MLB DFS Picks Today (6/29): Kirby, The Padres Stack & Tatís

It is hot as hell across most of the country this week, and that heat is doing some of the work for us on this 11-game Monday MLB DFS slate. Wrigley is the headliner: roughly 90 degrees with a 16 mph wind blowing out to left, which is exactly the kind of forecast that turns a cheap stack into a tournament-winner. The slate sets up beautifully because you do not have to choose between good bats and good arms today, and the cheapest pitching points to the most expensive stacks. Here is how I am attacking the Stokastic MLB Sims for DraftKings and FanDuel.

In Summary

• Top Pitcher: George Kirby (SEA) ($8,600 DK / $8,500 FD) at home against the lowest-total offense on the board, the Angels. Down year or not, the matchup and the price make him a smash.
• Value Arms: Robert Gasser (MIL) ($6,700) and Trey Yesavage (TOR) ($8,100), with Ryan Weathers (NYY) ($8,800) as the higher-ceiling option versus Detroit.
• Top Stacks: San Diego Padres (37% Sims exposure), Chicago Cubs (23%), and Miami Marlins (19%).
• Headline Bat: Fernando Tatís Jr. (SD) at just $4,400, the third-highest simulated player ROI on the entire site.
• Cheap pitching means you can pay all the way up for bats, and the Sims are leaning hard into that build.

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Today's Slate At A Glance

Pull up the team totals in the DataHub and the shape of the day is obvious. Two teams sit above a 6 implied total (one of them, predictably, at Coors), and another four or five clear 5.4. Then there is a long list of offenses parked in the high-4s. The wind at Wrigley and the heat at Coors push the Cubs and Marlins/Rockies games to the top of the board.

The flip side is real pitching. There is no Misiorowski, no Ohtani on the mound, no Wheeler or Skenes, no $10K-plus arm to anchor a build. The most expensive pitcher on the slate is Parker Messick at $9,800, and we are projecting him for just 10% ownership. That matters: with no premium arm forcing your hand, the cheap, high-strikeout pitchers free up salary to load every dollar into the expensive stacks.

Build These Lineups With The Stokastic MLB Sims

Everything below comes out of the same place: our morning MLB Sims and projections. The Sims run the full contest tens of thousands of times to produce projected ownership, optimal exposures, and a simulated player ROI for every name on the slate, then the Contest Sims build the actual lineups. The Top Stacks Tool ranks every team's value, and the Perfect Lineup shows the highest-upside build of the day. That is the engine behind the Kirby call, the Padres lean, and the 69% Tatís exposure. None of it is a gut feel; it is a simulation.

Run the same Sims we used to build today's slate. Stokastic Sims gives you the MLB Sims, projected ownership, the Top Stacks Tool, and the Perfect Lineup for DraftKings and FanDuel. Use code MLBSTRATEGY for 15% off any DFS or Props package.

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Pitchers: Why George Kirby Is The Top Play

The question on this slate is not whether to play George Kirby. It is how you possibly get away from him.

George Kirby (SEA) · $8,600 DK / $8,500 FD · Mariners vs. Angels

He has not had a Kirby-caliber season, and he is priced like it. He is also not priced like a guy with this matchup. The Angels carry the lowest team total of any of the 26 teams playing today, a 25% strikeout rate against righties, the worst walk rate in the league, and a bottom-five wRC+. They are bottom-eight in ISO against right-handed pitching, and with Jorge Soler striking out and Mike Trout out of the lineup, this is about as soft as a spot gets.

• The Case: 6.5-strikeout prop, 18.5-outs prop, 1.5 earned runs allowed prop. The books expect a clean, deep, strikeout-heavy start.
• The Math: factor the matchup in honestly and Kirby should be at least $9,500 today. At $8,600 he is the highest-projected pitcher and sixth in value, which almost never happens together.
• Ownership: around 32%. We are at roughly 64%, twice the field. He could give up eight in the first and it would not change the process; this is the spot.

Kirby's down ERA is real, but it is largely irrelevant against an Angels lineup that does this little against righties. The price has not caught up to the matchup, and that gap is the edge.

Ryan Weathers (NYY) · $8,800 · vs. Detroit at Yankee Stadium. This is the higher-ceiling, lower-owned alternative to Kirby. A 27% strikeout rate and a sub-7% walk rate is a great profile, and Detroit is a bottom-10 offense against lefties with the sixth-highest strikeout rate in the league. Yankee Stadium plays better for lefty arms than righty arms, so the park is not the problem people assume. He and Kirby project within a fantasy point of each other; Weathers just comes cheaper and quieter.

Robert Gasser (MIL) · $6,700 · Brewers vs. Reds. Here is the best value arm on the board. A 24.5% strikeout rate, a 5.5-K prop, and a Cincinnati lineup that strikes out nearly 25% of the time. Gasser grades as the sixth-highest projected pitcher and third in value at the 14th-highest price on the board. Cincinnati is better against lefties than righties, so there is some risk, but back-to-back 20-plus-point games say the floor is fine for the salary.

Trey Yesavage (TOR) · $8,100 · Blue Jays vs. Mets. Yesavage is the third arm I am happy to build around. The Mets have been quietly bad against right-handed pitching this year (96 wRC+, 149 ISO, 28th in wOBA), and at $8,100 Yesavage projects right in the mix with Kirby and Weathers.

