MLB DFS Live Before Lock: Gavin Williams At $10,700
August 14, 2026
Friday's 14-game MLB slate rewards conviction at the very top of the pitcher pool and paying up in exactly one spot on the hitting side. Gavin Williams (CLE) is close to a lock-button play on both sites, but the real edge on FanDuel is a Texas Rangers stack priced so low it borders on a mistake. Host Eric Lindquist builds both boards live on the show, embedded below, and closes the loop on why he's willing to pitch against the same Texas bats he's stacking somewhere else on his card.
Gavin Williams — one of the featured players on today's slate.
Watch The Video
Friday's full FanDuel and DraftKings pools get built live below, including the case for going overweight on Gavin Williams, the Washington Nationals stack the Sims like best, and why the Rangers' FanDuel pricing is "not even close" the best stack on the board.
The Quick Answer
Gavin Williams (CLE) against San Diego is the top pitcher play on both sites, priced at $10,700 on FanDuel and $10,200 on DraftKings, and Lindquist is targeting north of 62% DraftKings exposure. The Sims' favorite stack of the day is Washington against 36-year-old Robert Stock (NYM), and the best price angle anywhere on the board is a Texas Rangers stack on FanDuel that's barely $3,000-$3,400 a player. The full pitcher pool, the stack math on both sites, and why he's under the field on a hot Atlanta Braves stack are below.
- Gavin Williams (CLE) vs. San Diego is the top pitcher play on both sites: $10,700 on FanDuel (27% projected owned), $10,200 on DraftKings, behind a 45.1% strikeout rate and a 1.48 SIERA over his last month.
- Washington Nationals against Robert Stock (NYM), a 36-year-old making just his sixth career start, is the Sims' favorite stack of the day.
- Texas Rangers against Gage Jump (ATH) is the single best price angle on the board: Wyatt Langford, Corey Seager and Ezequiel Duran all sit at $3,000-$3,400 on FanDuel.
- Gage Jump (ATH) is the top DraftKings leverage arm at $7,000, projected at just 13% owned.
- Lindquist is under the field on the Atlanta Braves stack against Brandon Pfaadt (ARI), the board's second-most popular FanDuel stack, despite Pfaadt not allowing more than two earned runs in a start since April 25.
Pitchers: Williams Is The Play, Gage Jump Is The Leverage
Build lineups against this same pool with the Stokastic MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub, the same screens the show runs live.
| Pitcher | Team | Matchup | FanDuel price | DraftKings price | The read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gavin Williams | CLE | vs. SD | $10,700 (27% owned) | $10,200 | 45.1% K rate, 3.5% walk rate, 1.48 SIERA over the last month; Lindquist calls the 9.7% top-pitcher-percentage projection light given the floor |
| Yoshinobu Yamamoto | LAD | vs. MIL | Top tier | Top tier | More strikeout equity than Sale against a Brewers lineup that walks at the highest clip in baseball, even though Milwaukee owns the sport's best record |
| Chris Sale | ATL | vs. ARI | Top tier | Top tier | Lower K-rate than Yamamoto, but priced down because the market already respects Arizona's third-best wRC+ vs. LHP this season |
| Gage Jump | ATH | vs. TEX | — | $7,000 (13% owned) | 32.4% K rate over the last month pitching at Sutter Health Park's launch-pad dimensions; Lindquist wants north of 30% exposure |
| Peter Lambert | HOU | vs. SEA | — | $9,000 | A 21% swing-strike rate on his changeup makes him brutal on lefties, and Seattle is rolling out a lineup that's lefty-heavy outside Julio Rodríguez and Randy Arozarena |
| Kyle Freeland | COL | vs. SF | — | $6,700 | The Sims like him near 17% behind a well-bought pitching-outs prop; Lindquist is landing closer to 10% and spending the savings on Gage Jump instead |
Williams is the one Lindquist keeps coming back to. He's been the best pitcher in baseball not named the Miz over the last month, carrying a 0.64 WHIP in that stretch, and he's a full-freight price on a two-pitcher DraftKings site where he can't be forced to single-handedly win the slate. "I don't know what to tell you on FanDuel, I would be playing near-lock-button amounts of Gavin Williams," Lindquist said, arguing the field's 9.7% top-pitcher-percentage number undersells a pitcher with this high a floor.
