MLB DFS Picks Today 7/8: Pay Down Arms, Load Phillies

Some slates ask you to spend up for an ace and pray. Wednesday's July 8 MLB main slate is the other kind: a no-early-window, one-big-board night where the smartest DraftKings build starts by spending as little as possible on pitching. That is exactly the angle Dave Loughran and Josh Ingram took on Stokastic's Perfect Lineup show, and it is the thread we pull on here. Pay down at both starting pitchers, then take the salary that frees up and pour it into a power stack the rest of the field can't afford to build around. Hold onto that idea, because the two cheap arms are not punts. They are the down payment on the whole lineup.

In Summary

• Strategy: pay down at both pitchers to unlock a mega-stack, a "get weird" midweek build on a main-only slate.
• Pitcher Value Plays: Christian Scott (NYM) at $7,200 vs. the Royals and Connor Prielipp (MIN) at $6,900 vs. the Guardians.
• The Stack: the Philadelphia Phillies (PHI) against Chase Burns (CIN), where ISO and power are the sliver of edge.
• The Payoff: the Stokastic single-lineup Sim graded a Phillies-anchored build at a 44% simulated ROI and a 29.5% cash rate.
• Offer: 10% off Stokastic MLB with promo code PERFECT10.

Watch The Video

Watch the full build with Dave Loughran and Josh Ingram: Watch on YouTube.

The Strategy: Pay Down At Both Pitchers

The Perfect Lineup show is named for the exercise, not the promise; nobody nails the optimal build every night. The point is to read what a slate rewards, and this Wednesday it rewards discipline at pitcher (the wider framework lives in our MLB DFS strategy guide). There is no premium arm you have to have. Kyle Harrison (MIL) is $9,500 and good, but he draws a Cardinals lineup that simply does not strike out against left-handers, a 16% strikeout rate versus lefties that caps his ceiling. MacKenzie Gore (TEX) looks fine at $8,300. Davis Martin (CWS) is a sneaky mid-$8K arm against a Red Sox team that has struggled against righties all year. None of them is a necessity.

Here is the pitcher board at a glance, the two arms we buy and the pricier ones we pass on:

So instead of forcing a $9,000-plus name, we go the other way and buy two arms cheap. Every dollar saved at pitcher is a dollar we get to spend on bats, and that is the promise this build pays off later. Here are the two we land on.

Christian Scott (NYM) Vs. The Royals: The Value Arm

Christian Scott is $7,200 against a Kansas City Royals team that grades out below average across the board versus right-handed pitching. The case is not just the matchup, it is the price relative to the projection. Scott carries the third-highest DraftKings point projection in the Stokastic data, sits fourth in top-two-pitcher probability, and ranks fourth-best in value on the entire slate. Eight pitchers are more expensive than Scott on DraftKings today, and none of them clearly out-projects him. He also brings a 28% season strikeout rate and a 5.5-strikeout prop that is juiced to the over.

The row worth staring at is "fourth-best in value with the third-best raw projection," a rare combination. It means you are not sacrificing ceiling to save money; you are getting near-elite output at a mid-tier tag. There is one wrinkle to talk yourself out of. The Royals just scored 31 runs across their last two games, 16 and 15, and that total is real. But it is two games, not a trend, and chasing a two-game explosion is how you end up off the best value arm on the board. We are not fading Scott because a hot streak scared us.

Connor Prielipp (MIN) Vs. The Guardians: The Obligatory Southpaw

If Scott is the value play, Connor Prielipp at $6,900 is the closest thing this slate has to an auto-play. The reason is the team standing in the other batter's box. The Cleveland Guardians rank dead last in wRC+ (81) and dead last in wOBA (.286) against left-handed pitching, plus 29th in ISO (.110). And in a genuine departure from the contact-heavy Guardians teams of years past, they now punch out nearly 24% of the time versus lefties, the seventh-highest rate in baseball. When a serviceable southpaw draws that lineup, you play him and move to the next roster spot.

Prielipp is more than serviceable. A 24% strikeout rate, an 8% walk rate, and a 3.64 FIP are numbers you can build a lineup on, not white-knuckle through. Sort the pitchers by value and he is second on the whole slate, inside the top five in DraftKings point projection. Pair him with Scott and you have two of the better strikeout-and-value profiles on the board for less than the going rate on one mid-tier ace, which is the entire point.

The Stack: Philadelphia Phillies Vs. Chase Burns

Here is the payoff on that promise. Spending down at both pitchers leaves a pile of salary for hitters, and we spend it on the Philadelphia Phillies against Chase Burns (CIN). This is not the comfortable play, so let's be honest about the read. Burns is excellent, a top-end arm who misses a ton of bats and is drawing roughly 25% ownership, which means the field is already on him. The Phillies are 22nd in wRC+ and fifth in strikeout rate against righties, so on a lot of nights against a pitcher this good, this ends with Philly getting mowed down.

