MLB DFS Live Before Lock (7/31): Cease 80%, $5K Sugano
July 31, 2026
Friday's MLB DFS Live Before Lock had 13 of the day's 15 games on the DraftKings main slate, and Eric Lindquist's read is that the board is deceptively simple: Dylan Cease is the pitcher, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Detroit are the stacks, and the only hard decision left is a $5,000 arm he openly called awful. That arm, Tomoyuki Sugano, starts at Coors Field directly against the Kansas City bats Lindquist is stacking in nearly half his lineups, and the case for putting him in 15% of the build anyway is the most interesting piece of game theory on the slate. The full math on that swing is below.
Dylan Cease — one of the featured players on today's slate.
The Quick Answer
Lindquist's Friday build runs Dylan Cease (TOR, $10,700) in about 80% of his 150 DraftKings lineups, pushes underowned Hunter Brown (HOU, $9,000) toward 30-35%, and stacks Kansas City, Milwaukee and Detroit, the three best hitting spots on the slate by his read. His one big leverage swing: 15% Tomoyuki Sugano (COL, $5,000), the Rockies starter facing his own favorite Kansas City stack at Coors. The full pitcher board, the Anaheim weather wrinkle, and how the 150-lineup exposure math fits together are below.
- Dylan Cease (TOR) vs. St. Louis is the slate's best pitcher "by a mile," with the highest strikeout projection on the board at 7.5 in the Stokastic Sims. Lindquist targets roughly 80% exposure on DraftKings and would jam Cease on FanDuel's single-pitcher format too.
- Hunter Brown (HOU) vs. Texas is the arm he thinks the field is getting wrong: he expected 30-35% ownership and was surprised to see far less, so he pushes his own exposure up as the slate's second-best fantasy-point ceiling.
- Shane Drohan (MIL) at the Los Angeles Angels is a good play he expects to be overowned, north of 20% against a 12-15% projection, in an Anaheim park that plays very differently in Friday's unusual heat and humidity.
- Tomoyuki Sugano (COL) vs. Kansas City at Coors Field is a 15% cap, DraftKings only, and purely a leverage play against the field's favorite stack.
- Kansas City, Milwaukee And Detroit are his three stacks, "the best three spots on the slate by a landslide," with KC at 40-45% of his builds.
Watch The Video
Eric Lindquist builds the full 150-lineup portfolio live below, from the Cease decision through the Sugano boost right up to Friday's lock.
Pitching: One Obvious Answer, Then A Board Full Of Uncomfortable Clicks
Lindquist opened with the point that makes everything else on this slate follow: with Paul Skenes, Hunter Greene and Shota Imanaga all locked into early games off the main slate, Dylan Cease stands alone. At $10,700 against a St. Louis lineup, Cease carries a 7.5 strikeout projection in the Sims while no other main-slate starter projects above 6.5. "As much of him as possible, he is by far the best pitching option," Lindquist said, settling on roughly 80% of his 150 DraftKings entries after his final Sims run came back at 68% and he pushed it higher.
The second seat is where the show spent its time. Here is the board as Lindquist played it:
| Pitcher | Team | Matchup | DK Salary | Lindquist's exposure | The read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dylan Cease | TOR | vs. STL | $10,700 | ~80% | Best arm on the slate by a mile; highest K projection at 7.5 |
| Hunter Brown | HOU | vs. TEX | $9,000 | Pushed to ~30-35% | Field is underowning the slate's second-best ceiling |
| Nathan Eovaldi | TEX | at HOU | Meaningful share | Same game as Brown | 18.5-out prop, an innings-eater's number; sixth-highest K rate on the slate |
| Bryce Miller | SEA | vs. MIN | $9,500 | Modest | Due for regression but a decent spot |
| Shane Drohan | MIL | at LAA | Capped vs. projection | Good play, will be overowned | Angels have not stopped striking out against lefties since July 1 |
| Jeffrey Springs | ATH | vs. DET | $5,800 | Minority share | Detroit's lefty bats are hurt, cutting the pinch-hit risk |
| Tomoyuki Sugano | COL | vs. KC | $5,000 | Capped at exactly 15% | Pure leverage against the field's Kansas City stacks |
The row that tells you the most is Hunter Brown's. Lindquist walked into the show expecting Brown at 30-35% owned and was surprised the field wasn't there, and his response was to push toward the number he thought the field would be at, not away from it. His case: Texas at a 103 wRC+ against right-handed pitching is a softer assignment than Houston's 106 wRC+ and .173 ISO on the other side, and while Corey Seager's return puts a real bat back atop the Rangers order, Seager's 25% strikeout rate feeds exactly the stat Brown needs. Nathan Eovaldi, in the same game, is the quieter version of the argument: an 18.5-out prop is a number books hang on almost nobody, and it signals a starter whose job is to pitch deep with the slate's sixth-highest strikeout rate along for the ride.
Every exposure number in that table came out of the Stokastic MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub, the same screens the show runs live, and the day's full board lives on the MLB DFS picks hub. Code MLBLBL takes 10% off any MLB or All Access package.
The Drohan Problem: A Good Play Priced For The Wrong Ownership
Shane Drohan against the Angels is the kind of click every MLB DFS player recognizes: obviously good, and uncomfortable precisely because it is obvious. The Angels have been baseball's most strikeout-prone lineup against left-handed pitching for the entire month of July, and the Sims like Drohan at his projected 12-15% ownership. Lindquist's problem is that he does not believe the projection. "There is not a planet that Shane Drohan ends up just 15%," he said, putting his own number north of 20%.
