The whole show was the host trusting that math over the temptation to just roster the best name on the board.

FAQ

Who are the top MLB DFS pitchers for June 25? Cam Schlittler is the host's favorite arm and most likely big game, against a weak Boston lineup. Cristopher Sanchez ($11,500) is the highest-projected and most-owned, but the host trimmed him under 10% as a chalk fade. Tatsuya Imai is the mid-price leverage play, and Freddy Peralta ($7,600) is the FanDuel value.

What are the best MLB DFS stacks on June 25? The Arizona Diamondbacks against McGreevy and the New York Yankees against the Red Sox graded one-two in the Sims at nearly identical simulated ROI. The Phillies against Cade Cavalli are the leverage stack off the Sanchez chalk.

Why fade Cristopher Sanchez if he is the best pitcher? In DFS, ownership matters as much as the matchup. On a six-game slate, Sanchez's concentration of ownership at an $11,500 price means the field is heavily exposed to one arm, so being underweight creates leverage if he has even an average game.

Where can I build these MLB DFS lineups myself? The Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, Top Stacks, and Ownership projections live on the Stokastic MLB DataHub. The single-lineup Sim shown on the stream is part of the same toolset.

Build Your Own Lineups

Everything on the show ran through the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims: build the player pool, filter to your pitchers, read which stacks the Sims keep building around, and grade your final lineup before lock. Top Stacks shows you which teams the field is over and underweight on, and Ownership projections turn that into real leverage. Try it on tonight's slate and take 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL.

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