MLB DFS Picks Today: Perfect Lineup For July 24

Dave Loughran and Josh Engleman close out the work week with a 10-game Friday slate, and the build they land on leans on price where the data backs it up rather than chasing ownership. Loughran locks in Logan Webb (SF) at home in the sport's best pitcher's park, then pairs him with a true coin flip in Dustin May (STL). Engleman's stack goes to the Athletics (ATH), a team that hasn't hit for power all season lined up against a starter who serves up plenty of it. None of the individual pieces look obviously correct in isolation. Run through the Stokastic single-lineup Sim, the first version of that build graded out at a 45% simulated ROI — and one swap at shortstop pushed it to 54%. Hold that number; the swap that did it is the payoff at the end.

Logan Webb — one of the featured players on today's slate.

In Summary

• SP1: Logan Webb (SF) at home vs. the Los Angeles Angels at Oracle Park, a pricey lock Loughran calls hard to fade.
• SP2: Dustin May (STL) at home vs. the Cincinnati Reds, the higher-variance pitcher Loughran pairs with Webb in the actual build.
• The Stack: the Athletics (ATH), targeting lefty bats against Minnesota's Zebby Matthews, led by Tyler Soderstrom (ATH) at $4,600.
• The Payoff: swapping in Jacob Wilson (ATH) at shortstop to free up a two-man Toronto Blue Jays pair took the Stokastic single-lineup Sim from a 45% simulated ROI to a 54% simulated ROI.
• Offer: 10% off Stokastic MLB with promo code PERFECT10 — the last day the show is running this discount.

Watch The Video

Watch Dave Loughran and Josh Engleman build the full lineup live in the Sims: Watch on YouTube. Catch up on last Friday's Perfect Lineup build or check tonight's Live Before Lock update for lineup news closer to first pitch.

Logan Webb (SF): Paying Up Because Every Box Checks

Webb is going to be popular tonight, and Loughran plays him anyway. "He legitimately checks every box that I'm looking for," he says, and the only box Webb doesn't check is ownership — which Loughran notes isn't even that high to begin with. The matchup is the first piece: the Angels carry a 24.7% strikeout rate against right-handers, rank bottom-three in the league in wRC+ against right-handed pitching, and sit bottom-five in isolated power against righties. The park is the second piece. Oracle Park is one of the sport's more extreme power suppressors — it grades at a 90 home-run factor, ten points below a neutral park — and it's running an elite overall projection tonight.

That combination makes Webb the highest fantasy-point projection of any pitcher on the entire 10-game slate, and not by a little — a full DraftKings point clear of the field. The prop market backs it: Webb's strikeout line sits at 5.5 with heavy juice to the over, and he carries an 18.5 outs prop on top of it, evidence the market expects him to work deep. He's gone seven-plus innings in every home start since returning from the injured list, which is exactly the volume a pitcher needs to cash a number like that. The cheaper alternative was Bryce Miller (SEA), sitting roughly 10% less owned after a rough recent stretch — Loughran considered him but wasn't in love with the matchup enough to pass on Webb.

Dustin May (STL): The Roller Coaster Loughran Boards Anyway

The second pitcher is the one Loughran frames as a real risk. "You might puke, you might get stuck upside down, it may just completely fall off the tracks," he says of Dustin May (STL) — but he boards anyway because the underlying numbers are real. May carries the third-highest projection of any pitcher on tonight's slate, the ninth-highest price on the board, and ranks third in top-two-pitcher probability and value at $7,800. He's facing a Cincinnati Reds team that is dead last among active rosters in wRC+ against right-handed pitching and carries the fourth-highest strikeout rate in that split at nearly 24%.

The park case is the part that surprises. Busch Stadium doesn't have Oracle Park's reputation, but its three-year rolling park factor tells a similar story — a 98 home-run factor, close enough to Oracle's 90 that both rank among the more pitcher-friendly venues in the sport, not the hitter-friendly one its history might suggest. May's home splits this year back it up directly: 0.16 home runs allowed per nine innings, essentially nothing, a 23% strikeout rate, and a .278 weighted on-base average allowed. That's the case for pairing a legitimate boom-or-bust arm with the safer lock in Webb rather than doubling up on chalk.

