MLB DFS Picks Today (8/13): Gilbert And Fried Lead The Chalk, White Sox Lead The Stacks
August 13, 2026
Logan Gilbert — one of the featured players on today's slate.
The Quick Answer
Thursday's six-game early slate (1:10 PM ET lock) has two clear chalk arms in Logan Gilbert (SEA) and Max Fried (NYY), but the show is trimming Fried exposure because of what comes attached to him: heavy Seattle Mariners bat ownership it doesn't want. Payton Tolle (BOS) at $9,500 is the arm getting bumped up in the builds, and the real stack decision isn't Boston or the Chicago Cubs, it's the Chicago White Sox, a team grading at or near No. 1 in stack score and value against Cincinnati's Andrew Abbott while sitting several points below the Cubs in raw ownership. The Cubs get faded outright below. The full pitcher tiers, the White Sox case, and the exposure math on all six games are below.
Watch The Video
Josh Engelman filled in on Thursday's MLB Strategy show and ran the live Data Hub build for the early slate. Watch on YouTube.
Get the full pitcher board and live props. Every number below came off the same Stokastic MLB Data Hub run pulled up live on today's show — use code MLBSTRATEGY for 10% off any Stokastic DFS or Props package.
Two Chalk Arms, One Ownership Problem
Gilbert and Fried separated from the pitching field early and immediately soaked up the bulk of the slate's chalk. That part was easy. The harder part showed up on the hitting side: taking Fried pulls in a heavy dose of Seattle bats, and taking Gilbert pulls in a heavy dose of the Yankees, and the show doesn't love either side of that trade at full strength. That tension shapes almost every pitching decision below, and it's also why the Chicago White Sox, barely owned relative to their grade, end up the article's real headline. First, the two arms everyone's building around.
The Chalk: Logan Gilbert (SEA) And Max Fried (NYY)
Logan Gilbert (SEA) · $9,000 · SEA @ NYY The slate's most-owned pitcher at 35%, and the show's live sims lean toward him over Fried when forced to pick one. The case:
- Strikeout prop: 6.5, juiced to the over
- Outs prop: 17.5, leaning the under
- A full strikeout ahead of Fried's own prop line
- The show's raw, unfiltered sim pull showed 54% exposure to Gilbert against 44% to Fried, before any manual trimming
Max Fried (NYY) · $8,500 · SEA @ NYY Second-most-owned arm at 30%, and his own underlying numbers haven't moved: a double-digit swinging-strike rate and a strikeout rate sitting around 24% against righties (22.5% against lefties, a smaller sample this season). What has moved is the power he's allowing, which has been close to zero, something the show calls unsustainable but more of a timing issue than a sign his stuff has changed.
- Strikeout prop: 5.5, juiced to the over
- Outs prop: 17.5, leaning the under
- Started at roughly 50% of the show's exposure before getting trimmed back
The Second Tier: Payton Tolle (BOS), Braxton Ashcraft (PIT) Parker Messick (CLE)
Below the two chalk arms sits a tightly bunched pack, all drawing right around 24% ownership and all within about $1,300 of one another. The show's read isn't uniform across them.
Payton Tolle (BOS) · $9,500 · BOS @ TOR The one the show is bumping up. The case:
- Toronto has almost no power to punish mistakes with
- Strikeout prop: 5.5, neutral
- Outs prop: 17.5, leaning the over
- "I don't really see the appeal in fading him," was the show's read after digging into Toronto's numbers
Braxton Ashcraft (PIT) · $8,200 · PIT @ MIA A clean, unspectacular matchup the show is comfortable holding. The case:
- Miami's lineup ranks 24th in wRC+ and 25th in ISO against right-handers
- Strikeout prop: 5.5, matching Tolle's
- Outs prop: 17.5, with a stronger lean
Parker Messick (CLE) · $8,700 · CLE @ DET The one getting trimmed slightly. The case:
- Has given up almost no power this year
- Detroit's roster is only middling against lefties (ninth in wRC+, mid-pack in ISO)
- A fine matchup, but not one the show wants to over-own relative to Tolle and Ashcraft
Kevin Gausman (CHC) And The Rest Of The Pitching Field
Kevin Gausman (CHC), pitching against Washington, sits in what the show called "no man's land" on ownership at roughly 17%, without a strong lean either direction; his exposure is basically staying at field level today. Below that tier is a crop of lower-owned arms the show mentioned only in passing, including Max Scherzer (TOR) and Tyler Phillips (MIA). The one arm in that group worth flagging is Cade Cavalli (WSH), a cheap dart the show is bumping up specifically because he's the pitcher standing between the field and the Chicago Cubs stack below.
Fade: The Chicago Cubs Stack
Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC) at $6,600 and Seiya Suzuki (CHC) at $5,700 are tied with Boston atop the slate's raw ownership, but the pairing grades with just a 4.8% value rating, second-worst on the slate. The show isn't following the chalk here: "I don't see the love of a top-stacks Cubs team." The preferred play against them is the cheap pitcher dart named above, over rostering the Cubs bats themselves.
