MLB DFS Picks Aug 9: EMac's Live Before Lock Plays
August 9, 2026
Sunday's MLB DFS main slate is a top-heavy one. Three five-figure arms sit clear of the pitching field, there's no Coors Field or Sutter Health Park to chase for bats, and weekend host Eric "EMac" MacPherson spent the show working the real problem: how to pay for the aces. His answer runs through the sub-$7,000 pitcher tier and two hot-weather ballparks in the middle of the country. One lineup-wide strikeout number even talked him into rostering a pitcher he openly admits he doesn't like, and that number is the key to his whole cash build below.
Jacob Misiorowski — one of the featured players on today's slate.
The Quick Answer
EMac's anchor is Jacob Misiorowski (MIL) against a shorthanded Twins lineup, with Cam Schlittler (NYY) and Jesus Luzardo (PHI) rounding out a three-arm top tier that lands in roughly 80% of his 150 FanDuel entries. His cash game pairs Misiorowski with Kumar Rocker (TEX), a matchup play built entirely on Baltimore's strikeout-prone lineup, and he calls Ryan Gusto (MIA) a fair swap in that spot. His bats follow the weather: a Chicago Cubs stack against Kansas City starter Randy Dobnak, whose sub-1.00 ERA he expects to collapse, plus heavy Boston exposure against the Athletics. The full pitcher board, the stack table and the cash lineup logic are below.
- Jacob Misiorowski (MIL) vs. Minnesota is the top projection on the slate, with a 20% bump on his median fantasy-point projection over the next-best arms and 10-plus strikeouts in four of his last five starts.
- Cam Schlittler (NYY) vs. Atlanta and Jesus Luzardo (PHI) vs. Toronto complete the three-arm ceiling tier.
- Kumar Rocker (TEX) vs. Baltimore is the cash-game value: the Orioles' lineup today carries a combined 26.4% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching.
- Chicago Cubs against Randy Dobnak is the stack of the day, backed by near-90 heat and a breeze toward left-center at Kauffman Stadium.
- Boston Red Sox against J.T. Ginn keeps showing up in his builds, riding what EMac counts as 30 wins in their last 36 games.
Watch The Video
EMac walks through the full Sunday board live below — the three-ace pitching tier, the Baltimore lineup number that talked him into a pitcher he doesn't even like, and the FanDuel and DraftKings portfolio builds as he actually entered them.
Pitching: A Three-Arm Ceiling Tier, Then A Cliff
The show opened where the projections do. Misiorowski, Schlittler and Luzardo are all five-figure salaries, and EMac expects about 80% of his 150 FanDuel entries to carry one of the three.
| Pitcher | Team | Matchup | EMac's read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jacob Misiorowski | MIL | vs. MIN | Top median fantasy-point projection, 20% clear of the next tier; 10+ strikeouts in four of his last five starts |
| Cam Schlittler | NYY | vs. ATL | 11 K/9 ranks fifth in baseball, with Misiorowski (13.8) and Dylan Cease (13.1) among the arms ahead of him |
| Jesus Luzardo | PHI | vs. TOR | Toronto's Sunday lineup is unusually strikeout-happy for a low-strikeout team |
Misiorowski is the interesting case, because the matchup argues against him and EMac plays him anyway. Minnesota does not strike out much, and without Byron Buxton the lineup shows only two bats at a 24%-or-higher strikeout rate, Royce Lewis and Ryan Kreidler. Lewis brings real thump for this lineup (13 home runs and a .179 ISO against righties on the season), so the profile is more "grind out five innings" than "double-digit strikeouts." The counterweights: nobody on the slate matches Misiorowski's swing-and-miss, and his fantasy-point-per-dollar value still outpaces everything until you fall all the way down the salary scale. The caveat EMac flagged is the pitch count. Everything Misiorowski throws is a stressor pitch at 101-102 mph, he lives on a roughly 95-pitch limit, and the quality start is never guaranteed.
Schlittler's case is cleaner. Atlanta offers two legitimate strikeout targets in Matt Olson (24%) and Austin Riley, who carries a 31.2% strikeout rate against fellow righties and has slid all the way to eighth in the order during a down year (a .145 ISO on the season). The strikeouts are the target with Riley, not a dead bat: his power actually ticks up against righties (.165 ISO), so the swing-and-miss is what Schlittler attacks. Luzardo's edge is subtler: Toronto rarely strikes out, but today's lineup runs out Kazuma Okamoto, Josh Smith and Davis Schneider as high-strikeout bats, and the team has struck out in double digits in three of its last seven games. The power risk is minimal too. By EMac's rundown, Okamoto is the only bat in the lineup with even average power (a .175 ISO in righty-lefty matchups), Ernie Clement sits at .145, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is down to a .103 ISO against lefties.
