MLB DFS Live Before Lock (8/5): Skenes Is The Chalk
August 5, 2026
Wednesday gave us a 7-game DraftKings slate (7:05 p.m. ET lock) inside an 11-game FanDuel main (6:35 p.m. ET), and Live Before Lock opened with the read that organized the whole hour: almost every pitcher worth rostering shares a game with a stack worth rostering. The SP2s and the bats live in the same handful of environments, so Wednesday was about picking games, not players. It also set up the night's best live moment, a Detroit lineup card that dropped mid-show and changed the math on one arm in real time. More on that below.
Paul Skenes — one of the featured players on today's slate.
The Quick Answer
Paul Skenes (PIT) is the DraftKings chalk at a projected 57%, and the show still put him in roughly half its builds. The tournament swing is Eury Perez (MIA), sub-5% projected on FanDuel with the No. 1 graded stuff on the slate, and Bryan Woo (SEA), $8,900 on FanDuel, earned a real mid-show boost in the DraftKings pool when Detroit's posted lineup added strikeouts everywhere. The slate's key game is Twins-Royals, where Noah Cameron (KC) at $6,600 on DraftKings and both offenses are all in play. The full pitcher pool, the stack board, and the Cameron ownership math are below.
Watch The Video
The full pre-lock breakdown, including the live Sims runs and the Detroit lineup reaction as it happened, is below.
Skenes Is The Chalk, But His Game Is Doing Double Duty
Paul Skenes (PIT) at a projected 57% on DraftKings is the definition of eat-the-chalk, and the show mostly did, landing him in about half its DraftKings builds and calling him the premier FanDuel cash-game arm at $9,300. The honest caveat came first, though: his fastball velocity is down about a mile and a half this season, and the pitch's stuff grades have sagged with it. The breaking stuff is still elite, a slider grading out around 120 on the stuff-plus scale, and that swing-and-miss is what keeps his floor intact even in starts where he gets hit.
The other half of the read is the game he's pitching in. Milwaukee at home, roof open, humid air, and a Brewers lineup with Garrett Mitchell (MIL) hitting third, Andrew Vaughn (MIL) in the six-hole and Christian Yelich (MIL) sliding down the card is exactly the kind of spot where a diminished Skenes carries real blow-up risk. So the show played both sides of the environment: a small allocation of Milwaukee leverage stacks built around Mitchell, Brice Turang (MIL) and Jackson Chourio (MIL), with William Contreras (MIL) the piece it could live without at catcher.
That same game holds the slate's most interesting cheap arm. Kyle Harrison (MIL) returned from a month away to face a Pittsburgh lineup that strikes out a ton against lefties, and at $8,500 on DraftKings the price never caught up to the matchup. The catch is workload: his final tune-up was 5.2 innings and 68 pitches in Triple-A, so projecting him past 85 pitches is a stretch. That killed him on FanDuel, where the six-inning bonus and win equity matter more, and the show played him at zero there while going overweight on DraftKings, where raw strikeouts pay the bills. Playing Skenes and Harrison together in the same builds was the plan, one game covering two pitcher slots. That kind of site-split thinking is covered in more depth in our MLB DFS contrarian strategy guide.
Eury Perez: The Best Stuff On The Slate At Sub-5%
Sort the slate's starters by stuff-plus for the season and Eury Perez (MIA) is No. 1, yet FanDuel projections had him under 5% owned, with DraftKings only around 12%. That gap is the whole appeal. Atlanta is a legitimately dangerous matchup, a lineup at a 105 wRC+ against right-handed pitching with a .174 ISO that's tied for sixth in baseball, and the big lefty bats of Michael Harris II (ATL), Drake Baldwin (ATL) and Matt Olson (ATL) are exactly who you'd fear. The show's counter: Perez's fastball-slider combination gives him seven-innings-of-one-hit-ball outcomes against good lineups, and a slight wind blowing in at Atlanta shaves the worst case.
