MLB DFS Picks Today: Live Before Lock, August 3, 2026 Slate

Cam Schlittler — one of the featured players on today's slate.

The Quick Answer

Here are our MLB DFS picks today for the August 3, 2026 slate: Yankees SP Cam Schlittler ($11,500 DK) as the pay-up ace, Rays SP Ian Seymour as Lindquist's favorite cheap DraftKings arm, and a Tampa Bay-heavy build leaning on Yandy Diaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda, with Rangers 1B Abimelec Ortiz and Rays OF Jesus Sanchez as the $2,000 value plays a chaotic trade deadline created. The full stack breakdown, pitching pivots, and why he trusts a $2,000 infielder as much as an $11,500 ace are below.

Trade-deadline day is always a mess for MLB DFS, but the August 3 slate broke in a way even Eric Lindquist hadn't planned for. Lineups were still moving 37 minutes from first pitch. DraftKings' own player pool flagged Nationals 2B Luis Garcia Jr. (WSH) as ineligible to accrue fantasy points mid-show, only for him to still be sitting in the CSV and the projected lineup (a platform bug, not a real scratch, that Lindquist had to chase down live on air before building could even start). Cardinals INF Brian Torres slid into the five-hole after a last-minute trade sent his teammate out of St. Louis hours before lock. That's the backdrop for every decision below: 8 games on the board, several lineups still in flux when the show started, and a pricing structure that rewarded patience over panic.

In Summary

• Cam Schlittler (NYY) is the pay-up arm at $11,500 on DraftKings. Lindquist prioritizes him over every other starter and pushes his own exposure toward 42%.
• Ian Seymour (TB) is his favorite DraftKings pitcher on the entire slate, a sub-$7,000 strikeout arm against a Rockies lineup that will see plenty of left-handed matchups.
• Trade-deadline churn created two clean $2,000 bats: Abimelec Ortiz (TEX), now batting second, and Jesus Sanchez (TB).
• Tampa Bay is the backbone stack. Yandy Diaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda all get featured usage against Colorado.
• Build lineups with the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims & projections, the same tool Lindquist ran live on the show.

Watch The Video

Lindquist built every lineup on screen in real time, trades and all, worth watching for the full sequence of adjustments as news hit.

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Pitching: Pay Up, Then Pivot Around The Chaos

Cam Schlittler (NYY) is the slate's clearest priority. At $11,500 on DraftKings against a Cardinals lineup that just lost a bat to a trade minutes before first pitch, Lindquist called him a "spicy meatball" of an opportunity cost but said he's an easy player to prioritize over the field's other studs. He pushed his own build's Schlittler exposure up toward 42% rather than fight the chalk.

The rest of the staff is where the real decisions live. Brandon Sproat (MIL), Bubba Chandler (PIT), and Padres Michael King (SD) are the three arms Lindquist called his most-leveraged group against Schlittler's price tag, but his favorite of the bunch on DraftKings specifically is Ian Seymour (TB). Seymour is priced sub-$7,000 against a Rockies lineup that will see at least three left-handed bats in the Rays' matchup path, and Lindquist said the Sims had him underpriced relative to his strikeout upside, backing an ownership number above 12.5%. For a deeper look at how the rest of today's pitching staff prices out, the MLB DFS top stacks and pitchers breakdown covers the full arm-by-arm rundown.

On FanDuel, the arm he singled out is Brandon Pfaadt (ARI) at $7,700 against the Padres. Pfaadt doesn't miss many bats (a 15.9% strikeout rate this season), but he's carried a streak of 14 consecutive starts allowing two earned runs or fewer, and Lindquist said the price makes him a FanDuel-only play he prefers over the more popular, similarly-priced King. Dodgers Justin Wrobleski (LAD) is priced at $9,000 on DraftKings, a fine secondary option once Schlittler eats into a build's pitching budget. Astros Cristian Javier (HOU), by contrast, was a clean pass on the cheap end. Lindquist ruled him out without hesitation.

Seymour's price is the single biggest outlier on the board relative to his strikeout ceiling, and it's the reason Lindquist is comfortable pairing him with the pay-up Schlittler builds instead of hedging into a cheaper, worse arm.

