MLB DFS Picks Today: Thursday's Five-Game Chalk (7/9)
July 9, 2026
Thursday's early slate is only five games, and Stokastic's Dave Loughran didn't sugarcoat it on MLB DFS Strategy: this isn't the best pitching we've seen on an early board this year. But a thin pitching slate isn't a reason to punt the day, it's a reason to lean harder on process. Everyone is picking from the same short list of arms, which means the two decisions that actually separate lineups are how much of the obvious chalk you're willing to eat and which of the ugly options you trust enough to pivot to. Here's how Loughy worked through both, plus the stack picture underneath it.
In Summary
- Drew Rasmussen (TB) Vs. NYY and Gavin Williams (CLE) vs. MIN are the two clear chalk arms, both on an island in top-pitcher probability. Rasmussen sits in roughly three-quarters of our lineups, Williams around half.
- The Pivot: Sean Manaea (NYM) Vs. KC And A Boosted Bailey Ober (MIN) Vs. CLE. Manaea grades out with the best top-value score on the slate; Ober's floor is ugly but the ceiling (he's thrown a complete-game shutout this year) is real.
- Fade: Patrick Sandoval (BOS) Vs. CWS, making his first start off a 60-day IL stint and projected worse than every arm on the slate not named the Rays' long reliever.
- Six Team Stacks Are Bunched Within Five Points Of Each Other in projected ownership (Atlanta 16%, Cleveland 12%, the Mets, Kansas City, Boston and Pittsburgh all at 11%). Nothing separates cleanly at the top.
- Cleveland (CLE) Is The Value Play Against Ober, not because the Guardians offense is good, but because the Rasmussen/Williams pitching squeeze leaves salary to spend there.
- Code MLBSTRATEGY takes 15% off any DFS or Props package, and Loughy's advice is to take it monthly with the All-Star break coming.
Watch The Video
Watch MLB DFS Strategy (7/9/26) on YouTube for the full pitcher and stack breakdown, live from the Stokastic Data Hub.
The Pitching: Two Chalk Arms And Where The Pivot Hides
Start with the arms, because on a five-game slate the pitcher decision drives almost everything downstream. Loughy pulled up the Data Hub and found the same problem everyone else will: two names separate from the pack, and after that it's a coin flip between five options nobody actually wants to play.
| Pitcher | Matchup | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Drew Rasmussen (TB) | vs. NYY | 25% K rate vs. lefties, 26% vs. righties, nearly even on paper. But the real crack is in the damage allowed: a .334 wOBA-against vs. lefties compared to .317 vs. righties, and a 1.14 WHIP vs. lefties against just 0.59 vs. righties. The Yankees are running seven lefty bats out there today, and they still haven't been good enough to scare anyone off him. In roughly three-quarters of our lineups. |
| Gavin Williams (CLE) | vs. MIN | 28% strikeout rate and the highest ceiling on the slate: the guy who drops 35-40 DraftKings points and pitches deep on his best nights. Also the guy who's been all over the map this season. Around half our lineups. |
| Sean Manaea (NYM) | vs. KC | The best top-value score on the board at 35.5%. His strikeout prop (4.5) is juiced to the over at -164 and his outs prop sits at a respectable 16.5. Sitting at only around 10% owned, which is the gap between what the number says and what the field is actually doing. |
| Bailey Ober (MIN) | vs. CLE | Two dominant starts this year, including a complete-game shutout, buried under a brutal floor. His ceiling isn't far off Manaea, Anthony Kay, Bryce Elder or Michael Wacha, so we're boosting his ownership toward the field rather than letting the tools bury him. |
| Patrick Sandoval (BOS) | vs. CWS | First start off a 60-day IL stint. Projected behind every starter on the board except the Rays' long reliever. Only a 1.5-run earned-run prop and no outs prop to lean on, a sign the market isn't confident he goes deep. |
Rasmussen is the one to internalize, because the platoon split is real and it still doesn't matter today. Seven lefty bats in the Yankees lineup is exactly the matchup where a 1.14 WHIP against lefties should give you pause, but the Yankees have been bad enough all year that pitchers keep running through them anyway. That's the calculation the whole field is making, which is why he's the highest-owned arm on the board.
Below Rasmussen and Williams, ownership stops meaning much. Loughy put it plainly: unless you're talking about Mitch Keller or Sandoval specifically, the field is scattered enough among Manaea, Ober, Kay, Elder and Wacha that no single one of them is a differentiator by itself. The one exception worth boosting is Ober, because his ceiling doesn't actually trail the field the way his season-long floor suggests it should.
Build the whole slate with the Sims. Get 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBSTRATEGY at Stokastic MLB DFS The Data Hub is what surfaced the Rasmussen platoon split and Ober's real ceiling before either one showed up in the exposures.
The Stacks: Six Teams Bunched, Cleveland The Forced Value Play
This is where the pitching squeeze shows up. When two arms soak up that much salary and ownership, the stacks left over stop separating cleanly, and that's exactly what happened on Thursday's board.