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FanDuel: A Texas Rangers Stack Too Cheap To Pass Up
FanDuel's pitcher pool is straightforward: Williams over the field, full stop. That's exactly why the hitting side is where Lindquist is willing to get different. Texas is priced so far off market that he's rostering the Rangers in 100% of his single FanDuel lineup, calling it "not even close" the best stack on the slate.
| Hitter | Team | Position | FanDuel price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wyatt Langford | TEX | LF | $3,300 |
| Corey Seager | TEX | SS | $3,400 |
| Ezequiel Duran | TEX | SS/2B | $3,000 (projected batting 3rd) |
| Elias Díaz | TEX | C | $3,300 |
It's an admittedly contradictory spot: Lindquist is pitching Gage Jump against these same Texas bats in some DraftKings builds while stacking them here. He owns the tension outright: the Rangers' FanDuel pricing is simply too far off to leave on the table, and Jump's $7,000 DraftKings price is too cheap to fade either. On DraftKings, the Rangers stack around Jake Burger ($4,100) and Langford ($4,900) grades out as a chalky, positive-leverage piece rather than the auto-include it is on FanDuel.
DraftKings Stacks: Washington Is The Favorite, Atlanta Is A Fade
The Sims' favorite stack of the day is Washington against Robert Stock (NYM), a 36-year-old journeyman making just his sixth career MLB start, grading out at an 86 stuff-plus with an inflated home-run-to-fly-ball rate in that tiny sample. Even without James Wood, Curtis Mead and Luis Garcia Jr. in the lineup, Washington's remaining bats carry a 105 wRC+ and .178 ISO against right-handed pitching since the trade deadline, sixth-best in baseball in that stretch.
| Hitter | Team | Position |
|---|---|---|
| CJ Abrams | WAS | SS |
| Abimelec Ortiz | WAS | 1B |
| Brady House | WAS | 3B/DH |
| Daylen Lile | WAS | LF |
| Jose Tena | WAS | DH/2B |
Abimelec Ortiz is the name driving the stack. He went deep a day earlier and Lindquist calls him "out of control right now," even with shortstop as deep a position as it's been all year: CJ Abrams is sharing the pool with Bobby Witt Jr. (KC), Corey Seager (TEX) and Zach Neto (LAA).
Two secondary angles round out the DraftKings build. Angels bats, Mike Trout (LAA) up top, get preference against Kansas City's Seth Lugo, a right-handed-heavy matchup Lindquist likes in single-entry. And a lower-owned San Francisco Giants stack (Jonah Cox, Rafael Devers, Bryce Eldridge) against Freeland is in the mix as a contrarian dart, even if it's a lineup Lindquist admits he doesn't know top to bottom. On the fade side, Atlanta is the board's second-most popular FanDuel stack against Brandon Pfaadt (ARI), but Lindquist is staying under the field there — Pfaadt hasn't allowed more than two earned runs in a start since April 25, even though his last two starts carried ugly 6.28 and 5.45 xFIP marks that say the results are running hotter than the process.
Worked Example: Two Boards, One Shared Logic
The through-line connecting both sites is the same: find where the price is broken and load up there. On FanDuel, that's Texas at $3,000-$3,400 a player, cheap enough that Williams-plus-Rangers fits in a single build with room to spare. On DraftKings, it's Gage Jump's $7,000 tag funding exposure to both him and the Nationals stack in the same lineup pool, while Freeland's $6,700 price is good enough to take a haircut from the field's 17% number down to 10% and put the difference on Jump instead. For more on building a stack around a value arm, see our guide on MLB DFS stacking strategy, and for spreading pitcher exposure across a 20-max pool the way Lindquist does with Williams, Yamamoto and Sale, see our MLB DFS multi-entry strategy guide.
The Through-Line: Pay For The Arm, Then Find The Broken Price
Friday's slate is a reminder that the two hardest DFS instincts, paying up for the safest arm and getting aggressive on a broken price, aren't in conflict. Williams is the safest pitcher on the board and still worth going near-max on; Texas is priced so far below its true talent that it's worth 100% exposure in the same breath. Washington against Robert Stock ties the two together on DraftKings, a stack good enough to fund the top of the pitcher pool without needing a discount arm anywhere else in the build. For the full board through lock, see our MLB DFS picks hub and yesterday's MLB DFS Live Before Lock for August 13.
Build Your Own Lineups
Every projection on Friday's show came out of the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims: track whether the field catches up to the Texas pricing on FanDuel, watch how far Gage Jump's ownership climbs on DraftKings, and see whether Washington holds up as the top stack once lineups lock. Try it on tonight's slate with code MLBLBL for 10% off any MLB or All Access package.
More on this: MLB DFS Hub: Every Live Stokastic MLB Page · MLB DFS Picks Today (9/16): Yusei Kikuchi's 31-Point Leverage Anchors DraftKings · MLB DFS Picks Today (9/16)