MLB DFS Strategy June 24: Early Slate Pitchers & Stacks

Anytime there are three or more games on an early MLB slate, we tackle it on the Stokastic MLB DFS Strategy show, and June 24 gives us a four-gamer worth playing. It is not a pretty board. There is no ace to anchor to, the pitching is shaky top to bottom, and that is exactly the kind of slate where the Stokastic Sims earn their keep. Below is the early-slate strategy we walked through, with the real DraftKings salaries, strikeout props, and live Sims exposures behind every read. (The night seven-game main slate gets its own breakdown on Live Before Lock later today.)

In Summary

• Four-game early slate, first pitch around 1:10 ET. No expensive ace; the most you can pay up for is a mid-priced arm.
• Trey Gibson ($6,700) has the best value score on the whole slate and is the leverage anchor against a weak Angels offense.
• Nolan McLean ($9,300) is the highest-projected pitcher, and he and José Soriano grade out almost identically.
• José Soriano ($9,700) carries the board's top strikeout prop at 6.5 against a Baltimore lineup that whiffs at the second-highest rate versus righties.
• Tanner Bibee ($7,700) is the value middle, $2,000 cheaper than Soriano with a soft White Sox matchup.
• Leverage sits on Gunnar Henderson and Pete Crow-Armstrong, the two bats our Sims pushed furthest over the field.
• Boston is the bounce-back stack at Coors Field; Baltimore is the low-owned leverage stack against Soriano.

Watch the Video

The full June 24 early-slate show is embedded below. It runs each pitcher one at a time, pulls up the live Sims exposures, and shows exactly where we land over and under the field. Watch on YouTube.

A Four-Game Early Slate With No Easy Pitching

Four games, and every team total sits at 4.2 or higher. That is the headline. On most slates the value comes from low-total games where a pitcher can shove. Here those low-total games exist on the full day, they just are not on this early wave. So you are picking through a board where every offense has a real number and no starter feels safe.

That theme is not new this week. We keep going back to the well on cheap, underpriced arms and the Sims keep cashing them. Yesterday Robbie Ray gave us 30 DraftKings points at $7,800 on eight clean innings, and Sean Burke went six and a third with the win against a Cleveland lineup we have targeted repeatedly. The question today is whether the same approach holds when the pitching is this thin.

Here are the four games and the totals shaping every decision:

One scratch to note before you build: the Cubs swapped Shota Imanaga out and Javier Assad into the early game, so the matchup math below reflects Assad on the mound. And Juan Soto is out for the Mets with back tightness, which thins their lineup against Assad.

The Only Four Pitchers Worth Playing

Ask me for my three favorite pitchers and it gets hard, because there are four I like and nobody else. Gibson, McLean, Bibee, and Soriano are the group. Everyone past them, Erick Fedde and Kyle Freeland especially, is a punt I would rather avoid.

Trey Gibson Is the Value Anchor

Trey Gibson ($6,700) has the best value score on the slate, which sounds crazy until you look at his matchup. I am not going to tell you Gibson is good. He is coming off two starts where he got blown up, and his real problem is a 14% walk rate that you simply cannot sustain at the big-league level. But the last couple of outings he has started missing bats again, with a 13% swinging-strike rate against the Dodgers, and he piled up roughly 15 strikeouts across those two rough starts.

The case is the matchup, not the man. The Angels carry a 97 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, the lowest walk rate in the league, and a 24.2% strikeout rate that is essentially tied for the second highest. Trout is on the injured list and Soler strikes out at a heroic clip. This is the unstoppable force meeting a very movable object, and at $6,700 with a 4.5 strikeout prop juiced to the over, Gibson is the salary-relief engine that lets you build everywhere else.

Nolan McLean and José Soriano Are the Same Pitcher Today

Nolan McLean ($9,300) and José Soriano ($9,700) are as close to identical as two pitchers get. Our projections have them at 16.97 and 16.89 fantasy points, with matching ownership and a top-pitcher probability that differs by four tenths of a percent. The only edge is McLean's marginally higher value score.

Soriano draws the better strikeout matchup. Baltimore strikes out at the second-highest rate in baseball against righties (24.4%), and Soriano's 6.5 strikeout prop is the highest on the board, with true odds around plus 106 even though some books juice it to minus 125. The catch is that Soriano has been overpriced for two months. The Cubs lineup McLean faces strikes out less (22nd in the league), so his matchup is a touch tougher, but he just shoved seven scoreless three-hit innings with nine strikeouts and 35 DraftKings points against the Reds in a hitter's park. Pay for either and you are paying near the top of a slate that does not have a real top.

Tanner Bibee Is the Value Middle

Tanner Bibee ($7,700) is the in-between play that makes the math work. He projects a bit below McLean and Soriano, but he is $2,000 cheaper than Soriano and $1,600 cheaper than McLean, and the White Sox are a fine target: eighth-highest strikeout rate against righties, a 102 wRC+, and a 4.2 implied total. He sits around 28% projected ownership, so he is not a leverage play, but the price-to-projection is the best of the four.

