MLB DFS Picks Today (6/26): Misiorowski, Value Arms, And A Flat-Slate Stack Plan

Josh Engleman took over the MLB DFS Strategy Show for June 26, and he ran into a slate with one obvious answer at pitcher and almost no obvious answers anywhere else. There are 15 games, no Coors, no 120-degree bandbox, and a top stack tool so flat that the highest-owned team sits at 7%. That combination is a gift for anyone willing to do the work. Here is how we attacked it on DraftKings and FanDuel.

In Summary

• Jacob Misiorowski ($13,000) is the anchor: 5.5 projected points clear of the field and a 35% chance to finish a top-two pitcher. He shows up in 79% of our top simulated lineups, and fighting him too hard is a losing game.
• Pair Him With Value Arms. J.T. Ginn ($7,700, 13% owned) and Taj Bradley ($7,600) are both top-four projected pitchers at a fraction of the price, which frees salary for bats.
• The Slate Is Historically Flat For Stacks. No team total clears 5.2 runs and no stack is over 6.5% projected ownership, so you can roster almost anything at 2x the field without sinking your day.
• Lean Into Leverage. The Minnesota Twins are the top raw stack, the Tampa Bay Rays are the best spot, and a 3.5%-owned Colorado Rockies stack against chalk Taj Bradley is the sharpest gimmick on the board.
• Build it in the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, where projected ownership, Sim ROI, and the Top Stacks Tool drove every read below.

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Josh runs the Sims live and works through the pitching tree and stacks in real time. Watch the full June 26 breakdown, then build alongside it.

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Jacob Misiorowski Is The $13,000 Question

There is one pitcher who breaks this slate, and it is Milwaukee's Jacob Misiorowski against the Cubs. At $13,000 on DraftKings he is projected for 5.5 more fantasy points than anyone else on the board, he carries a 35% chance to be a top-two pitcher, and he is massively owned. When you have a number like that, the job is not to find a reason to play him. It is to honestly check whether there is a hole.

Pulling up his FanGraphs page, there isn't much of one:

• Strikeouts: a 39% strikeout rate with 13 K/9. Those are video-game numbers.
• Run Prevention: a 1.66 FIP, four barrels allowed all season, and no home run surrendered since April 14.
• Stuff: a fastball sitting at 100 mph, a 35% called-plus-swinging-strike rate, and a 125 Stuff+.
• Control: the walk rate is down to 6.5%, and he has had exactly one start since May 8 with more than one walk.

The track record backs the metrics. He has not pitched fewer than five innings in a single start this year, every outing except April 14 produced at least seven strikeouts, and six different games hit double-digit Ks. He already struck out eight against this exact Cubs team on May 19, walking one and allowing three hits and nothing else. The Cubs are a real lineup, ninth in wRC+ against right-handers and second in walk rate, but they sit middle of the pack in strikeout rate. It is a solid matchup, not a smash spot against him.

The contrarian itch is real: a 13K salary builds awkward rosters, and part of you wants to be the one who fades the chalk ace on the day he finally implodes. But that is a bet on variance, not on information. The smarter version of "be different" is to simply own a little less of him than the field, not zero. The K prop tells the same story. He is sitting at 8.5 strikeouts with no juice at OddsShopper, with the outs prop at 18.5 juiced to the under. A clean 8.5 K line in a neutral matchup is a number you almost never see.

Build It With The Stokastic MLB DFS Sims

Every read on this page came out of the same place: the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims. We trimmed the top simulated lineups to a Sim ROI of 72 to cut the early-slate noise, then read projected ownership against Sim exposure to find where the field is over- and under-rostered. That is the difference between guessing at leverage and measuring it.

Today only: code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any Stokastic Sims DFS package (weekly, monthly, single-sport, or All-Access). It runs the slate up to 10,000 times so you can build by win probability and projected ownership instead of trusting one static projection. The 30% disappears tonight. Start with code MLBSTRATEGY

The Top Stacks Tool, ownership projections, and Sim ROI are what turn "I like this team" into "this team is 3.5% owned and tied for sixth in ISO against the pitcher I'm fading." If you want to keep up with the show in real time, that toolkit is the show.

The Value Arms To Pair With Misiorowski

The best part of this pitching slate is that you do not have to choose between the ace and salary relief. Two top-four projected arms are priced in the $7,000s, which is exactly how you afford Misiorowski and still fill out a real lineup.

J.T. Ginn ($7,700) is the one I keep coming back to. He is the fourth-most-projected pitcher on the slate and carries the fourth-highest top-pitcher odds, yet he sits at 13% ownership, about half of Taj Bradley's. He does not strike out lefties, but he runs a 27% strikeout rate against righties (29.5% if you fold in last year), and he draws the Angels, the team with the highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching on their active roster. He showed up in just 16% of our top simulated lineups; a small Sim boost to him at the expense of a touch of Bradley pushed that to 24%, and that is a trade I will make every time. If "leverage" is a new word to you, our MLB DFS glossary covers the terms.

Taj Bradley ($7,600) is the chalk value at roughly 29% projected ownership. He is not an ace. A 25% strikeout rate, a walk rate near 10%, and a swinging-strike rate just north of 10% are all merely fine, but at this price against this matchup, "solid" is plenty. He lands in 65% of the top Sims for a reason.

