MLB DFS Strategy June 19: Pitching Reads & Stacks

The June 19 DraftKings and FanDuel main slate is not the cut-and-dry build it looks like at first glance. It is a 12-game slate, the top of the pitcher pool is strong, and a couple of the cheapest arms on the board grade out well enough to free up your bats. That combination is exactly why our Stokastic MLB DFS Sims are spreading our exposure across more than one ace instead of jamming the obvious one. Below is the MLB DFS strategy we walked through on the show, with the real DraftKings salaries, strikeout props, and live Sims exposures behind every read.

In Summary

• Jacob Misiorowski ($12,500) is the highest-projected pitcher by a mile, but he is on the road against the Atlanta Braves and priced for it. He sat at roughly 59% of our early Sims exposure.
• Don't sleep on Jacob deGrom ($10,000) versus a San Diego Padres lineup that has been anemic against right-handed pitching. He was about 35% exposure, and the matchup, not the name, is the reason.
• Cam Schlittler ($10,400) at home against the Cincinnati Reds rounds out a strong top three.
• The cheap arms are real leverage: Tatsuya Imai ($6,000) against a depleted Cleveland lineup and Jeffrey Springs ($6,300) are the salary relief that makes a Misiorowski build work.
• Bryce Miller ($8,900) carries a "probable opener" tag against Boston that has him at roughly 5% ownership, well below where his recent form says it should be.
• Stacks: our pool leaned Pittsburgh (~30%) and the New York Yankees (~29%), but mostly through the cheaper bats, not the expensive top of those orders.

Watch the Video

The full June 19 MLB DFS Strategy show is embedded below. It runs the pitcher pool one arm at a time and pulls up our live Sims exposures, so you can see exactly where we are over and under the field. Watch on YouTube.

The Top of the Pitcher Pool: Three Arms, Not One

This is one of those slates where the high end looks very good and the obvious play is not automatic. Three arms sit clearly above the rest of the board, and the cheaper end has two more worth using.

Jacob Misiorowski ($12,500) is the highest-projected pitcher, and it is not close. He projects four to five fantasy points clear of the next-best arm, which is rare air, and his called-plus-swinging-strike rate is the highest in the league by a wide margin. The catch is the price and the spot. He is on the road against the Atlanta Braves, so the matchup is the worst of the three top arms even if the strikeout stuff mitigates the damage. We are getting a lot of him because he is that good, but at $12,500 he forces salary decisions everywhere else in the lineup. This is no fade, just a reminder that you do not have to be 80% Misiorowski simply because he is the top projection.

Jacob deGrom ($10,000) is the read a lot of people will skip, and that is the mistake. You are getting a $2,500 discount relative to Misiorowski, and the matchup is the cleanest on the board. The San Diego Padres rank dead last in weighted on-base average against right-handed pitching among active rosters, with only the Boston Red Sox marginally worse by wRC+ (San Diego around 89 to 90, Boston 87). The Padres are 24th in ISO and striking out at the 10th-highest clip against righties, up from 25th last year, and that number climbs any time Luis Arraez and his 4% strikeout rate is out of the lineup. deGrom's 16.9% swinging-strike rate is the second-highest in all of baseball, and San Diego carries the lowest implied total on the slate at 3.2. If deGrom were not on this board at all, we would likely be running closer to 80% Misiorowski. The fact that his matchup is this good is exactly why he pulls real exposure away from the chalk.

Completing the top tier is Cam Schlittler ($10,400) at home against the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds carry a low implied total around 3.4, Schlittler's strikeout prop is juiced to the over at 6.5, and his outs prop (18.5) and earned-runs prop (1.5) both point the right way even in a park that is not pitcher-friendly today. He is excellent. We just prefer deGrom over Schlittler here as a personal lean.

A note on Roki Sasaki ($8,000): he is a fine pivot at around 11% exposure against a Baltimore Orioles team that strikes out plenty but is not bad against righties. The one real worry is the venue. Dodger Stadium ranks first in baseball for home runs, so the spot is playable rather than free of risk. All of these arms grade out well in the Stokastic DataHub top-pitcher probability, so the question is exposure, not whether they belong.

Why the Cheap Arms Matter More Than Usual

When you are paying up for a $12,500 or $10,000 pitcher, the only way the math works is finding strikeout upside at the bottom of the pool. Two names do that here.

Tatsuya Imai ($6,000) is the cheapest starter on the board outside the Coors Field arms and the Yankee Stadium spot. The case for him is the opponent. Cleveland's active roster has been one of the worst lineups in baseball against right-handed pitching, dead last in ISO with just 27 home runs against righties and several bats (including Jose Ramirez) on the injured list. Imai carries a 24% strikeout rate, and his 4.5-strikeout prop is juiced heavily to the over. He projects for only about 12% field ownership while grading out as the No. 1 value arm on the board and eighth in the DataHub's top-pitcher probability. The risk is just as real. His last start, five days ago against Kansas City, he did not get out of the first inning. He walks a lot of batters and runs a high home-run-per-fly-ball rate around 17.5%, so when he gives up contact in the air it tends to leave the yard. At $6,000, that volatility is the point. A Misiorowski-plus-Imai pairing is a very natural build, which is why our pool pairs them often.

The other cheap arm worth using is Jeffrey Springs ($6,300), who grades third in value against a Los Angeles Angels lineup carrying a 4.8 implied total. You do not have to feel great about him, but at that price he opens up the same kind of build Imai does. Spend up top and these are the arms that let you afford the bats.