His second concern is the environment, and it is the sharpest weather note of the show. Angel Stadium has played as the second-worst home run park in baseball this season, ahead of only Busch Stadium, with a 72 home run factor and a run factor tied for the league's worst. Friday is not a normal night in Anaheim: 85 degrees and 55% humidity at first pitch, with almost no marine layer. Hot, humid air carries the ball, and a park that has suppressed offense all year suddenly looks like a decent place to hit. Drohan stays a good play at his price in Lindquist's book, still worth up to about 35% exposure, but the combination of inflated ownership and a live hitting environment is why he capped it rather than treating Drohan as the slate's free square. That same weather read is also why he likes the other dugout, which comes up again below.
The Sugano Swing: 15% Of An Awful Pitcher, On Purpose
Here is the promised math. Lindquist's favorite stack on this slate is Kansas City at Coors Field against Tomoyuki Sugano, and he is playing that stack in 40-45% of his lineups. He was also blunt about the man on the mound: "I think he is an awful, awful pitcher." So why does Sugano appear in 15% of the same player's builds?
Because the two positions cover each other. At $5,000, Sugano is the only sub-$9,000 starter Lindquist called stomachable other than Drohan, and his 15.5-out prop is priced at plus money to the over. His last start, at Milwaukee, was the argument in miniature: 5.1 innings, five strikeouts, two home runs allowed, 93 pitches, roughly 18 DraftKings points from a start everyone expected to be a disaster. When Sugano fails, Lindquist's heavy Kansas City position gets paid at Coors. When Sugano holds, the Kansas City chalk fails for the whole field, "and you were bypassing a majority of the field," as he put it on stream. That is the entire trade: a 1%-owned pitcher in 15% of lineups, paired with Cease, in exactly the lineups that skip KC bats.
The discipline matters as much as the idea. Sugano is a DraftKings-only play, his $7,300 FanDuel price kills the value there, and the cap is firm. "If you're playing one lineup today, you're not playing Tomoyuki Sugano." This is a portfolio move for a 150-entry build, the kind of exposure logic covered in our MLB DFS contrarian strategy guide.
Stacks: Three Nuclear Spots, And He Is Not Getting Cute
Lindquist called Kansas City, Milwaukee and Detroit "the best three spots on the slate by a landslide," the three highest implied run totals on the board, and his build simply reflects that instead of fighting it.
| Stack | The matchup | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Kansas City Royals | at Tomoyuki Sugano (COL), Coors Field | Favorite stack, 40-45% of lineups; best park and some of the best hitting weather on the slate |
| Milwaukee Brewers | at Ryan Johnson (LAA) | "They will just punish him"; the same abnormal Anaheim heat that worries him about Drohan |
| Detroit Tigers | at Jeffrey Springs (ATH) | Third nuclear spot; Tigers face an arm he also holds shares of |
| Colorado Rockies | vs. Michael Wacha (KC) | Right-handed one-offs against Wacha's reverse splits rather than full stacks |
| Washington Nationals | at Bryce Elder (ATL) | Individual hitters only; Elder has "turned back into a pumpkin" |
The Kansas City row is the one carrying real personal exposure behind it: Salvador Perez sits at 42% across Lindquist's builds and catcher Carter Jensen at 33%, with Bobby Witt Jr. tracking toward a Tuesday return that does nothing for tonight. Jensen is a conviction call that predates this slate; Lindquist has been saying since early summer that Jensen was going to hit a lot of home runs, and Coors is a fine place to keep being right. On the Colorado side of the same game, Hunter Goodman against Wacha drew the strongest single-bat praise of the show, described as nuclear against right-handed pitching over the last month, with home run odds sitting at +250. Milwaukee leans run through Jackson Chourio, Christian Yelich and Brice Turang, plus Jake Bauers at first base, a player Lindquist noted the Sims have disliked all year and finally endorsed for tournaments.
Worked Example: How The 150 Fits Together
The exposure numbers only work as a set. Cease at roughly 80% of the 150-lineup DraftKings build means the second pitcher seat does the differentiating: Brown toward 30-35%, meaningful Eovaldi, capped Drohan, and exactly 15% Sugano, with the Sugano lineups deliberately excluding Kansas City bats so one side of the Coors game pays off no matter how it breaks. Move to FanDuel's single-pitcher format and the whole decision tree collapses: Cease came back at 37% in the Sims and Lindquist would go higher, because with no second pitcher slot there is no Sugano conversation at all, and his $7,300 FanDuel price tag settles it anyway. Sizing a max-entry split like this is the subject of our MLB DFS multi-entry strategy guide.
The Through-Line: Take The Chalk, Then Buy The Other Side Of It
Everything in Friday's build traces to one idea: when a slate is this clear-cut, the edge is not in finding a different answer, it is in owning the failure case of the consensus one. Cease at 80% and Kansas City at 45% is the consensus; 15% Sugano is the insurance the field is not carrying. Lindquist closed with a forward look worth keeping: with the trade deadline landing Monday, he expects Sunday lineups for deadline-heavy teams like Detroit, Colorado and Washington to get strange as clubs bubble-wrap players they intend to move, an angle he plans to attack across the weekend. For the framework behind builds like this, see our MLB DFS stacking guide, our MLB DFS correlation strategy guide and our guide to using the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims. For Thursday's board, see the July 30 Live Before Lock recap. EMac has the weekend slates covered before Lindquist returns Monday.
Build Your Own Lineups
Every number on Friday's show came out of the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims: refresh projections as lineups drop, cap or boost any pitcher the way Lindquist capped Sugano at 15%, and watch which stacks the simulations keep building around before lock. Try it on the next slate with code MLBLBL for 10% off any MLB or All Access package.