Who I am fading today:

• Parker Messick ($9,800) has arguably the best raw matchup on the slate against Texas, but the price and a quiet 10% projected ownership make the three $8K arms a better use of salary.
• Ranger Suárez ($9,300) is an excellent pitcher, but I do not love the matchup. Washington punishes good pitching (10th in wRC+ against lefties), and at 17% he is a next-tier-down play, not a leverage spot.
• Peter Lambert ($8,400), Eduardo Rodríguez, and Gage Jump ($8,300, with the Dodgers' bats waking up in 88-degree heat) all come off the build.

Here is the quick pitcher board:

The Stacks: Padres, Cubs, And Marlins

With no expensive arm to roster, the Sims pour the savings into bats, and three teams stand out.

San Diego Padres (37% Exposure) Vs. Shota Imanaga

This is the leverage play and the value play at once. Imanaga has allowed the third-most home runs in baseball this year (already 20, on the heels of 31 last season), and he is doing it in a Wrigley game with a slate-high 11.5 total, 90-degree heat, and a 16 mph wind blowing out. San Diego grades out as the highest-value stack on the board by a mile in the Top Stacks Tool, and the reason is the price tag:

A 5.4-team-total stack whose top hitter costs $4,400 is how you afford to pay up everywhere else. The Padres have done their share of squandering good spots this year (16th in wRC+ against lefties, and they will frustrate you), but you play the matchup, the park, and the price, not the storyline. 37% is aggressive; if you want to meet in the middle and cap it closer to 25%, that is a fair compromise. But they are objectively a quality stack today.

Chicago Cubs (23% Exposure)

Same park, same wind, same slate-high total. The Cubs are the more expensive side of the Wrigley game, with Michael Busch (31% exposure) the highest-owned individual bat on the slate outside of the Padres. If you would rather pay up for the home team's bats than the visitors', this is the stack to do it with.

Miami Marlins (19% Exposure) At Coors Field

The Marlins are at Coors against a Rockies arm, and the value angle is a pricing quirk: DraftKings prices up the Rockies for the park, but it does not preemptively price up Wrigley hitters for wind. Miami's most expensive hitter is only $5,300, cheaper than several Colorado bats, so you get a Coors stack at a discount. Kyle Stowers (14%) anchors the exposure here.

Toronto rounds out the stacks at a lighter 6%, and the Dodgers are in play against Gage Jump but expensive (five bats above $5K).

Bargain Bats: Fernando Tatís Headlines A Cheap Padres Core

Fernando Tatís Jr. (SD) · $4,400 · Padres vs. Imanaga. Tatís is the headline bat of the slate at 69% projected exposure. He has buried home-run bettors all year with only three on the season, but the Sims do not care about the narrative: he is the third-highest simulated player ROI on the entire site, with a 10% simulated player ROI, and the only names above him are his own teammates. At $4,400 in this park against this pitcher, he checks every box.

The betting market agrees on the upside. His home run number is shopping as long as +285 on the OddsShopper home-run board (FanDuel +280), and he carries a 2.5 hits-plus-runs-plus-RBI prop with a 1.5 total-bases number juiced to the over. When a $4,400 bat is priced like a $250-to-$285 home-run shot, the tools are getting there for a reason.

Behind him, the rest of that Padres core (Machado at $3,900, Merrill at $3,700, Bogaerts at $3,400) is where the salary relief comes from. On the Mariners side, Cal Raleigh (16%) and the cheap pitching let you double-stack the expensive offenses without breaking the budget.

The Bottom Line

This is a fun, solvable puzzle of a slate: cheap, high-strikeout pitching (Kirby, Gasser, Yesavage, Weathers) funding the expensive bats the Sims love (the Padres, Cubs, and Marlins, with Tatís the centerpiece). San Diego has done us dirty all year, and yes, Kirby could lay an egg. That is baseball. You build on the data, you take the leverage the matchup and the price hand you, and you move on to the next slate with a clean head. There is a Live Before Lock show tonight if you want the final ownership read before lock.

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MLB DFS Picks Today: FAQ

Who is the top pitcher for MLB DFS today (6/29)? George Kirby ($8,600 DK / $8,500 FD) at home against the Angels. The Angels have the lowest team total on the slate and a 25% strikeout rate against righties, and Kirby is underpriced for the matchup, grading as both the highest-projected and a top-six value arm.

What is the best value pitcher today? Robert Gasser at $6,700. A 24.5% strikeout rate, a 5.5-K prop against a strikeout-prone Reds lineup, and a price that frees up salary to pay all the way up for bats.

What are the best MLB DFS stacks today? The San Diego Padres (37% Sims exposure) against Shota Imanaga at Wrigley, the Chicago Cubs (23%), and the Miami Marlins (19%) at Coors. Wrigley has a slate-high 11.5 total with the wind blowing out.

Is Fernando Tatís Jr. a good DFS play at $4,400? The Sims say yes. He is the third-highest simulated player ROI on the site at 69% projected exposure, with a home-run price as long as +285 in a great park and matchup spot. The price is what makes him a smash, not his three home runs on the year.

Where can I get the projections and Sims? The full MLB Sims, projected ownership, Top Stacks Tool, and Perfect Lineup are in the Stokastic DataHub. Code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any DFS or Props package.