MLB DFS 8/15: Schlittler 46% Owned, Baez $2K Bat
August 15, 2026
Saturday's 15-game MLB slate is a split one, FanDuel carved it into two separate slates, and Emac builds his early board live on this show before a second Live Before Lock airs later tonight. The pitcher decision comes down to Cam Schlittler (NYY) against a Toronto lineup that just cannot get him out, and on the hitting side one rookie minimum-salary bat, Joshua Báez (STL), works his way into practically every lineup he touches.
Cam Schlittler — one of the featured players on today's slate.
Watch The Video
Emac builds his DraftKings and FanDuel boards live on screen, walks through the pitcher pool, the top stacks, and closes out the show scrambling to fix a lineup with ten minutes to lock.
The Quick Answer
Cam Schlittler (NYY) at Toronto is the pitcher build for Saturday's early slate: 46% projected owned on DraftKings behind a league fourth-best 11.2 K/9, with seven strikeouts in each of his two 2026 starts against the Blue Jays. Logan Webb (SF) and Sean Manaea (NYM) round out the arms Emac mixed in, and Joshua Báez (STL), a $2,000 DraftKings / $2,200 FanDuel minimum-salary bat batting fifth for St. Louis, landed in every hand-built lineup. The full pitcher case, the stacks, and how the Sims-built boards came together before lock are below.
- Cam Schlittler (NYY) at Toronto: 46% projected DK owned, 4th in MLB at 11.2 K/9, seven strikeouts in each start against the Blue Jays this year; Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was out of Saturday's Toronto lineup.
- Logan Webb (SF) vs. Colorado: ten quality starts in his last 13, San Francisco -200 favorites, even with his strikeout rate down to 19% from 26% a year ago.
- Sean Manaea (NYM) vs. Washington: the Nationals are without James Wood (injured list) and already traded away Luis Garcia Jr. and Curtis Mead.
- Joshua Báez (STL) — $2,000 (DraftKings) / $2,200 (FanDuel), batting fifth: the value anchor across nearly every build.
- Top stacks: the Chicago White Sox (the only team implied for more than 4.5 runs), Yankees lefties against Toronto's bullpen, and the Giants' top four against Michael Lorenzen.
Pitchers: Schlittler Is The Chalk, Webb And Manaea Round Out The Pool
Build 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 | DK ownership | The read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cam Schlittler | NYY | at Toronto | 46% projected owned | 4th in MLB at 11.2 K/9; seven Ks in each start vs. Toronto this year; Blue Jays rank 19th in scoring over their last 11-5 stretch and are without Vladimir Guerrero Jr. |
| Logan Webb | SF | vs. Colorado | — | 10 quality starts in his last 13 (a FanDuel bonus target); Giants are -200 favorites, pointing to length into the 6th; K rate down to 19% from 26% last year |
| Sean Manaea | NYM | vs. Washington | — | Nationals missing James Wood (IL), plus traded-away Luis Garcia Jr. and Curtis Mead; priced as a value arm |
Schlittler is the pitcher Emac keeps coming back to. Toronto's lineup has retooled around some injuries this year, and even with an 11-5 record in its most recent stretch the offense still ranks 19th in scoring with the second-fewest runs in the league on the season. Two Blue Jays carry real strikeout risk against him, Kazuma Okamoto (32% strikeout rate) and Brandon Valenzuela (27%), and the bottom of the order, Josh Smith and Charles McAdoo, has jumped from a 27.1% strikeout rate last year to 31.4% this season in a small sample. With Guerrero out of the lineup, it is not an imposing group to attack.
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The Value Anchor: Joshua Báez (STL)
Joshua Báez (STL) · $2,000 (DraftKings) · $2,200 (FanDuel) · batting 5th vs. Matthew Boyd
Báez was a late addition to St. Louis's lineup card and ended up in every one of Emac's hand-built single-lineup Sim outputs on the day, DraftKings and FanDuel both. At the minimum salary and hitting fifth, he is exactly the kind of price break a 15-game slate hands out, and Emac graded the Cardinals-Cubs matchup itself as a wash, Boyd has real strikeout upside and St. Louis isn't a particularly good offense, which makes rostering the cheapest bat in the lineup the easier way in.
Top Stacks: White Sox Lead The Implied Totals, Yankees Attack The Bullpen
| Stack | Opponent | Why it's in play |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | at Detroit (Troy Melton) | The only team on the board with an implied total above 4.5 runs |
| New York Yankees (Lefties) | at Toronto | Opener Braydon Fisher into Simeon Woods Richardson; Ryan McMahon plays well down the order with Toronto's lone lefty reliever likely unavailable after throwing on back-to-back days |
| San Francisco Giants (Top 4) | vs. Colorado (Michael Lorenzen) | The bottom of the order grades poorly, but the top four, Rafael Devers included, attack a pitcher who isn't among the sport's best |
Emac considered a stack or a pitcher play against Anthony Kay (CWS) with Detroit on the other side, but passed. Kay has allowed more than four earned runs just once in his last seven starts and doesn't carry the same strikeout ceiling Schlittler does, so that arm slot went to Manaea instead.
Building The Board: Sims, A Mad Scramble, And Two Sites' Worth Of Results
Emac hand-built five hand-built FanDuel single-lineup Sims before the show, and Manaea showed up in four of the five. On DraftKings, he ran a 50-lineup single-entry build with heavy exposure to his three preferred arms, dialing one up to 40% since it was already showing up in nearly every one of his hand-built lineups, and used the tool's ownership sliders to lean into Rafael Devers and get differentiated with Ryan McMahon. On FanDuel's smaller split slate, he built a 60-lineup, single-entry-cap pool anchored on Michael McGreevy.
The single-lineup Sim has been carrying its weight lately: Emac turned $300 into $1,100 (an $800 net gain) in an on-air scramble a week earlier, cleared roughly $1,300 across three sites the following Sunday, then finished first out of about 22,000 entries in a quarter-dollar tournament and second in a nickel tournament with roughly 40,000 lineups the same week.
Build lineups against Saturday night's slate, or Sunday's card, with the same Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, ownership and Top Stacks tool in the DataHub, plus 10% off any MLB DFS or Props package with code MLBLBL.
Bottom Line
This is a Schlittler slate: a beatable Toronto lineup missing Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a pitcher with a real strikeout floor against them, and a $2,000 Cardinals bat in Joshua Báez to fund the build around him. Webb and Manaea give the pool two more directions depending on how much salary you have left, and the White Sox, Yankees lefties, and Giants' top four round out the stacks worth attacking. A second Live Before Lock airs at 6:30 PM ET tonight for the late slate; see yesterday's Live Before Lock for August 14 and the full MLB DFS picks hub for more.
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)