MLB DFS Picks Today: DraftKings & FanDuel (7/6/26)

Some MLB DFS slates hand you a dozen ways to be right. Monday's seven-game evening board is not one of them. Almost all of the leverage lives in a single game, the Houston Astros at the Washington Nationals, and for most of the afternoon that game was sitting under a rain cloud in D.C. That is the whole story of this slate: one launching-pad spot that the entire field wants, a sky that nearly took it away, and the question of whether you have the conviction to hammer it anyway.

Our MLB DFS Live Before Lock show worked that exact problem in real time, weather radar open in the corner right up to lock. Below are the pitcher and stack plays that came out of it, plus the two cheap bats, a $2,000 second baseman and a $3,000 third baseman, that make the whole build affordable. Hold that pair in mind; they are the reason you can fit both of the stacks everyone else is squeezing to reach.

In Summary

• Stack The Launching Pad. The Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are the top two stacks in the Nationals Park bandbox, once the rain cleared.
• Griffin Jax (TB), $7,500 DK is the pitcher to build around, the arm we want to be overweight on despite the coming chalk.
• Cam Schlittler (NYY), $11,000 DK is the raw-points leader, but we are under the field in tournaments.
• Landen Roupp (SF) is the positive-regression contrarian pitcher; Eric Lauer (LAD), $6,000 is the tournament punt.
• Jake Cronenworth (SD), $2,000 and Kyle Karros (COL), $3,000 are the value bats that pay for the stacks.
• Fade Mike Burrows (HOU) entirely; he is the reason the Washington stack is the play.

Watch The Video

Watch MLB DFS Live Before Lock (7/6/26) on YouTube for the full before-lock breakdown, weather updates and all.

The Pitching: Where The Ownership Is Going To Land

Start with the arms, because the ownership decisions you make here set up everything downstream. Two pitchers are going to soak up the field on a short slate, and knowing which one to lean into is half the leverage.

The one to internalize is Griffin Jax. Build in the Stokastic Sims and you are going to get a lot of him, likely a number north of 20%, in a game Vegas has priced as a near coin flip. Normally that would be a reason to pivot off a pitcher. Here it is the opposite: he is the arm we want, so we are happy to take on the chalk and find our leverage elsewhere in the lineup. Remember that 20% number, because it is exactly why the cheap bats below matter so much.

Schlittler is the counterweight. At $11,000 he still leads the slate in projected points and you can click him in cash without a second thought. But that rising .385 wOBA is not the pitcher we saw in the first two months, and on a short slate there is no reason to match the field's ownership on the expensive guy. Going under on him is a free leverage lever.

Roupp is the tournament wrinkle. His expected marks say he has pitched better than his line, he carries an 8.3 K/9, and San Francisco lets a fly-ball arm breathe. Against a Toronto lineup that strikes out as little as anyone, he is a fine low-owned dart while the field piles onto the two obvious names.

The Stacks: Houston And Washington In The Bandbox

Now the reason the pitching ownership tilts the way it does. The best hitting spot on the board is the Astros at the Nationals, and both offenses are in play because both starters are attackable in a hot, humid park that plays like a launching pad.

The catch was the sky. Rain radar sat over D.C. for most of the afternoon, and this game is the entire pivot point of the slate, so it was worth watching down to the wire. It cleared. Boots on the ground by the ballpark reported it stopped and the skies opened, the pregame radar turned encouraging, and the expectation shifted to a full game getting in. Green light to lean in.

The row to sit on is Washington. James Wood (WAS) and Luis Garcia (WAS) go one-two in a lineup that owns the best ISO in baseball at 187 against right-handed pitching, and even the team's overall 102 wRC+ against righties undersells a top-heavy order against a pitcher who cannot miss a bat. Burrows is one of the highest pull-air-rate arms in the league, which is a tidy way of saying the barrels are coming. Fading him to zero is not a hot take; it is the whole rationale for the stack, and it is why you will see the Nationals owned heavily on both sites.

Houston is the mirror image, teeing off on Mikolas, with Christian Walker's $3,700 tag the kind of price break that lets you fit the bigger bats around him. The Padres are the tournament pivot if you want to get off the crowd: Arizona at San Diego was the second-favorite game environment on the board, and Pfaadt's process numbers say the results have been a gift that regresses.