The projections, ownership numbers and fantasy-point-per-dollar values behind that board come from the Stokastic MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub, the same screens the show runs live; the strikeout splits and team game logs are EMac's own cross-checking. Code MLBLBL takes 10% off any MLB or All Access package.
The Value Tier: Where The Strikeout Matchups Live
Three expensive aces force the question underneath, and this is where EMac's promised number arrives. The Orioles' lineup, once it finally posted, combines for a 26.4% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching, with seven of the nine hitters at 24% or higher. Only Jackson Holliday (23%) and Leody Taveras (22.4%) sit below the line. That is the entire case for Kumar Rocker, who has barely a 20% strikeout rate across roughly 700-750 batters faced over the last two seasons, and whose season line (4.46 ERA, 8.4 K/9, 1.3 HR/9) says the same thing. "I don't like Kumar Rocker," EMac said, before putting him in his cash lineup anyway. The matchup is the play, not the pitcher.
| Pitcher | Team | Matchup | The case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kumar Rocker | TEX | vs. BAL | Baltimore's lineup combines for a 26.4% strikeout rate vs. righties; EMac's cash pairing with Misiorowski |
| Ryan Gusto | MIA | vs. LAA | Four Angels at 26%+ strikeout rates, led by Zach Neto (33%) and Adam Frazier (32%) |
| Joey Cantillo | CLE | at CWS | A 28% strikeout rate vs. righties across two seasons; five White Sox bats qualify as strikeout candidates, with rain-delay risk in Chicago |
| Jared Jones | PIT | vs. NYM | Tournament-only efficiency play on a roughly 80-pitch leash |
| Grant Holmes | ATL | at NYY | $6,600 against six Yankees at 23%+ strikeout rates |
Gusto mirrors Rocker almost exactly: a roughly 20% strikeout rate across 600 batters over two seasons, a season line to match (4.78 ERA, 7.9 K/9, 1.1 HR/9), and a rescue arriving via an Angels lineup that hands him Neto at cleanup and Frazier in the nine-hole. EMac is fine with either arm in the same lineup slot. Cantillo's superpower is striking out righties (28% last season, 27.7% this year, nearly 700 combined batters), and the White Sox oblige with five strikeout candidates, including leadoff man Brenton Doyle, Munetaka Murakami, Randal Grichuk and both Montgomerys, Braden and Colson, while the bottom third of the order offers almost no power at all. The one warning on Cantillo is the sky: the slate's only weather concern is in Chicago, where storms between 2 and 3 p.m. make a delayed start the likely outcome. Jones gets by on efficiency in the sixth inning range, but Pittsburgh has capped him near 80 pitches in his return from the elbow injury that cost him all of last season, and EMac would not be surprised by a shutdown within weeks, so he stays a tournament piece against a Mets lineup with four bats at 24%-plus strikeout rates. Holmes is "definitely in play" at $6,600, with the one real risk being Yankees left-handed power; he has allowed a .188 ISO across 270 matchups against lefties.
The fades were just as direct. Matthew Boyd at $8,500 is not trustworthy in Kansas City's conditions; EMac would sooner roll the dice on Rocker or Connor Prielipp, who has been solid for a rookie even if the Brewers matchup caps the excitement. Davis Martin has 17 strikeouts in 25 innings over his last five starts with 23 runs allowed; he's playable only as an SP2 on the five-game DraftKings late slate, and EMac isn't targeting him even there. Sean Manaea is simply fine at $7,200, while Grayson Rodriguez earned nothing more than a token 5% in the DraftKings build.
The Weather Points At The Bats
The same conditions that scare EMac off Boyd are the reason his stacks live where they do. With no Coors Field and no Sutter Health Park on the board, the Sims have exactly two environments they can lean into: St. Louis, forecast at 90 degrees with a 10-15 mph breeze out to left field, and Kansas City, in near-identical heat with a slightly stronger wind toward left-center at Kauffman Stadium. EMac expects the simulations to keep surfacing the offenses in those two parks all afternoon, and he treats that as the day's map rather than a problem: it is exactly why Boyd at $8,500 in that air was an easy pass while the Cubs bats in that same park headline his stacks.
