MLB DFS Picks Today: DraftKings & FanDuel Plays For Saturday, June 27

Saturday gives us two separate MLB DFS slates to attack, and our Live Before Lock show broke down the early one first. DraftKings runs a four-game afternoon slate that first pitches at 3:07 p.m. ET; FanDuel runs a three-game slate starting at 4:05, which means you only have to roster one starting pitcher there. Below is the read we walked through on the show, plus the Stokastic Sims work behind it.

In Summary

• Slate: DraftKings is a four-game afternoon slate (first pitch 3:07 p.m. ET). FanDuel is a three-game slate at 4:05, so it's a one-pitcher build.
• Top Pitchers: Dylan Cease and Chase Burns are the two arms to spend up for. Cease is sitting on a career-best strikeout rate, and Burns is missing bats at an elite clip.
• Top Stacks: The Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, Cincinnati Reds, and New York Mets are the offenses we want to build around.
• Value Pitching: Davis Martin and Michael Wacha are the mid-range options; Jared Jones is the cheap, high-strikeout dart with real risk attached.
• Late News: Wyatt Langford was scratched from the Rangers lineup, so adjust any builds that ran through him.
• Build it all in the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims and projections.

Watch: MLB DFS Live Before Lock (June 27)

We built every lineup below live on the show, including a walk-through of the Single Lineup Sim. If you learn best by watching the tools in action, start here: Watch on YouTube.

Top Pitchers For Today's MLB DFS Slate

Both of the elite arms on this slate are missing bats, and on a short four-game board that scarcity is exactly why they'll be popular.

Dylan Cease is the headliner. He's in his age-30 season and putting up a strikeout rate well above his career number, the highest he's ever posted. His home run rate, around 0.57 per nine, is also the best mark of his career, so he's limiting the one outcome that wrecks a pitcher's DFS night. The matchup helps: the Rangers carry a handful of high-strikeout bats, with Wyatt Langford, Josh Jung, and others having posted strikeout rates north of 27% in recent stretches. Cease was on roughly two-thirds of lineups in our projected ownership, so he's a play, not a leverage spot.

Chase Burns is the other one to build around. He's technically still a rookie, and the strikeouts have been excellent at 10.7 per nine while he's surrendered just one home run per nine. The one caution: his 93.4% strand rate is well above the league norm of roughly 70-74%, which is doing a lot of work to keep his ERA so low. Some of that will regress, but on this slate the strikeout upside is real and the price gets you a true ace.

That's the spend-up tier. The rest of the board is about getting cheaper arms right so you can afford both of them, or pairing one with a value bat-heavy build.

The show code, on the page: ⚾ 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL ⚾. Stokastic Sims gives you the same MLB DFS Sims, projected ownership, and Top Stacks Tool we used to build every lineup in this article. Lock in 15% off.

Value And SP2 Pitching Options

On a four-game slate, your second pitcher is where you find the salary to pay up at the top.

• Davis Martin is the cleanest matchup-based value. His strikeout rate has climbed to 24.3% this year, up from around 17%, and he draws a Kansas City lineup missing pieces. Bobby Witt Jr. is batting second, but the Royals are down a couple of their better bats here, which softens the spot.
• Michael Wacha doesn't rack up strikeouts, so the DFS community tends to overlook him, but he's quietly run elite ERA marks since 2022 by inducing weak contact and limiting power. He's a fine SP2 who can absorb innings without blowing up.
• Jared Jones is the cheap dart. He carries a soft cap around 75 pitches and usually goes three or four innings as the Pirates ease him back from Tommy John surgery. He has strikeout upside, but he'll likely give up a few earned runs, so you need five or six strikeouts on a short outing to make him pay. That's a tournament-only gamble, not a cash-game piece.

A quick map of where each arm fits:

Pitcher	Role	The case
Dylan Cease	Spend-up / cash + GPP	Career-best strikeout rate, low home run rate, high-K Rangers matchup
Chase Burns	Spend-up / cash + GPP	10.7 K/9, one HR/9; strand rate flags some ERA regression
Davis Martin	Mid-range value	24.3% strikeout rate vs. a short-handed Royals lineup
Michael Wacha	SP2 floor	Weak-contact, low-power profile; soaks up innings
Jared Jones	Cheap GPP dart	Strikeout upside on ~75 pitches, but gives up runs

Top Stacks To Build Around

The bats are where this slate gets fun, because three of the four pitching matchups set up well for the offense.