The White Sox Are The Stack The Field Is Missing
This is the outlier of the day. The Chicago White Sox, facing Cincinnati's Andrew Abbott (CIN), graded at or near No. 1 in stack score and cleanly No. 1 in value on the Data Hub's top-stacks tool, yet sit near the bottom of the slate's team ownership, several points below the Cubs despite the better grade. Abbott has had specific trouble with right-handed hitters, and the White Sox lineup backs that up against lefties: 10th in wRC+, 9th in ISO. The one hesitation was the weather forecast for the White Sox's park, which the show flagged as a concern before walking it back after a closer look, not enough on its own to talk anyone out of the spot.
| Team Stack | Opponent | Stack score / value | Show's exposure lean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | vs. Andrew Abbott (CIN) | No. 1 or No. 2 stack score, No. 1 value | Priority — "big jump up" |
| Boston Red Sox | vs. Max Scherzer (TOR) | No. 2 stack score | Comfortable eating the chalk |
| Chicago Cubs | vs. Cade Cavalli (WSH) | 4.8% value (2nd-worst) | Faded to zero |
| Seattle Mariners | vs. Max Fried (NYY) | Tied top in early sims exposure | Trimmed, especially Julio Rodriguez |
| New York Yankees | vs. Logan Gilbert (SEA) | Ran up to 65% in early builds | Cut hard, down to about 40% |
The row worth sitting with is the top one. A team grading No. 1 in value and top of the board in stack score, priced as a clear afterthought relative to the Cubs, is exactly the kind of gap the show's tools exist to catch.
Worked Example: Forcing More White Sox Into The Build
The show didn't just flag the White Sox and move on. It ran the process live, and it's a useful template for anyone building today:
- Start with an unfiltered top-20 pull. The first look confirmed the baseline: heavy Gilbert/Fried pitching, and the hitting side splitting mostly between Seattle and the Yankees, whichever pitcher was in.
- Check what a forced White Sox stack actually costs. Filtering to lineups that included a White Sox four- or five-man stack didn't require giving up Gilbert or Fried at all. The only real drag was Miami bats coming along for the ride from the Ashcraft game, which the show was already fine holding.
- Trim the games the field is over-owning. Manually knocking the Yankees down from 65% team exposure to roughly 40%, and taking Seattle down a similar amount, freed up the roster spots the White Sox stack needed.
- Re-check the top-stacks tool after the tweaks. On the refresh, the White Sox had slipped from No. 1 to No. 2 in stack score, but still carried a clear value edge over the Cubs and roughly five percentage points less ownership.
That four-step process, done live on air in about 20 minutes, is the whole difference between building the field's Cubs-heavy roster and building the show's White Sox-heavy one. "I am going to be prioritizing the Chicago White Sox," the show said in closing out the build. "I will not be representing the Chicago Cubs in the same way."
Boston Chalk Against Max Scherzer (TOR)
The Red Sox lineup facing Max Scherzer (TOR) is the one piece of popular ownership the show is fine eating outright. Scherzer is running a .212 expected ISO (xISO) allowed against lefties this season (.194 against righties), and the show described his stuff against left-handed hitters as having "evaporated." Boston's bats, tied with the Cubs atop raw ownership, are the more defensible half of that tie.
The one-line version: eat the Boston chalk, trim the Seattle and Yankees chalk that comes bundled with your pitcher, and put the exposure you save into the White Sox.
Seattle And New York: Trim, Don't Skip
If Fried is in the build, Seattle bats come with him, led by Cal Raleigh (SEA), Julio Rodriguez (SEA), Randy Arozarena (SEA) and Josh Naylor (SEA). Raleigh's fine to hold as cheap catcher filler, but the show specifically doesn't want a full share of Julio Rodriguez in this matchup. Flip to Gilbert and the Yankees come along instead, anchored by Jazz Chisholm Jr. (NYY), Austin Wells (NYY) and Spencer Jones (NYY) — an early build ran the Yankees up to 65% team ownership, which the show called too much and knocked back toward 40%.
Run today's full board, MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the Data Hub, before you lock in a lineup, especially if you're weighing how far to push the White Sox stack against the Cubs chalk.
The Bottom Line
Gilbert and Fried are still the two arms most rosters build around, but the show's own tweaks tell the real story: less Fried, less of the Seattle and Yankees bats that come with these two chalk arms, more Payton Tolle, and a lot more Chicago White Sox. The Cubs get left off the roster entirely despite tying Boston atop ownership, because a 4.8% value rating doesn't hold up against a White Sox stack grading No. 1 in the same tool. That's the actual decision Thursday's slate is asking builders to make.
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For today's full pitcher board and stack ranks, head to the MLB DFS picks hub, or brush up with the Stokastic Sims tutorial, our correlation and contrarian strategy guides, or the MLB DFS glossary and how to win at MLB DFS primer if you're new to slate construction.
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