MLB DFS Strategy June 23: Cheap Pitching & Stacks

This is a "go back to the well" kind of Tuesday. The June 23 DraftKings main slate looks a lot like Monday's, and the same arms on the same teams in the same matchups grade out just as well a day later. There is no expensive ace to anchor to, so the whole build is about finding cheap pitching that the Stokastic Sims still love and banking the savings for your bats. 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

• Sean Burke ($7,000) is the best value on the board against a José Ramírez-less Cleveland lineup. He grades out as the top value arm, and our Sims pushed his leverage to roughly 35%, more than double the field.
• Robbie Ray ($7,800) is the highest-projected pitcher on the slate and carries the highest strikeout prop on the board (6.5). At home in a strong pitcher's park, his Sims leverage sat near 45%.
• Pair Ray and Burke and you spend under $15,000 on two pitchers. That is the salary-relief engine of this slate.
• Shane Baz and Parker Messick ($9,300) round out a four-arm core; we wanted a touch more of both.
• Boston is the value stack: cheap, at Coors Field, against a left-handed starter the Red Sox bat far better against than righties. Boston led our pool around 41%.
• The other stacks: Arizona (~13%), Milwaukee (~10%), and Baltimore (~9%) filled out the rest.

Watch the Video

The full June 23 MLB DFS Strategy show is embedded below. It runs the pitcher pool one arm at a time, pulls up the live Sims exposures, and shows exactly where we are over and under the field. Watch on YouTube.

A Cheap-Pitching Slate With No Anchor

There is no Hunter Brown, no Dylan Cease, no Shohei Ohtani on the bump today. Joe Ryan was scheduled, got scratched, and is off the board, so the most expensive pitcher on the slate is Parker Messick at $9,300. Nobody else clears that number.

That changes how you build. When there is no ace worth paying all the way up for, the edge moves to the cheap arms that still project like mid-tier starters. I like pitching today, but I do not like the full offering. There are four or five starters I want, and I am fine getting essentially none of the rest. The good news on a nine-game Tuesday: you do not need to dumpster-dive for a starter, because the value at the top of the cheap tier is real.

It is also a weather slate. The Dodgers-Twins game in Minnesota and the Mets game in New York both carry rain risk, and an eight-game slate would not be a surprise by lock. Keep an eye on it and check the Stokastic MLB DataHub before you submit.

Sean Burke Is the Best Value on the Board

Sean Burke ($7,000) against the Cleveland Guardians is the one I keep coming back to. This is not about whether Burke pitches a gem. It is that he is objectively underpriced for the matchup, and the matchup is the entire point.

Cleveland has three starters on the injured list, one of them José Ramírez, one of the best hitters in baseball. That offense was already a soft spot for pitchers, and without Ramírez it is worse. Against right-handed pitching this year, the Guardians sit sixth in strikeout rate, 29th in isolated power (.135, with only the Marlins below them), 26th in weighted on-base average, and 25th in wRC+. They are bottom-five almost everywhere with the sixth-most strikeouts in the league.

Burke himself has not been bad. He runs a 24% strikeout rate, a sub-4 FIP, and a 5.5-strikeout prop that is juiced heavily to the over (around -146 to -150). In the Sims he comes out third in raw fantasy-point projection and first in value score on the whole slate. To put the price in context, here is where the comparable arms are sitting:

Look at that strikeout prop next to the price. Burke should not be cheaper than $8,000 on this board, and he is $7,000. That gap is the value. We are getting him at roughly 35% leverage in the Sims, more than double the field.

Robbie Ray and the Athletics' Platoon Split

Robbie Ray ($7,800) at home against the Athletics is the most interesting projection on the slate, because the surface read and the numbers disagree. Ray has been ordinary lately and runs only a 22% strikeout rate, and the A's do not strike out much overall. But the platoon split is everything here.

Against left-handed pitching this season, the Athletics strike out at the fourth-highest clip in baseball (24.5%). Against righties, they drop to 25th (19.8%). Ray is a lefty, so he gets the version of this lineup that whiffs. He is also pitching in one of the best pitcher's parks in the league, and his 6.5-strikeout prop is the highest on the entire slate, even with the juice to the under.

The risk is honest. The A's are dangerous against lefties beyond the strikeouts, sitting top-three in wRC+, wOBA, and isolated power versus southpaws, with a middle-of-the-road 4.2 team total. Ray can get hit. But if he is missing bats, that is what matters most for fantasy scoring, and the park plus the league-high strikeout prop is why his leverage sits near 45%, more than double the field.

The build that makes this slate sing is pairing them: Ray and Burke together cost under $15,000 for two pitchers. That is how you afford everything else.