Stacks: Cubs First, Boston Everywhere
Start with the regression call in Kansas City.
| Stack | Opposing pitcher | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago Cubs | Randy Dobnak (KC) | The popular stack, and deservedly so; Dobnak's results can't hold |
| Boston Red Sox | J.T. Ginn (ATH) | Heavy in EMac's builds; 30 wins in the last 36 games by his count |
| Philadelphia Phillies | Shane Bieber (TOR) | Bieber's baserunner luck is due to catch up with him |
| St. Louis Cardinals | Michael Lorenzen (COL) | Great matchup, cold bats; the field's 5% interest is about right |
Dobnak is the story here. Across four starts he has struck out 11 batters in 21.1 innings while walking nine, and he has allowed one home run and two total runs. EMac's verdict: a pitcher with that strikeout-to-walk profile "simply should not have a sub-one ERA," and the regression, when it lands in a 90-degree wind-aided park, should be ugly. The regression call is why the Cubs are popping in ownership and why he built his own cash stack there rather than fighting the field.
Boston's case is the collision EMac kept circling: a Red Sox team he describes as a team of destiny, with 30 wins in their last 36 games by his count, against a starter he concedes can survive the matchup but whose profile leans the wrong way. Ginn brings a 49% ground-ball rate, yet three of his five worst starts came at home in Sutter Health Park, and now he takes the road trip to Fenway against the hottest team in baseball. Philadelphia against Bieber is the luck fade. Since returning from his elbow trouble (Tommy John in April 2024, then a roughly 10-week shutdown for inflammation this year), Bieber allowed 11 baserunners in his last start and gave up one run, and 15 baserunners against Washington with four runs. The strikeouts have not come back, so he is not bailing himself out forever. EMac's home run call of the day even lives in this game: Kyle Schwarber, batting leadoff as he has for most of his career, hitting his second homer since the Home Run Derby. St. Louis is the cautionary row. Lorenzen has pitched like he brings Coors Field on the road with him, but the Cardinals have scored more than three runs just three times in their last 13 games, so their modest 5% popularity is, in EMac's words, probably appropriate.
One structural note: with Misiorowski, Luzardo and Schlittler towering over the slate, EMac found no direct-leverage stack he liked against any of the three, and beyond that trio the popularity numbers barely reach double digits, so there was no leverage worth buying anywhere. For the mechanics behind that choice, see our MLB DFS stacking guide and MLB DFS correlation strategy guide.
Worked Example: The DraftKings Cash Build
EMac's cash lineup is the whole show in miniature. Misiorowski anchors it, and the 26.4% Baltimore strikeout number is what made Rocker the second pitcher instead of a mid-priced arm, freeing salary for bats. The hitting core is a four-man Cubs stack against Dobnak, completed by Michael Conforto over Owen Caissie specifically because Conforto plus Dansby Swanson turned three Cubs into four. He passed on Pete Crow-Armstrong at his price and saved money in the outfield instead. The same logic scaled to his tournament portfolio: 150 lineups on FanDuel (slightly under the field on Misiorowski and Schlittler, over on Luzardo) and 50 on DraftKings, where the build's first pass spat out 90% Misiorowski before he walked it all the way back to match the field, redistributing that exposure to Gusto at 25% with Rocker and Connor Prielipp at 20% each. Sizing a portfolio this way is the same math covered in our MLB DFS multi-entry strategy guide.
The Through-Line: Chalk You Believe In Cash, Chalk You Dodge In Tournaments
EMac knows exactly how chalky this board is. Asked late in the show where pure differentiation lives, his answer was blunt: don't play Misiorowski, and don't play the Cubs. He is doing both anyway in his cash games, because the 26.4% Baltimore strikeout number and Dobnak's borrowed ERA are edges worth taking at face value in a double-up; the fade-the-field thinking belongs in his 50 DraftKings tournament entries, where walking Misiorowski back from that first-pass 90% to field-level exposure already leaves room to be different on purpose. Only a few MLB Sundays remain before the show hands the weekends to NFL season, and EMac posts his top stacks and pitchers for both the main and late slates free on Tails, including the Sunday afternoon slate almost nobody covers. For the running board, see yesterday's edition and our MLB DFS picks hub.
Build Your Own Lineups
Every number EMac argued from today — the 20% projection gap at the top of the pitcher board, the ownership he trimmed by hand, the two hot-weather offenses the Sims kept surfacing — came out of the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims. The main slate may already be locked by the time you read this, but the same screens run for tonight's late slate and every slate after it, including the Sunday afternoon window EMac covers when almost nobody else does. Build the next one with code MLBLBL for 10% off any MLB or All Access package.