MLB DFS Picks Today: DraftKings Top Plays for Monday, June 22

In Summary

Monday rolls in with a big MLB DFS main slate, and the Perfect Lineup crew, Josh Ingram on stacks and Dave Loughran on pitchers, built one DraftKings tournament lineup from the top down. The short version: anchor on Kyle Bradish ($8,500) against a gutted Angels lineup, punt SP2 down to Anthony Kay ($6,500) in a strikeout-friendly spot against Cleveland, then pay all the way up for a five-man Los Angeles Dodgers stack against Minnesota's Zebby Matthews. From there the Stokastic single-lineup Sims fill the last spots and grade the build, which is exactly how I run my own slate. This is an applied GPP build, not a primer, so if you are still learning roster construction, start with the DFS 101 beginner guide first.

Watch the Video

The full breakdown, including the live Sims walkthrough where the crew toggles players in and out, is in the episode below. Watch on YouTube.

SP1: Kyle Bradish Sits Atop a Deep Pitching Slate

This is a strong SP1 board, but Kyle Bradish ($8,500) is the cleanest spot at the top. The case starts with the opponent. The Angels' active roster grades out poorly: bottom 10 in wOBA, ISO, and wRC+, the seventh-highest strikeout rate, and the lowest walk rate in baseball against right-handed pitching at 6.4%. Free strikeouts and no free passes is the profile you want behind a pitcher you are paying up for.

There is a double-edged wrinkle. With Mike Trout on the IL and Jorge Soler out of the lineup, the Angels lose two bats that both carry an ISO north of .200 against righties, so the power ceiling drops. The flip side is those two also owned a combined 29% strikeout rate against righties, so pulling them slightly lowers the team's whiff rate. Net it out and you still have a thin, below-average offense, which is exactly the matchup that lets a streaky arm play up.

Bradish himself has been all over the map this season, which is precisely why you lean on the projections, the props, and the matchup rather than the gut. He is coming off a 12-strikeout game and carries a 6.5-strikeout prop at his $8,500 price. In the Stokastic Data Hub he sits second in projected fantasy points, second in top-two-pitcher probability, and top five in value percentage, which is loud for an arm in this price tier.

He will be popular, and the crew has him as one of the higher-owned plays on the slate. That is not a reason to fade. On a chalky pitcher you can simply run him at twice the field's exposure and still differentiate, because beating the field by going heavier is leverage too, not just fading down. There are real ways to get off Bradish if you want them, and they are good pitchers in their own right:

If you want to get different at SP1, those are the levers. The build itself rides with Bradish, because the crew went weird at SP2 instead.

SP2: Punt to Anthony Kay in a Strikeout Spot

The SP2 philosophy here is the one that wins tournaments: get comfortable being uncomfortable, or you end up in the same builds as everyone else. Cheap second pitchers fail plenty, because they are not elite arms and sometimes the spot is wrong. The hit rate justifies it anyway. On Friday the crew's cheap SP2 turned 11 strikeouts and three runs allowed into 30 DraftKings points, and that is the whole reason you chase strikeout upside at a punt price: the whiffs survive a little traffic on the bases.

Tonight that arm is Anthony Kay ($6,500) against Cleveland. Kay is nowhere near elite, and he is not priced like it, but the matchup carries him. He has a 4.5-strikeout prop with heavy juice to the over, sits second in value in the Data Hub, and still lands top six in projected fantasy points. Cleveland is the reason. Their active roster is currently without Jose Ramirez, Angel Martinez, and Chase DeLauter, and against left-handed pitching that lineup grades out near the floor of the league: the second-highest strikeout rate against southpaws at 25% (behind only Baltimore), 29th in wRC+ and ISO, and dead last in wOBA. When the price, the prop, and the matchup all point the same way, you pull the trigger.

If you want a second cheap lefty to consider, the same logic points at the arm drawing that Baltimore lineup, which carries the highest strikeout rate against left-handed pitching of any active roster. Neither of these is an ace. They are high-upside punts in good matchups at the bottom of the price scale, which is all you are asking a punt SP2 to be.

The Stack: A Five-Man Dodgers Build Against Zebby Matthews

The bats are the easy part tonight. The crew went to a five-man Los Angeles Dodgers stack against Minnesota and Zebby Matthews, and the matchup does most of the talking. Matthews has become a different pitcher this year. The command is still fine, but the swing-and-miss has evaporated, and he is not missing many bats anymore. That matters less than usual here, because the Dodgers do not need help: they rank first in wRC+ and first in ISO against right-handed pitching, and they barely strike out, sitting 23rd in team strikeout rate. A pitcher who cannot generate whiffs against a lineup that refuses to give them away is the recipe for a stack.

In the Data Hub the Dodgers grade fourth in Top Stacks and 16th in Top Value, with the third-highest projected ownership and the fourth-best stack score. They are not cheap, and that is fine, because Bradish at $8,500 and a sub-$8,500 SP2 leave plenty of salary to spend on bats. The names in play are the ones you would expect: Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman, and Andy Pages ($5,000). Even paying up, the salary is not a barrier to fitting five of them.

Stacking rule of thumb: when the opposing pitcher cannot miss bats and the offense does not strike out, the matchup is asking you to stack. The Dodgers check both boxes against Matthews tonight.

How to Build the Lineup in the Single-Lineup Sims (A Worked Example)

With the pitchers and the stack settled, the rest is mechanical, and this is the part I lean on the Sims for. In the Stokastic single-lineup Sims the crew locked Bradish and Kay plus a five-man Dodgers core of Freeman, Edman, Betts, Ohtani, and a fifth bat, then clicked Complete This Lineup to auto-fill the last three spots at optimal value with the roughly $3,500 left over. The Sims returned William Contreras, Caleb Durbin, and Tyler O'Neill as one-off values, leaving $300 on the table, and then graded the build with a lineup simulation.

What I value most about the tool is not the first lineup, it is how fast we can compare a second. Pull one bat, add a little randomness, re-run, and you get a different structure to weigh against the first. Here is the crew's first build against a quick variation that swapped an outfield spot for Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing and let the Sims attach a three-man Red Sox mini-stack around Ceddanne Rafaela and Masataka Yoshida:

The first build graded out better here, but that is the workflow: build one, change a piece, re-run, and stack a few lineups into a package you actually believe in instead of forcing a single optimal. The cash rate held while the ROI moved, which tells you the second structure traded ceiling for the same floor, not the trade you want in a tournament.

Cash vs GPP: Where This Build Fits

Read this as a tournament lineup, not a cash play. The whole shape, a punt SP2 for strikeout ceiling, a low-cost differentiation lever at the top, and a five-man stack, is built for a high ceiling and correlation, which is what large-field GPPs reward. For cash games you would lean toward the higher floor: more of the chalk, fewer punts, and a smaller stack. The Sims rebuild the optimal lineup when you change the contest-size setting, so the fastest way to get a cash version is to flip the setting and re-run rather than eyeball it.

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The Bottom Line

The slate handed the Perfect Lineup crew a clean top-down build: Bradish over a hollowed-out Angels offense, Kay as a strikeout-chasing punt against Cleveland, and a five-man Dodgers stack against a pitcher who cannot miss bats. The reads come from the Data Hub projections and Top Stacks, and the lineup comes together in the single-lineup Sims, where comparing a second and third structure takes seconds. When I sit down to a slate like this, that workflow is the whole edge in my process. Pull up the slate, run the same process, and code PERFECT10 gets you 10% off Stokastic MLB to do it.

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