The Athletics Stack: Hunting Lefty Power Against Zebby Matthews

Engleman's stack call starts before he ever hears Loughran's pitcher read. "Looking in the Stokastic data hub and looking at the Top Stacks tool, this is the best option at the moment," he says of the Athletics (ATH), who sit third in top-stack rating, third in top value, and second in stack score against Minnesota's Zebby Matthews (MIN) — yet only fourth in ownership, with the field bunched tightly enough that could easily shift. The Athletics rank seventh in wRC+ against right-handed pitching this season, a real strength, but sit 28th in isolated power in that same split. Matthews solves that mismatch for them: he has been blasted by left-handed bats all year and last year alike, giving up power almost every time a lefty bat steps in.

That's the signal Engleman builds around, prioritizing the Athletics' left-handed bats over their righty pieces. Tyler Soderstrom (ATH) at $4,600 is the anchor — cheap enough to fund the rest of the roster — alongside Carlos Cortes (ATH) and Tommy White (ATH), with Jeff McNeil (ATH) and catcher Shea Langeliers (ATH) rounding out the group before filling the remaining righty bats around them. "I think we have massive home run potential, even for a team that hasn't really flashed that so far this season," Engleman says — the Athletics' power grade is a season-long number, not a tonight number, and tonight's starter is the reason it doesn't apply.

Worked Example: One Swap At Shortstop Changes The Grade

The crew locks Webb and May at pitcher, then Langeliers, McNeil, White, Soderstrom, and Cortes as the five-man Athletics core, with roughly $4,500 per remaining roster spot left to fill first base, shortstop, and one outfield spot. Clicking "complete this lineup" in the Stokastic single-lineup Sim auto-fills those slots off the projections, landing Gunnar Henderson (BAL) at shortstop and Julio Rodríguez (SEA) in the outfield, with $100 left unused on the cap.

Running that build against a full contest-sized player pool graded it at a 45% simulated ROI, a 2% chance to win, and a 34.5% cash rate. Then the crew made one change: swapping in the Athletics' own Jacob Wilson (ATH) at shortstop freed up enough salary to add a two-man Toronto Blue Jays pair in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (TOR) and George Springer (TOR), plus Royce Lewis (MIN) at third base — with the same $100 left on the table. Re-running the Sim on that version returned a 54% simulated ROI, a 2% chance to win, and a 33% cash rate.

Both versions kept the same Webb-May pitching core and the same five-man Athletics anchor. The nine-point jump in projected ROI came entirely from one position swap opening the door to a second correlated pair — the exact kind of iteration the single-lineup Sim is built to run in seconds rather than by hand.

Build and stress-test your own version with the MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub, the same tools behind every read in tonight's build.

Last day for the discount. The Sims, projections, and single-lineup optimizer above are how the Perfect Lineup crew grades every build before it locks. Today is the last day the show is running its current discount before it scales back — get 10% off any Stokastic MLB package, weekly or monthly, core or max, with code PERFECT10.

Start building with Stokastic MLB Sims

FAQ

What is the Perfect Lineup show? It's Stokastic's daily MLB DFS build show, run by Dave Loughran and Josh Engleman, where Loughran sets the pitchers, Engleman sets the stack, and the two hand the build to the Stokastic single-lineup Sim to grade and refine it live.

Why pay up for Logan Webb instead of fading him for ownership? Because the matchup, park, and prop market all point the same direction: an Angels lineup that's bottom-three in wRC+ and bottom-five in ISO against right-handers, moved into one of the sport's most extreme power-suppressing parks, with a strikeout and outs prop that only the slate's best-projected arms carry.

Who is the top stack for MLB DFS tonight? The Perfect Lineup build stacks the Athletics against Minnesota's Zebby Matthews, prioritizing left-handed bats like Tyler Soderstrom, Carlos Cortes, and Tommy White because Matthews has been vulnerable to lefty power all season.

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 before the discount ends today.

The Bottom Line

Tonight's build only makes sense as a pair of bets working together: Webb's price is the safe half, backed by a matchup and a park that both grade elite, while May is the calculated variance play the crew is willing to take because his home numbers back up the risk. The Athletics stack ties both pitchers' logic together — a team without much season-long power that becomes a real home-run threat against the one starter who can't get lefties out. And the worked example is the real lesson: the first lineup the optimizer hands you is a starting point, not the answer — one shortstop swap turned a 45% simulated ROI into 54% without touching the pitching core at all. See the same builds in the Stokastic MLB DFS picks hub and grab 10% off Stokastic MLB with code PERFECT10 at stokastic.com before the discount ends today.