MLB DFS Strategy: How to Build Around a $12,500 Ace

The easy read on this Friday slate is to jam the top pitcher, spend whatever is left on bats, and call it a build. I get the instinct. When one arm projects four to five points clear of the entire field, you feel like the slate is solved. It is not. The way I attacked this 12-game board heading into the weekend, the most interesting decisions were not whether to play the obvious ace. They were how to pay for him, and which discount arms let me do it without gutting my hitting.

This MLB DFS strategy breakdown walks the pitching board top to bottom, shows where the leverage actually lives, and explains how the Stokastic Sims funneled my exposure once the salary math got tight. The numbers and reads below all come from the show, and you can watch the full session right here. If you want the rest of our MLB DFS picks and write-ups, the full library lives in our articles hub.

In Summary (TL;DR)

• Jacob Misiorowski ($12,500) projects four to five points higher than any other pitcher again, but his matchup at Atlanta is the worst of the top three. He is still the highest-owned arm in my Sims (about 59% on the first run).
• Jacob deGrom ($10,000) is a $2,500 discount into a Padres lineup that is near the bottom of the league against right-handed pitching. He earned roughly 35% exposure for a reason.
• Cam Schlittler ($10,400) is the third stud. On a smaller slate I might jam him; here he sits around 15%.
• Tatsuya Imai ($6,000) and Jeffrey Springs ($6,300) are the punt arms that make a Misiorowski build affordable.
• Bryce Miller ($8,900) is the leverage swing: a "probable opener" tag is suppressing him to 5% ownership on a pitcher who has been Seattle's best.
• Stack-wise, Pittsburgh at Coors owns the slate, but the Sims got there through the cheap Pirates bats, not the expensive top of the order.

Watch the Video

The full slate walkthrough, including the live Sims exposures and Sim ROI lineups referenced below, is on the Stokastic MLB DFS Strategy show: Watch on YouTube.

The Three Studs, and Why It Is Not Cut and Dry

Misiorowski leads the board at $12,500, on the road against the Atlanta Braves. The projection gap is genuinely silly. He is not nosing out the next pitcher by half a point; he projects four to five points clear of the field every single day, and this slate is no exception. He carries a 17% swinging-strike rate and the highest called-plus-swinging strike rate in the league by a wide margin. Atlanta's implied team total sits at just 3.5. None of that is in question.

Here is the part people skip: his matchup is the worst of the three studs, not the best. That is not a knock. It is a pricing problem.

Look at deGrom at $10,000. That is a $2,500 discount, and he draws a San Diego club that has been anemic against righties all year. The Padres rank dead last in weighted on-base average versus right-handed pitching among active rosters, and the only team with a worse wRC+ against righties is Boston (San Diego around 89, Boston 87). They are 24th in isolated power and striking out at the 10th-highest clip, and that K rate is being held down by Luis Arraez and his microscopic 4% strikeout rate. Take Arraez out of the equation and the whiffs climb. deGrom's 16.9% swinging-strike rate is the second highest in all of baseball, a hair behind Misiorowski's 17%, and the Padres own the lowest implied total on the slate at 3.2.

Pitcher	Salary	Matchup	Opp. implied total	First-run Sims exposure
Jacob Misiorowski	$12,500	at Atlanta Braves	3.5	~59%
Jacob deGrom	$10,000	vs San Diego Padres	3.2	~35%
Cam Schlittler	$10,400	vs Cincinnati Reds	3.4	~15%

That is why deGrom has to occupy space in my lineups. If he were not on this slate, you would probably be running 80% Misiorowski and moving on. Because he is, the right answer is a split. Schlittler rounds out the trio at $10,400 against a Cincinnati lineup with a 3.4 implied total, carrying a 6.5 strikeout prop juiced to the over and an outs prop around 18.5. The park weather is not ideal for him, and on another night I might jam him, but on this board he is my third option. Personally I lean deGrom over Schlittler, though call it a preference, not a mandate.

Why You Have to Go Cheap at Your Second Pitcher

Once you commit to the top of the board, the math gets unforgiving. If your Sims are spitting out roughly 59% Misiorowski, 35% deGrom, and 15% Schlittler, you simply cannot also force in a Ranger Suarez at $8,600 or a Michael Soroka at $9,200 with any real volume. The strikeout upside on those mid-tier arms is not significant enough to justify eating the salary. So the second pitcher slot becomes a value hunt, and that is exactly where two punts come in.

Tatsuya Imai is $6,000 against Cleveland. He is volatile in the truest sense. He can look dominant or fail to escape the first inning, which is roughly what happened his last time out. He walks a lot of batters and carries a 17.5% home-run-to-fly-ball rate, so when he gives one up, it travels. But he also owns a 24% strikeout rate, and Cleveland's active roster is a skeleton crew right now, with several regulars on the injured list. That group is dead last in isolated power against righties and 10th in strikeout rate, sitting on a 4.2 implied total. In the Stokastic MLB DataHub he grades eighth in top-pitcher probability and number one in raw value. Jeffrey Springs at $6,300 is the same flavor of play, third in value, in a spot you do not have to love.

You do not have to feel great about either one. But if you are paying $12,500 for Misiorowski, there is room for an arm like Imai or Springs, and that is the whole point. The Sims were getting to plenty of both.