One piece of the case was conditional, and the show said so explicitly. Perez is one of the worst pitchers in baseball at holding runners, and the argument leaned on Joe Mack (MIA), one of the best runner-controlling catchers in the game, getting a third consecutive start behind the plate; a lineup with Agustin Ramirez (MIA) catching instead was called a non-starter for the play. The show locked 20% Eury Perez exposure on FanDuel on that basis, a tournament-sized stake in an arm the field ignored, with one explicit caveat: when a pitcher's case depends on a lineup card like this one, keep checking it right up until lock.
Build tonight's board before you lock anything. The same MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub that ran live on the show are there to explore, and code MLBLBL takes 10% off any MLB or All Access package.
The Detroit Lineup Dropped, And Bryan Woo Got Better
Here's the payoff on that mid-show moment. Bryan Woo (SEA) at $8,900 on FanDuel came into the show as a splits argument: a 2.96 xFIP and 0.77 WHIP at home against a 4.22 xFIP and 1.49 WHIP on the road, with a strikeout rate north of 29% at T-Mobile Park. The hesitation was Detroit's contact bats. Then the actual lineup posted on air, and it read like a strikeout menu: Eduardo Valencia (DET) catching, Javier Baez (DET) out entirely, and a card where Spencer Torkelson (DET), Max Clark (DET), Riley Greene (DET) and Valencia carry strikeout rates the show read off at roughly 31%, 30%, 26% and 25%. The reaction was immediate: Woo went from a liked-but-hedged play to a clear boost in the DraftKings pool, and the show liked the strikeout angle enough to call out a $40 bet on Woo's strikeout over live on air.
The one caution kept in frame: T-Mobile has quietly played up for left-handed power this season, about a 120 home run park factor for lefties over a rolling year, partly because Seattle's all-right-handed rotation keeps feeding lefty bats. Woo at home is a strikeout play, not a zero-risk one.
The Both-Sides Game: Cameron, Kremer And Twins-Royals
Live Before Lock called Twins-Royals the key to everything it was doing, and it's the clearest expression of the games-not-players thesis. Noah Cameron (KC) at $6,600 on DraftKings is the Sims darling, a lefty who has done his best work against righties, generating strikeouts while limiting right-handed power, against a Minnesota lineup that ran out only two left-handed bats, Kody Clemens (MIN), who hit cleanup, and Trevor Larnach (MIN). On the other side, Dean Kremer (MIN) made his first start as a Twin at 5% projected ownership, and the show went overweight, with a hard cap around 15%. Kremer owns a 29% strikeout rate against righties, but his season-long problem is left-handed power, a .403 wOBA and .341 ISO allowed to lefties, and Kansas City's lefty-heavy lineup is built to punish exactly that, with Bobby Witt Jr. (KC) headlining an order the Sims had at 62% exposure before the show trimmed him toward 50%.
The park tempers the fireworks in both directions. Kauffman Stadium has run about an 86 home run park factor for left-handed power, below average, while still grading out around 106 for lefties overall because the moved-in fences reward doubles and line drives more than they used to. So the game rewards stacks that hit for average and pile up baserunners, not just pull-side power. The answer was to play the game from both ends: Cameron in 35% to 40% of builds, Kansas City stacks against Kremer at roughly the field's level, and Minnesota as its favorite single-entry stack at 15% to 20% exposure. Our MLB DFS stacking guide covers why a game like this one, cheap arms plus live offenses, is where stack leverage actually comes from.