• Philadelphia Phillies are the foundational stack. They run three left-handed bats at the top of the order against a Mets starter, Christian Scott, who's returning from injury, and that lefty-heavy top of the order is exactly the shape you want to roster.
• New York Mets are the other side of that game and a stack in their own right. They draw Alan Rangel, who worked his way up through the minors but profiles as a back-end starter rather than a shutdown arm, so there's run upside here too.
• Toronto Blue Jays are in a strong spot against a bullpen game. Cal Quantrill is likely to go only a couple of innings, and Toronto then gets a parade of relievers. Alejandro Kirk projects to hit in the heart of the order, and cheap, multi-position bats like Ernie Clement and Nathan Lukes make a Toronto stack easy to fit alongside the two expensive pitchers. The Sims naturally gravitated to a Toronto stack on the optimal lineup.
• Cincinnati Reds lefties are the leverage play. Ellie de la Cruz is back from a hamstring issue, and the Reds' left-handed bats line up well against Jared Jones, with Pittsburgh's bullpen thin on lefty relief behind him after using two of their three the last couple of days. Sal Stewart and the rest of the top of that order fit the matchup.

The takeaway: on a four-game slate, the optimal cash build naturally pairs Cease and Burns with a Toronto stack and a few Cincinnati lefties. Tournaments are where you get different — leave the chalk and build around the Phillies or Mets instead.

A Worked Example: How We Built Our Lineups (Single Lineup Sim + 50 Lineups)

The show wasn't just a list of names; it was a live build, and the process is the part you can copy. Here is the exact example I walked through on stream, step by step.

1. Start with the optimal. The Single Lineup Sim's unfettered optimal looks only at projected points, ROI, and how each player fits under the salary cap. On this slate it returned both top pitchers plus a natural Toronto and Cincinnati lean, confirmation that the chalk and the projections agreed.
2. Put your thumb on the scale. From there, lock the bats you actually believe in, like the Cincinnati lefties against Jones, and let the Sim build the rest of the roster around them. Swapping one third baseman for another and re-simming shows you instantly whether the change helped or hurt.
3. Build the bulk with exposure controls. For the 50-lineup tournament build, we ran a 5,000-lineup pool with light smoothing, capped a few bats so the cheap, popular pieces didn't show up in every lineup, and set uniques so the portfolio isn't 50 copies of the same team.

That whole workflow, the Single Lineup Sim, the optimal, and the exposure controls, lives inside Stokastic Sims. You can also start free in the Stokastic DFS Sims to see how it builds.

A Note On Weather And Late Lineups

Two of the afternoon games carry some rain risk: the Pirates game in Pittsburgh and the Mets game in New York. Both looked likely to clear, and because they start a bit later in the window, you have time to bail out before lock if the forecast turns. We built them as if they'll play.

The bigger lesson is to check the lineups right up to lock. Wyatt Langford was scratched from the Rangers, which changes any build that ran through him, and a late scratch like that is exactly why you want a tool refreshing ownership and projections in real time before the slate locks.

FAQ

Who are the best MLB DFS pitchers today? Dylan Cease and Chase Burns are the two arms to spend up for on the DraftKings four-game slate. Cease is on a career-best strikeout rate against a high-strikeout Rangers lineup, and Burns is missing bats at 10.7 per nine.

What are the top MLB DFS stacks for June 27? The Phillies, Mets, Blue Jays, and Reds are the offenses we want to build around. The Phillies and Mets face each other in a good hitting spot, Toronto draws a bullpen game, and the Reds' lefties line up well against Jared Jones.

What's the difference between the DraftKings and FanDuel slates today? DraftKings is a four-game slate first pitching at 3:07 p.m. ET. FanDuel is a three-game slate at 4:05, so you only roster one starting pitcher there, which makes Burns plus a bat-heavy build the natural cash play.

Where can I build these MLB DFS lineups? Use the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims and projections. The Single Lineup Sim, projected ownership, and Top Stacks Tool are what we used to build every lineup above.

Build Today's Slate With The Sims

Everything in this breakdown, the optimal pairings, the exposure controls, and the projected ownership behind every pick, comes out of the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims. New subscribers can use code MLBLBL for 15% off any DFS or Props package, and you'll have the same tools we built these lineups with: Lock in 15% off Stokastic Sims.

Good luck today, and we'll see you before lock.