| Stack | Facing | Projected ownership | The read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Braves (ATL) | Mitch Keller (PIT) | 16% | The slate's top team by raw share. Matt Olson (ATL) leads the individual exposure at 13%. |
| Cleveland Guardians (CLE) | Bailey Ober (MIN) | 12% | Number one in value and in stack score on the board, with a 4.8 team total (fourth-best on the slate) despite being one of the weaker offenses in it. |
| New York Mets (NYM) | Michael Wacha (KC) | 11% | Juan Soto (NYM) is drawing heavy exposure against Wacha. |
| Kansas City Royals (KC) | Sean Manaea (NYM) | 11% | Bobby Witt Jr. (KC) alone is close to half-owned. |
| Boston Red Sox (BOS) | Anthony Kay (CWS) | 11% | A tougher matchup than the ownership suggests. More on that below. |
| Pittsburgh Pirates (PIT) | Bryce Elder (ATL) | 11% | In the mix mostly because there isn't a clearly better alternative left on the slate. |
| Chicago White Sox (CWS) | Patrick Sandoval (BOS) | 9% | The lowest of the group, and not because the matchup is scary. |
The Cleveland row is the one worth sitting with, because it's a genuine outlier: the Guardians rank 25th in wRC+ against righties, sit dead last in the league in ISO against them at .137, and have hit only 46 home runs against right-handers all season. Washington, for comparison, has 96. None of that reads like a stack you build around. But that's precisely why it's the value play. With Rasmussen and Williams eating so much of the field's pitcher salary, Cleveland is the cheap, high-stack-score offense left standing once you've paid for the chalk arms, and it's carrying the second-lowest ownership of the group on top of that. The lesson isn't "Cleveland's offense turned a corner." It's that on a slate this concentrated at pitcher, the stack that benefits from leftover salary can outrank the stack that's actually good.
Boston is the row to double-check before you build around it. Anthony Kay is a lefty, and the read that Boston is an easy strikeout matchup for a southpaw doesn't hold up: the Red Sox carry the fifth-lowest strikeout rate against lefties in the league and one of the better wRC+ marks against them, too. Their actual weakness this year is against right-handers, not left-handers. Eleven percent ownership on that stack looks like the field pricing in "White Sox pitcher, easy spot" without pricing in that Kay draws the tougher side of Boston's platoon split. On the other side, Chicago isn't the automatic strikeout funnel it's been in past seasons either: a 23% strikeout rate against lefties and a top-half wRC+ mark against them means Sandoval's low 9% share is earned, not a leverage spot being left on the table.
Mix And Match, Don't Lock In
Loughy's parting advice on construction: don't treat this as a black-and-white slate. With six stacks bunched together and none of them clearly correct, the right approach across a multi-entry build is to actually use that bunching. If you're building 20 or 150 lineups, there's nothing wrong with a handful running Manaea with a Kansas City stack and a separate handful running Ober with Cleveland. Throwing multiple, well-reasoned darts is the point on a slate where the numbers themselves are refusing to pick a favorite.
A Worked Example: Pairing The Pivots
Here's how I'd actually build one of the lineups away from the chalk. Start with Sean Manaea instead of Rasmussen or Williams, since his 35.5% top-value score means the salary saved on pitching does real work elsewhere. From there, I'd rather pair him with the Kansas City stack he's facing than reach for Cleveland in the same build, since Bobby Witt Jr. gives that lineup a top-of-the-order power source Cleveland's own hitters can't match right now. In a second entry, I'd flip that: Bailey Ober on the mound, boosted past his raw floor, paired with the Cleveland stack that's benefiting from the same salary math. Running both versions across a multi-entry slate is exactly the "don't lock in" advice above, put into practice.
Weather To Watch
Two of the five games carry real rain risk today: Braves-Pirates and Red Sox-White Sox both showed postponement risk in the Data Hub as of the show. Neither looked likely to wash out outright, but check the live postponement-risk read in the Stokastic Data Hub before you lock, especially if you're leaning on Elder, Keller, Kay or Sandoval.
How We Build It
Every read above starts in the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims and projections — the top-pitcher probability that separated Rasmussen and Williams from the field, the platoon splits that flagged Boston's real weakness, and the postponement-risk tool that's tracking today's rain. Drop a pitcher into the single-lineup Sim and build the rest of your roster around it, then check the Top Stacks tool before you lock to see exactly how bunched a slate like this one really is.
With the All-Star break coming up, Loughy's recommendation is to grab the discount on a monthly package rather than a weekly one: the break itself is only three off days, there's a Showdown slate that Thursday (the first year the Sims support Showdown builds), and a month gets you through all of it for one larger discount. Pair this recap with today's full MLB DFS picks board and Wednesday's MLB DFS Live Before Lock read for the rest of the week's slates.
FAQ
What are the best MLB DFS pitchers today, July 9? Drew Rasmussen (TB) and Gavin Williams (CLE) are the two chalk arms, both clearly ahead of the field in top-pitcher probability. Below them, Sean Manaea (NYM) and a boosted Bailey Ober (MIN) are the pivots we like best.
Is Bailey Ober a good punt away from the chalk today? His season-long floor is rough, but his ceiling, including a complete-game shutout this year, isn't far off Manaea, Kay, Elder or Wacha. We're boosting his share rather than letting a bad full-season line scare us off a single good matchup.
Should I stack Cleveland today? It's the top value and stack-score team on the board, but that's a function of leftover salary after paying for Rasmussen and Williams, not a great Guardians offense — they're dead last in the league in ISO against righties. Treat it as the forced-value play, not a team you believe in.
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The Bottom Line
Zoom out and Thursday's slate is a lesson in what a thin pitching board actually forces you to do. The correct process here isn't finding a great arm nobody else has, because Rasmussen and Williams are objectively the two best options and everyone knows it. It's deciding how much of that chalk to eat, trusting Manaea and a boosted Ober enough to build away from it in some lineups, and understanding that Cleveland's stack-score lead says more about the pitching squeeze above it than it does about the Guardians' bats. Mix your builds across that bunched stack picture instead of picking one and locking in.
Build it with the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, and take 15% off any DFS or Props package with code MLBSTRATEGY. Thanks to Dave Loughran and MLB DFS Strategy for the read. Now go build.