Bargain Bats: Cronenworth And Karros

Here is the payoff promised up top, and it ties directly back to that Griffin Jax chalk. When the field spends up for the popular pitcher and crowds both launching-pad stacks, salary gets tight fast. The two bats that solve it are cheap, they bat at the top of the order, and one of them is barely rostered relative to how good the spot is.

Jake Cronenworth (SD) at $2,000 is the one to keep coming back to. He is priced like a punt but he bats second every night, and at only 14% owned he is one of the best value plays on the entire slate. In the same San Diego lineup you are attacking Pfaadt, a $2,000 hitter batting in front of the stars is a gift for your salary cap.

Kyle Karros (COL) at $3,000 is the leverage bat against Eric Lauer. He has moved from the 8 or 9 hole up to the two-spot against left-handers, where his power metrics are far better, one home run in 98 plate appearances against lefties, and Dodger Stadium is a fine place to swing. He is barely in the Sims, so getting north of 10%, roughly a fifth of your lineups, is real leverage. Hunter Goodman (COL) is the catcher pairing in that same spot against the lefty.

Neither of these bats will win you the slate on their own. What they do is buy the salary that lets you run both the Washington and Houston stacks without shaving your best arm, which is the entire trick of a build this top-heavy.

A Worked Build: Fitting Both Stacks

Here is the DraftKings construction I keep coming back to, and it is the whole point of picking the cheap bats first. Anchor the pitching with Griffin Jax at $7,500 rather than paying all the way up to Schlittler at $11,000. That single decision banks the salary you would otherwise sink into an arm you are trying to be under the field on anyway.

Spend that savings on the launching-pad game. Christian Walker at $3,700 is the value entry point into the Houston stack, and Cronenworth at $2,000 and Karros at $3,000 round out the cheap end. With three hitters costing barely more than a single stud, you have the room to run four Nationals bats around James Wood and Luis Garcia and still fit a mini Houston stack behind them. The build reads as chalk on paper, because Jax and both stacks will be popular, but your edge is hiding in exactly where the field is thin: a 14%-owned Cronenworth and a barely-rostered Karros doing the salary work that lets you get there at all. For more of today's board, see today's full MLB DFS picks.

FanDuel Notes

FanDuel changes the math a little. You can roster up to five hitters from one team there, so the game-stack construction gets easier, and the top Dodgers stack is the popular route. The play we keep is Landen Roupp as the single-lineup anchor at $9,700; pitching deep in San Francisco travels well, and you want to be a touch over the field's 15-to-16% on him.

One FanDuel caution on Griffin Jax: with quality starts and wins carrying more weight there, his prevailing 14.5 strikeout prop and a coin-flip game make him a better DraftKings play than a FanDuel one. Load up on him where he is priced to score raw points, and lean the arm mix elsewhere on the site that pays for length.

How We Build It

Every read above starts in the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims and projections. The Sims run millions of simulations of the slate to produce projections, projected ownership and leverage, which is exactly how a $2,000 Cronenworth or a barely-rostered Karros surfaces as a play in the first place. Re-running them right before lock is what catches lineup and weather changes like the ones that decided this slate. Pair this recap with today's MLB DFS picks board for the full projections.

Build the whole slate with us. Get 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL at Stokastic MLB DFS Five days of baseball before the All-Star break, and the Sims for every one of them.

The Bottom Line

Zoom back out and this slate is simple to describe and hard to execute. Nearly all of the value sits in one weather-threatened game, the field knows it, and the ownership on the Nationals, the Astros and Griffin Jax is going to be heavy no matter what. The edge is not finding the plays; it is having the conviction to run the obvious launching-pad stacks once the rain cleared, and using the cheap bats up top to afford them without cutting corners. Get those two decisions right and the crowded parts of the build stop being a liability and start being where you and the field agree, while your leverage hides in the value.

Run it back with the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, and take 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL. Thanks to MLB DFS Live Before Lock for the read. Now go build.

More on this: MLB DFS Hub: Every Live Stokastic MLB Page · How To Build Winning MLB DFS Lineups (DraftKings & FanDuel) · MLB DFS Picks Today (9/16)