Want the exact exposures and Sim ROI lineups I am working from? Stokastic+ runs your contest tens of thousands of times and builds the lineups for you, with the projected ownership and value grades that flagged Imai and Springs as the punts that fit. Use code MLBSTRATEGY for 15% off any Stokastic+ DFS or Props package, including All Access: start here.

The Bryce Miller Leverage Spot

If there is one name I keep circling back to, it is Bryce Miller at $8,900 against Boston. DraftKings has him tagged as a "probable opener," part of Seattle's piggyback experiment with Luis Castillo, and that label is doing something useful for us: it is scaring people off. He is sitting at 5% projected ownership.

Read his actual body of work, though. Miller has been Seattle's best starter this season, full stop, better over the full sample than the names you would assume rank ahead of him. He is striking out 29% of batters with a 4% walk rate, and his last two real starts went 94 and 91 pitches, so the "he is not stretched out" worry does not hold. Boston is tied for the lowest team total on the slate at 3.2 and is brutal against right-handed pitching, with the lowest wRC+, the lowest weighted on-base average, and the fourth-worst isolated power in the league. The only honest risk is that Seattle caps him around 75 to 80 pitches and pulls him while he is cruising. Every time they have run this look, he has gone five-plus innings, so I am willing to treat that risk as priced in. At 5% ownership against that offense, he is a boost candidate for me, not a fade.

Stacking: Pay Down, Not Up

The bat side is where the cheap-pitcher decisions pay off, and it is where most MLB DFS stacks go wrong. Pittsburgh owns this slate, with the highest top-stack probability by nearly 10%, sitting on a 6.5 implied total at Coors Field on an 85-degree day with an 11.5 run total. The instinct is to jam the top of that order. Resist it.

Watch where the Sims actually sent my Pittsburgh exposure. It did not go to the expensive top-of-the-lineup bats above $5,000. It went to the cheap end: Jared Triolo at $3,200 hitting near the bottom, a $3,100 bat batting sixth, Henry Davis at $3,800, with Nick Gonzales at $5,200 as the priciest piece I leaned on. The Sims are not being timid here; it is the only way the math works. If you stack the top of Pittsburgh, you have no salary left for pitching, and you cannot run a $12,500 ace next to four $5,000-plus hitters from one team. Pay down the order in the good park and you keep your arms.

There is a second wrinkle worth naming. Because Imai is both cheap and shaky, the opposing Cleveland stack is also live. Cleveland is not a good offense, but the bats are dirt cheap, so the Sims will surface Cleveland stacks in the same builds. It is a pattern you see often: one pitcher is bad but inexpensive, the other side is bad but inexpensive, and both end up viable at once. The Sims do not force you to choose; they show you the cheap pitcher and the cheap stack-against-him living side by side, and you let the win equity sort it out.

A Worked Example: Locking In an MLB DFS Lineup

None of the above is a single "optimal" lineup. It is a player pool with leanings, and the build comes from running it. Here is the actual sequence. I set my pool, let the Contest Sims simulate the field tens of thousands of times, and then nudge exposures: a boost on Bryce Miller, a hard cap on the expensive Pirates, comfort with Imai and Springs as the punts. One of the top Sim ROI lineups that fell out paired a five-man Pittsburgh stack of cheap bats with two value arms, a build I would happily play. Paying down the order is what makes that possible: a full MLB DFS lineup with an elite pitcher and a stack in the slate's best park, all under the cap. If a lineup card or a weather delay changes a spot before lock, late swap is the highest-value move left on the board, and the Live Before Lock show will carry that the rest of the night. You can run the same process free in the Stokastic MLB Sims before you ever subscribe.

New to the MLB Sims? They simulate the contest tens of thousands of times, build and optimize your lineups, and hand you the projected ownership, value grades, and Top Stacks that drove every read above, so you are not eyeballing salary math by hand. Code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any Stokastic+ DFS or Props package, All Access included: grab it here.

FAQ

Who is the top pitcher on this MLB DFS slate? Jacob Misiorowski at $12,500. He projects four to five points clear of every other arm and carries the highest called-plus-swinging strike rate in the league, even though his matchup at Atlanta is tougher than deGrom's or Schlittler's.

Who is the best value pitcher on this slate? Tatsuya Imai at $6,000 grades number one in value and eighth in top-pitcher probability in the DataHub, with Jeffrey Springs at $6,300 right behind. They are volatile, but they are the punts that let you afford Misiorowski.

Is Bryce Miller worth playing as a "probable opener"? The opener tag is exactly why he is only 5% owned, and he has been Seattle's best starter with a 29% strikeout rate against a Boston lineup tied for the lowest total on the slate. The risk is a short leash, but every prior time in this role he went five-plus innings.

How do I fit a $12,500 pitcher and still stack? Pay down the order. The Sims funneled Pittsburgh exposure to the cheap bats (Jared Triolo at $3,200, Henry Davis at $3,800, Nick Gonzales at $5,200) rather than the expensive top, which is the only way to keep salary for your arms.

The Bottom Line

This was a good slate precisely because it was not solved. Misiorowski is the obvious ace, deGrom is the discount you cannot ignore, and the build comes down to which cheap arms and cheap bats you trust to make the salary work. Set your pool, run the Sims, and let the exposures tell you where the value actually sits.

Code MLBSTRATEGY gets you 15% off any Stokastic+ DFS or Props package, All Access included: lock it in here.