The Trade Deadline Handed Him Two $2,000 Bats

That opening chaos wasn't just noise. It directly created the slate's best pricing value. Abimelec Ortiz (TEX) went from a non-factor to the Rangers' two-hole at a flat $2,000 on DraftKings once the lineup card updated, and Lindquist called it a source of real, actionable value rather than a min-priced afterthought. He's also the batter Lindquist rostered most aggressively on the showdown slate for the early Nationals-Phillies game. The MLB DFS perfect lineup for August 3 has the full salary math if you want to see exactly where that savings goes.

The second: Jesus Sanchez (TB) at $2,200, a name Lindquist said needs no explanation given the price relative to a Tampa Bay offense he's building a large share of his player pool around against Colorado's pitching.

Tampa Bay Is The Stack

Coors Field-adjacent salary relief and a soft Rockies pitching matchup put the Rays at the center of Lindquist's builds. Yandy Diaz (TB) is a top target he said he wants even more exposure to than his Sims-suggested number. Junior Caminero (TB) is priced at $6,800 on DraftKings and gets jammed into the vast majority of builds regardless of game stack construction. Jonathan Aranda (TB), sub-$5,000 on DraftKings and sub-$4,000 on FanDuel, is the value piece Lindquist called flatly "outrageously good" for the price, with the added FanDuel wrinkle that Aranda, Caminero, and Diaz can all start in the same lineup there, something DraftKings' position eligibility won't allow.

On the other side of that same game, Rockies C Hunter Goodman (COL) is the one bat Lindquist flagged as a Colorado leverage piece: a hitter already sitting on 30-plus home runs this season who Lindquist said is live to change the shape of that game if the Rays' pitching plan misfires.

Astros 3B Isaac Paredes (HOU) got a separate call-out as one of the more fascinating bats on the board given his extreme pull-side profile against the Blue Jays' Shane Bieber (TOR), a matchup Lindquist flagged as vulnerable given Bieber's recent stuff grades, including a two-inning implosion in his last outing before this one.

A Worked Example: Stacking The Value Around Schlittler

Here's how the pieces above fit into one build. Start with Cam Schlittler ($11,500 DK) as the anchor arm. That leaves roughly $38,500 in salary for the other nine roster spots on DraftKings. Fill the middle infield with Abimelec Ortiz at a flat $2,000, and add Jesus Sanchez at $2,200 in the outfield. That's two roster spots covered for $4,200 combined, well under half the cost of a single mid-tier bat elsewhere on the slate. Route the savings into the Rays stack: Junior Caminero ($6,800), Yandy Diaz, and Jonathan Aranda give the lineup three separate paths to the same Tampa Bay-Colorado game environment Lindquist is building the largest share of his player pool around. That's the shape of the build he described live on the show: pay full price for the one arm the field is right to pay up for, then let a scrambled trade deadline hand you the discount everywhere else.

The One Thing To Build Around

If there's a single thesis to this slate, it's that the trade-deadline scramble didn't just create noise. It created price inefficiencies most builders won't have time to find before lock. Lindquist trusted the $2,000 Ortiz and Sanchez bats as much as he trusted the $11,500 ace at the top of the board, and that's the split-second edge a slate like this rewards: pay up where the field is right to pay up on Schlittler, then use the leftover chalk to fund the value the news cycle handed you. The evergreen DraftKings MLB DFS cheat sheet breaks down that pay-up-then-leverage approach in more detail if you're new to building around a slate like this one.

Every one of these Sims runs, from the pitching leverage to the Rays stack shares to the showdown build around Ortiz, happened live on screen. Run your own version with the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims & projections before lock on tonight's slate, or check the daily MLB DFS picks hub for the rest of today's angles.

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Today's Full Slate

FAQ

What is the best MLB DFS play for August 3, 2026? Cam Schlittler (NYY) at $11,500 on DraftKings is our top overall priority arm, with Ian Seymour (TB) as the favorite value pitcher on the slate.

What is the best MLB DFS value play today? Abimelec Ortiz (TEX) at a flat $2,000 and Jesus Sanchez (TB) at $2,200 are the two clearest value bats, both created by trade-deadline lineup moves that firmed up minutes before lock.

What stack are the Sims favoring on this slate? Tampa Bay, built around Yandy Diaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda against a Rockies pitching matchup at Coors Field.

Eric Lindquist hosts MLB DFS Live Before Lock every slate day, running the Sims live and adjusting for news as it breaks. Catch tomorrow's show for another normal, hopefully less chaotic, slate.