A Worked Example: The Two-Pitcher Math

Here is the salary math I kept coming back to. If I roster Ray ($7,800) and Burke ($7,000), that is $14,800 on both pitcher spots, which leaves $35,200 for eight hitters, or about $4,400 per bat on a $50,000 DraftKings roster. Run the same build with two $9,000-plus arms instead and you are down to roughly $32,000 for eight bats, about $4,000 each. That $400-per-hitter gap is the difference between affording the top of a stack and settling for the value end of it. When both cheap arms grade out as top-three projected pitchers, paying up top is the worse build, not the safer one. The cheap pair is exactly what lets you fit a full Boston stack and still have salary left over.

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Rounding Out the Pitcher Core: Baz and Messick

Past Ray and Burke, two more arms fill out the group. Parker Messick ($9,300) is the most expensive pitcher on the board, and he draws the White Sox, who carry the lowest team total on the slate at 3.5. His 5.5-strikeout prop and his second-best projection make him a fine pay-up when you are not going double-cheap. Shane Baz is the other one, with the Angels carrying just a 4.2 implied total against him and a 5.5-strikeout prop of his own.

If anything, I want a little less Ray and Burke and a little more Baz and Messick to even the four out, but only those four. I am not chasing Nick Lodolo in a hitter-friendly Cincinnati park against a Milwaukee lineup that is not an easy matchup, I am not paying $8,700 for Sonny Gray's 19% strikeout rate at Coors Field, and I am passing on Aaron Civale, who has two strikeouts in four straight starts and keeps getting blown up. A good park is not enough on its own. You need the outs to be strikeouts, and Civale's are not there.

The one cheap dart worth a thought is J.R. Ritchie against a weak San Diego offense, but the opportunity cost is steep. With a 3.5-strikeout prop, you are threading a needle to get there when Baz, Burke, or Ray are barely more expensive and project far better. With this many cheap arms in play, you do not need to reach.

Stacks: Boston Is the Value Play

The bat picture is shaped entirely by how little salary the pitchers eat. With Ray and Burke costing under $15,000 combined, you can actually afford a premium stack, but the one I keep landing on is the cheap one.

The Boston Red Sox are the value stack of the day. They are at Coors Field against Sean Sullivan, a left-handed starter who gave up eight runs in his last appearance and carries a 3.5 earned-run prop. And Boston's platoon split is dramatic. Against right-handed pitching this year they are dead last in wRC+ (83), 27th in isolated power, and 29th in wOBA. Against lefties they jump to sixth in wRC+, third in wOBA, and 12th in isolated power. Sullivan is exactly the arm they hit. Add a 6.3 run total and bats priced as low as $3,000, and you can build the stack cheap. Boston led our pool around 41% before we flattened it with uniques. The one caveat is weather at Coors, so watch it.

After Boston, the exposure spread out:

Arizona was the one that raised an eyebrow, because the Diamondbacks have not been good against righties this year, yet they came out around 13% on their own. That is the value of running the Sims instead of eyeballing it: the simulations surface correlated, lower-owned stacks the projections alone would miss. The Dodgers showed up too through Ohtani, but the price and the Minnesota weather kept them in check.

How We'd Build It

On a slate like this, fewer pitchers are actually in play than the board suggests, and that is freeing. You are not forced into arms you do not trust. The shape we landed on:

• Anchor the cheap value. Pair Ray and Burke for under $15,000 and use the savings on bats. That single decision is most of the edge today.
• Even out the pitcher core. Mix in Baz and Messick so you are not over-concentrated on the two cheapest arms.
• Stack Boston cheap. The platoon edge plus the Coors total plus $3,000 bats is a rare combination of value and ceiling.
• Use uniques to diversify. Running the Sims with a few forced unique players pulled Boston from roughly 41% to 25% and flattened the stack spread without touching the pitching we liked. It is a clean way to spread a tournament portfolio.
• Manage variance. MLB is high-variance, weather is live in two spots, 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 23?

Robbie Ray ($7,800) is the highest-projected arm on the slate and carries the board's top strikeout prop at 6.5, at home in a strong pitcher's park against an Athletics lineup that whiffs against lefties.

Who is the best value pitcher on June 23?

Sean Burke ($7,000) against a José Ramírez-less Cleveland lineup grades out as the top value arm in the Sims, with the highest value score on the board and a 5.5-strikeout prop juiced to the over.

Which stacks are best for June 23 MLB DFS?

Boston is the value stack at Coors Field against a left-handed starter the Red Sox hit far better than righties. Arizona, Milwaukee, and Baltimore filled out the rest of our exposure.

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

The Stokastic MLB Sims build your full player pool, simulate the DraftKings and FanDuel contests thousands of times, and let you nudge exposure and force unique players. They generate and optimize the lineups for you and bake the stacking correlation in automatically.

Build Your June 23 Lineups

The reads above came straight out of the Stokastic MLB Sims and the Top Stacks Tool: the exposures, the strikeout props, and the value scores. 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, monthly, or all-access sub, Core or Max.

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