The Stacks: Yankees Chalk, Padres And Cardinals Leverage
The Yankees against Andre Pallante (STL) were the show's highest-owned stack, chalk it happily paid, with Ben Rice (NYY) and Jazz Chisholm Jr. (NYY) all over the show's exposure sheet. The leverage lived elsewhere:
| Stack | Opposing Pitcher | The Read |
|---|---|---|
| Minnesota Twins | Noah Cameron (KC) | Favorite single-entry stack, 15-20% exposure in a game the show played from both sides |
| San Diego Padres | Mitch Bratt (ARI) | Roughly double the field. A soft-tossing rookie whose 0.96 WHIP and 2.41 ERA at Triple-A Reno read as smoke and mirrors |
| St. Louis Cardinals | Will Warren (NYY) | Top tournament leverage next to the Yankees. Warren struggles to strike out lefties, and the top of the order is left-handed |
| Kansas City Royals | Dean Kremer (MIN) | Around the field. Lefty-heavy order vs. a .341 ISO allowed to lefties |
| Milwaukee Brewers | Paul Skenes (PIT) | Small leverage allocation against a diminished-velocity Skenes |
The San Diego case is a good example of looking past a season-long split. The Padres' full-season numbers against lefties are ugly, but reset the sample to July 1, roughly when Ty France (SD) entered the picture, and they're a league-average offense against southpaws, a 99 wRC+ with a 21.3% strikeout rate, facing a rookie the show flatly did not trust to generate big-league swing-and-miss. Fernando Tatis Jr. (SD), Jackson Merrill (SD) and Manny Machado (SD) in a spacious park that suits their line-drive, baserunning profile rounded it out, and conviction ran high enough that San Diego's moneyline was the show's favorite bet of the day.
St. Louis was the callback pick. Alec Burleson (STL) hit three home runs on Monday, in the same building against this same Yankees team, and Will Warren (NYY) has no real swing-and-miss weapon against left-handed bats. JJ Wetherholt (STL) and Burleson were called the Cardinals' best two-man combination, "not close," and the show has money riding on Burleson against Warren too. The deep cut is Blaze Jordan (STL) at $2,200 on DraftKings, a bat-speed profile with a .415 expected slugging and a 46.6% hard-hit rate, the kind of near-min-price salary relief that makes a five-man Cardinals stack fit. On the FanDuel-only portion of the board, Philadelphia projected as the top stack, the show loved Washington as a tournament stack against Andrew Painter (PHI), and it wanted no part of Reid Detmers (LAA) if his ownership pushed toward 15%.
Worked Example: The Noah Cameron Ownership Math
Here's the decision process on Cameron, stated as a rule you can reuse. His projection made him the slate's best value at $6,600, but the show refused to set exposure until it framed the ownership question: at 10% owned, there's no debate he's the best pitching play on the slate relative to ownership; push that toward 20% and it's a different conversation, because the same projection has turned into a field position instead of an edge. Exposure landed at 35% to 40%, hedging the scenario where Cameron's ownership spikes by holding 15% to 20% Minnesota stacks, the bats that profit most when the chalk cheap arm blows up. Same game, one question, two coordinated answers. That ownership-first habit, price a player against what the field will do rather than against his projection alone, is the core skill in how to win at MLB DFS, and you can pressure-test it yourself by running the Sims free on any slate.
The Bottom Line
Wednesday's board proved the opening thesis: the best builds came from committing to environments, Skenes and Harrison bracketing one game, Cameron and two stacks bracketing another, rather than cherry-picking names. Skenes was chalk worth eating, Eury Perez was the stuff-plus outlier the field ignored, and the Detroit lineup card, one catcher swap and a benched Baez, was the reminder that the last 30 minutes before lock carry real information, enough to swing an $8,900 arm's exposure and put $40 behind his strikeout over. Run your own board through the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub, check the daily MLB DFS picks hub for today's slate, and see how the previous edition played out in the August 2 Live Before Lock recap.
Build Your Own Lineups
Every read on Wednesday's show, the pitcher pool, the stack exposures, the ownership hedges, ran through the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims in real time. Build your pitcher pool, set your stack exposure, and let the Sims stress-test the whole thing before lock. Code MLBLBL takes 10% off any MLB or All Access package.
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