A Worked Example: The Salary Trade-Off

Here is the math I kept coming back to. Pair the two cheap arms, Gibson ($6,700) and Bibee ($7,700), and you spend $14,400 on two pitcher spots, leaving $35,600 for eight bats on a $50,000 DraftKings roster, about $4,450 per hitter. Run McLean ($9,300) and Soriano ($9,700) instead and you are down to roughly $31,000 for eight bats, about $3,875 each. That $575-per-hitter gap is the difference between affording the top of a Boston stack at Coors and settling for the value end of it. On a four-game slate where Gibson grades out as the best value score on the board, going cheap up top is the build, not the gamble.

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Where the Leverage Sits

Exposures only tell you who you are on. What I want is who I am most over the field on, because that is where a short slate is won. Two bats jump out, and it is no accident both are hitting against the two most popular pitchers.

Gunnar Henderson leads our Baltimore exposure at 47% against Soriano. Soriano is one of the chalkiest pitchers on the slate, so the field will be light on the Orioles, which makes Henderson a massive leverage spot if Baltimore gets to him. Pete Crow-Armstrong is the same idea on the other game, sitting around 35% against McLean. When you roster a popular pitcher, the cleanest leverage is the opposing lineup's best bat, and our Sims are loading up on exactly those two. Baltimore as a whole is barely 10% owned, so the Orioles bats are a low-owned, over-the-field pocket across the board.

Stacks: Boston Bounces Back, Angels Get a Boost

The stack picture is tight. Four or five teams sit between 10% and 13% stack probability, so there is no runaway chalk to fade.

• Boston Red Sox are the top stack and the bounce-back I keep landing on. They are at Coors Field against lefty Kyle Freeland, they hit lefties far better than righties, they carry a 6.4 total, and they are cheap today. Boston has been disappointing, roughly six runs across two games in this series, which is the point. This is the perfect spot to go back to a team everyone has written off.
• Baltimore Orioles are the leverage stack against Soriano. Only about 10% owned with a 4.8 total, fronted by Henderson at the top of the order.
• Los Angeles Angels are the one I had to nudge. They came in lower than I expected against Gibson, so I boosted them about 7% to bring them up near 12%. If we end up heavy on Gibson and Angels bats from the same game, that is the Sims telling you to play both sides, not pick one.
• Colorado Rockies sit around 13% owned against Suarez, with Hunter Goodman (28%) the platoon-advantage anchor.
• Cleveland Guardians are the top value stack, simply because they are so cheap and so bad that value shows up there every day, even against a weak arm like Fedde.

Why the Sims Shine on a Short, Ugly Slate

These four-game slates are the best ones for the tools, because nobody knows what to do with them. When the Sims simulate a lineup tens of thousands of times, they build combinations you would never construct by hand, because your own bias gets in the way. The clearest example today: the Sims are perfectly happy pairing Trey Gibson with an Angels stack from the same game. Your gut says pick the pitcher or pick the offense. The simulations say that on a slate this short, the right answer is often both, and that is the edge.

That is also why I am passing on the punts. Erick Fedde has a 15% strikeout rate, a 7% swinging-strike rate, and is working as a long reliever today, so he may not even reach 80 pitches. Ranger Suarez is fine on talent but costs $8,800 at Coors, and the opportunity cost is too high on a four-gamer, which is why our exposure to him sat around 13%. Javier Assad does not miss bats, so even with Soto out he projects as the second-lowest-owned pitcher on the board ahead of only Freeland. If you want a contrarian dart, Assad against a Soto-less Mets lineup is a real one, but I still prefer Bibee or Gibson.

How We'd Build It

• Anchor the cheap value. Gibson at $6,700 is the best value score on the slate. Lean into it and use the savings on bats.
• Mix the four arms only. Gibson, McLean, Bibee, and Soriano. Skip Fedde, Freeland, and most of Assad.
• Play both sides of the Angels game. If the Sims pair Gibson with an Angels stack, let them. On a short slate that combination is a feature, not a mistake.
• Stack Boston cheap at Coors. The platoon edge against Freeland plus a 6.4 total plus bounce-back value is the best ceiling on the board.
• Lean low-owned for leverage. Henderson and the Baltimore bats are where you get over a field that is scared of Soriano.
• Manage variance. It is a gross four-game slate. Expect ugly, size your entries sensibly, and play within your bankroll.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best MLB DFS pitcher on June 24?

Nolan McLean ($9,300) is the highest-projected arm on the early slate, grading out nearly identical to José Soriano. Soriano ($9,700) carries the board's top strikeout prop at 6.5 against a Baltimore lineup that whiffs at the second-highest rate versus righties.

Who is the best value pitcher on June 24?

Trey Gibson ($6,700) has the best value score on the slate. He is not a great pitcher, but the Angels offense is weak against righties and a four-game slate makes his price and leverage too good to ignore.

Which stacks are best for June 24 MLB DFS?

Boston is the top bounce-back stack at Coors Field against lefty Kyle Freeland. Baltimore is the low-owned leverage stack against Soriano, and the Angels are worth a small boost against Gibson.

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 tens of thousands of times, and let you nudge exposure and boost teams. They generate the lineups for you, bake in stacking correlation, and even grade hand-built lineups through the single lineup simulator.

Build Your June 24 Lineups

Every read above came straight out of the Stokastic MLB Sims and the Top Stacks Tool: the exposures, the strikeout props, the leverage spots, and the value scores. For the full 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.

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