If you want a payup that is not Misiorowski, Zack Wheeler ($11,000) is the conversation. There is a huge projection gap between him and Misiorowski, but the ownership gap is even bigger, and a 150-max player has little reason to be light on Wheeler against a flat Mets lineup. A small Sim boost gets you back to neutral with the field almost for free. And Roki Sasaki is the cheap pivot in the low-8K range: a 24% strikeout rate against a San Diego offense that ranks 29th in wRC+ and 26th in ISO against righties, at just 6% projected ownership. He was in only 3% of our top lineups, so even a modest boost gets you well above the field.

Stacking A Flat Slate: Twins, Rays, And A Contrarian Colorado Angle

This is the flattest hitting slate I can remember. No fake ballparks, no Coors, no heat wave. The highest projected team total is 5.2 runs, the top stack in the Top Stacks Tool sits at 6.5% ownership, and no team has a top-value score above 10%. The most-owned team on the board, the Minnesota Twins, is only 7% owned. The practical takeaway: whatever bats you like, you can roster at 2x the field without submarining your build.

A few spots rose to the top of the Sims:

• Minnesota Twins: the number-one team in the Top Stacks Tool and a 3x aggregate exposure for us, including 14% of our five-man stacks. The easiest stack to get to that still beats the field.
• Tampa Bay Rays: the spot I love most. They sit right behind Minnesota in the five-man pool against Arizona.
• Philadelphia Phillies: the stack in the Perfect Lineup. They were the number-one stack on yesterday's slate and would need a back-to-back, and their low top-value score makes them harder to reach naturally, but the leverage is there.

The sharpest gimmick on the board is the Colorado Rockies against Taj Bradley, a textbook contrarian MLB DFS angle. Bradley is going to be the chalk pitcher at about 29% ownership, which means roughly 29% of lineups in a tournament are tied to him going right. The Rockies are only 3.5% owned, and they are tied for sixth in ISO against right-handers at .170, enough pop to punish him. There are walks in Bradley's profile, the Rockies are middle of the pack, and I am not telling you I love Colorado. I am telling you that if Bradley is chalk and Colorado is 3.5% owned, they are a team I am happy to roster at 2x the field, with Hunter Goodman ($5,300) as the priced-up bat. And because we also have plenty of Bradley himself in builds without Colorado, you get to play both sides of that coin.

Worked Example: The Colorado Leverage Math

Here is the calculation I actually run in the Sims. Taj Bradley is projected at 29% ownership, so in a large-field tournament roughly 29% of the lineups in the pool need him to pitch well. The Rockies hitters opposing him sit at 3.5% combined ownership. So when I force a four- or five-man Colorado stack into a build, I am buying a position that, if it hits, simultaneously gives me a 3.5%-owned spike and leaves nearly a third of the field stuck with a struggling chalk pitcher. I do not need Colorado to be a great offense for that to be +EV in a tournament; I only need the ownership gap, and at 29% versus 3.5% the gap is enormous. That is the entire bet: not the storyline, the leverage.

When the chalk pitcher is 29% owned, a 3.5%-owned stack against him is free tournament equity. If Colorado hits, you are different and you faded a third of the field.

What The Optimal Cash Lineup Tells US

Look at the early optimal lineup and the whole slate snaps into focus: Misiorowski and Bradley on the mound, then one-off bats scattered everywhere. There are two White Sox (including Kyle Teel), two Phillies (Alec Bohm and Trea Turner), and then Ketel Marte, Wyatt Langford, Tyler O'Neill, and Josh Bell spread across the board. There is no six-run team towering over the slate, no stack the build is forced into. Only one hitter on the entire optimal lineup is in double-digit ownership; the rest of the cash core is all single digits.

That is the definition of a builder's slate. Teams are slipping through the cracks because nothing screams at you, which means the people who actually find the undervalued teams get rewarded. Use the Stokastic Sims and Top Stacks Tool to find your edges, because today the field is not going to hand them to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I pay up for Jacob Misiorowski on DraftKings today? Yes, with nuance. At $13,000 he projects 5.5 points clear of the field with a 35% top-two-pitcher chance and lands in 79% of our top Sims. The leverage play is owning slightly less than the field, not zero. Fading him entirely is a bet on variance, not information.

Who are the best value pitchers for June 26? J.T. Ginn ($7,700) and Taj Bradley ($7,600) are both top-four projected arms at value pricing. Ginn is the leverage option at 13% ownership against a high-strikeout Angels lineup; Bradley is the chalk value at ~29% owned.

What MLB stacks should I target on a flat slate? The Minnesota Twins are the top raw stack and the Tampa Bay Rays are the best spot. For tournament leverage, a 3.5%-owned Colorado Rockies stack against chalk pitcher Taj Bradley is the standout contrarian play.

How do I find the highest-upside MLB DFS lineups? Run the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, which simulate the contest thousands of times and surface lineups by win probability, with projected ownership and Sim ROI built in so you can measure leverage instead of guessing.

Build Your June 26 Lineups

This is a slate that rewards the work, so put the Sims to work. The Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, Top Stacks Tool, and ownership projections simulate today's slate up to 10,000 times and rank lineups by win probability, which is how you turn a flat board into an edge. Today only, code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any Stokastic Sims DFS package (weekly, monthly, single-sport, or All-Access). The 30% is gone tonight.

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For more on today's board, the Perfect Lineup video on the channel gives two pitchers plus an alternate build with and without Misiorowski, and Eric Lindquist breaks it all down on Live Before Lock tonight.