The sliver we cling to is power. Philadelphia ranks seventh in ISO, and Burns does flirt with home-run trouble against left-handed bats. That is the whole thesis of the stack: not batting average, not on-base, just the chance that a lefty-heavy lineup runs into one and the ballpark tilts a game. Kyle Schwarber (PHI) at $6,100 and Bryce Harper (PHI) at $5,600 headline the left-handed sluggers, with Brandon Marsh (PHI), Bryson Stott (PHI), and Justin Crawford (PHI) rounding out the lefty options. There is also nothing wrong with mixing in a right-handed bat like Trea Turner (PHI) at shortstop.

The leverage math is the interesting part. Philadelphia sits fifth in top-stack and fourth in ownership, so this is not some hidden gem, yet they land 13th in stack score, a real gap below where a leverage-hunter normally shops. That penalty is almost entirely about value: the Phillies are only 15th in top value because they are not cost-effective. On most builds, that markdown pushes you off a stack. On this build it does not matter, because our two cheap arms mean we do not need the bats to be cheap. We just need them to hit for power.

Worked Example: Building It In The Single-Lineup Sim

This is where the pay-down strategy stops being a theory and starts printing simulated ROI. Lock Scott and Prielipp, drop in a Phillies core (J.T. Realmuto (PHI) at catcher, Harper at first, Stott at second, Schwarber and Gabriel Rincones Jr. (PHI) in the outfield to save a touch of salary), and you are left with roughly $4,700 per spot for a third baseman, a shortstop, and an outfielder. That kind of cushion is a luxury you never get when you pay up for an ace.

Hit "complete this lineup" in the Stokastic single-lineup Sim and it fills the rest optimally. Shohei Ohtani (LAD), Eugenio Suárez (CIN), and Geraldo Perdomo (ARI) rounded out a build that graded at a 25% simulated ROI. Then one manual tweak told the story: swapping Realmuto out for Trea Turner, and letting the optimizer re-solve into Willson Contreras (BOS) and Jackson Merrill (SD), jumped the same lineup to a 44% simulated ROI and a 29.5% cash rate. The single most useful number in this whole exercise is that 44%, proof that the Phillies base, funded by two minimum-spend arms, is the skeleton of a tournament-winning lineup. From there you can spin up dozens of two- and three-man sub-stack combos that grade just as well.

One honesty note on ownership, because it doubles as the leverage read: in a full-field Sim run this morning, both Scott and Prielipp landed around 30% projected ownership, while the tools' preferred arms (Gore and Burns) came back around 60% each. So the pay-down pair is the slightly-less-owned route to a lineup the optimizer still loves. On a Wednesday main slate with no early games, that is exactly when you can afford to get weird.

Build it yourself. The Sims, projections, and single-lineup optimizer above are how the Perfect Lineup crew grades every build before it locks. Get 10% off Stokastic MLB with code PERFECT10.

Start building with Stokastic MLB Sims

Pay-Up Alternatives If You'd Rather

Not sold on spending down twice? The board still has arms. Harrison is the talent play if you think he beats that low-strikeout Cardinals lineup anyway, Davis Martin is the sneaky one against a righty-vulnerable Red Sox club, and Gore projects fine at $8,300 (the crew is fading him this time, mostly to jinx him into a good start). Any of them can anchor a more conventional build; you just lose the salary cushion that makes the Phillies stack sing.

FAQ

What is the Perfect Lineup show? It is Stokastic's daily MLB DFS build show with Dave Loughran and Josh Ingram, where they construct a tournament lineup live in the Sims and walk through the pitcher and stack decisions five days a week.

Why pay down at both pitchers on July 8? Because no premium arm is a must-play on this slate, and two cheap, high-value arms (Christian Scott and Connor Prielipp) free up enough salary to build around an expensive power stack. Call it a leverage move for a main-only Wednesday.

Who is the top stack for MLB DFS today? The Perfect Lineup build stacks the Philadelphia Phillies against Chase Burns, betting on Philadelphia's seventh-ranked ISO and Burns' vulnerability to left-handed power rather than on contact or on-base.

How do I build these lineups myself? Use the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims and projections and the single-lineup optimizer, and grab 10% off with code PERFECT10.

More on this:

• MLB DFS Hub: Every Live Stokastic MLB Page
• MLB DFS Picks Today (8/18): DraftKings & FanDuel Lineups
• MLB DFS Picks Today (8/18): Gausman Is Chalk On A 17-Point Pitching Slate

The Bottom Line

Every slate hands you a shape, and this Wednesday's shape is "no ace worth forcing, so buy leverage at the bottom of the pitcher pool and spend up on power." Christian Scott and Connor Prielipp are the arms that make the math work; the Phillies against Chase Burns are the swing you take with the money they save you. This is not the safe lineup; it is the one with a 44% Sim ROI and a real reason to exist. Build your own version in the Sims, and if you want the full toolkit behind it, take 10% off Stokastic MLB with code PERFECT10 at stokastic.com