A Worked Example: Pairing The Aces

This is the salary math we kept coming back to on this slate. If I want both Misiorowski ($12,500) and deGrom ($10,000) in the same lineup, that is $22,500 spent on two roster spots before I have added a single hitter. On a $50,000 DraftKings roster, that leaves $27,500 for eight bats, or about $3,400 per hitter. That is a tight number, which is why our pool only built that double-ace combo in roughly 11% of our 150 lineups. The alternative we leaned on more often: pair one ace with Imai or Springs at the bottom, bank the savings, and spend it on a real Pittsburgh or Yankees stack instead of two pitchers.

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The Bryce Miller Question: A "Probable Opener" Worth a Second Look

The most interesting ownership angle on the board is Bryce Miller ($8,900) against the Boston Red Sox. DraftKings has him labeled as a probable opener, part of Seattle's piggyback experiment with Luis Castillo, and that tag alone will scare a chunk of the field off him. He sits at roughly 5% projected ownership, and we have only one Miller lineup in the Sims so far, but there is a genuine case to boost him.

Miller has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since returning to the rotation, with a 29% strikeout rate and a 4% walk rate on the season. His recent starts back that up: six innings, one hit, no earned runs, nine strikeouts on 94 pitches, and an eight-inning, four-hit, two-run, seven-strikeout, no-walk outing. Every time Seattle has run this opener arrangement, he has gone five-plus innings anyway, including a five-and-two-thirds, one-hit, seven-strikeout start. Boston owns the lowest wRC+ and the lowest wOBA in the league against right-handed pitching and the fourth-worst ISO, and the Red Sox are tied for the lowest team total on the slate at 3.2. The one fear is that Seattle caps his pitch count around 75 to 80 this time. With ownership near 5% on a pitcher this good against an offense this weak, he is the kind of low-owned, high-ceiling arm tournament players hunt for. It is a real risk, but the upside is there.

Stacks: Where the Bats Are Coming From

The team-stack picture is shaped entirely by how much salary the top arms eat. Our pool leaned two teams, and the way it got there is the lesson.

Pittsburgh Pirates (~30% team exposure) carried the highest top-stack probability on the slate by almost 10%, with a 6.5 implied total. But with Misiorowski or deGrom eating salary, you cannot afford the five Pittsburgh hitters priced above $5,000, so the Sims route into the lineup through the value end of that order:

The expensive Pirates get far less: Bryan Reynolds ($5,800) at 6% and Spencer Horwitz ($5,000) at 5%. Jam the top of that order and you have no room left for pitching; build it from Gonzales, Triolo, and Henry Davis and it fits next to an ace.

A few other stacks worth a look:

• New York Yankees (~29% team exposure) against Rhett Lowder carry a 5.5 implied total, one of the highest on the board. Jazz Chisholm Jr. (37%) and Ryan McMahon (19%) are the heaviest individual bats in our pool.
• Athletics against Jose Soriano get a hitter-friendly park and a slate-high 5.6 implied total.
• Los Angeles Dodgers against Kyle Gibson carry a high total, with Shohei Ohtani the single most-rostered bat on the slate at 36%.
• Cleveland Guardians are the cheap punt stack that pairs with Imai. They are not a good offense, but they are so inexpensive that if Imai gets shelled, the cheap stack you punted to is exactly what pays off. That cheap-pitcher, cheap-stack correlation is a recurring edge.

The mechanic here is the same one the Sims are built to solve. Spending up on pitching forces you to find correlated, lower-priced stacks that still raise your ceiling. That is a tournament-first idea. The Contest Sims simulate the full GPP field tens of thousands of times to find which cheaper stacks actually win, rather than just listing the highest-projected bats. For cash games, where you only need to beat about half the field, you would build from the floor-based projections instead and skip the leverage chase entirely.

How We'd Approach the Build

On a slate like this, fewer pitchers are actually in play than it looks, which is freeing. You are not forced into arms you do not want. The shape we landed on:

• Pay up top, but spread it. Misiorowski is the highest-projected arm, but deGrom's matchup is good enough that he has to occupy real space too.
• Use the cheap arms as the release valve. Imai and Springs are how you afford the expensive bats or a second ace.
• Stack cheap and correlated. Lean into the value end of Pittsburgh, the Yankees against Lowder, or a cheap contrarian Cleveland stack paired with Imai. If Imai gets shelled, that same Cleveland lineup is live and inexpensive.
• Manage variance. MLB is a high-variance sport, and even the best pre-lock lineup can finish near the bottom. Trust the process, size your entries sensibly, and play within your bankroll.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best MLB DFS pitcher on June 19?

Jacob Misiorowski ($12,500) is the highest-projected arm by a wide margin against the Atlanta Braves, but the price and the road matchup mean he is not an automatic. Jacob deGrom ($10,000) against the Padres is the cleanest matchup of the top tier.

Who is the best value MLB DFS pitcher on June 19?

Tatsuya Imai ($6,000) against a depleted Cleveland lineup is the top value arm, with Jeffrey Springs ($6,300) as the other salary-relief option that lets you pay up elsewhere.

Which stacks are best for June 19 MLB DFS?

Our Sims leaned the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees, but largely through their cheaper bats so you can still afford a top-tier pitcher. A cheap Cleveland stack is a contrarian pairing with Tatsuya Imai.

How do I build MLB DFS lineups with the Stokastic Sims?

The Stokastic MLB Sims build your full player pool, simulate the contest tens of thousands of times, and let you nudge exposure on the players you like. They generate and optimize the lineups for you and build the stacking correlation in automatically.

Build Your June 19 Lineups

The reads above came straight out of the Stokastic MLB Sims: the exposures, the strikeout props, and the leverage spots. For the daily build, see our MLB DFS picks today. New to Stokastic? Stokastic Sims runs thousands of simulations of the DraftKings and FanDuel contests so you can see which lineups actually win before lock, instead of just playing the highest-projected names. Code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any weekly or monthly sub, all-access included.

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