MLB DFS Picks Today (8/14): Gavin Williams Leads A Wide-Open Pitching Slate

The Quick Answer

Friday's 10-game main slate is short on standout totals (seven of the day's games carry sub-4-run implied totals), and the show's own exposure numbers back that up: no team clears 7% true stack probability, and the builds are running zero uniques because the field is already this scattered on its own. Gavin Williams (CLE) is the top arm among three $10K-plus options, the value tier of Landen Roupp (SF), Kyle Freeland (COL) and Gage Jump (ATH) is drawing real overweight exposure, and Wyatt Langford (TEX) is the slate's highest-owned bat at 39%. The full pitcher tiers, the stack math, and where to find leverage are below.

Gavin Williams — one of the featured players on today's slate.

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The Stokastic MLB Strategy show broke down Friday's full 10-game slate live using the MLB Data Hub. 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.

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A Flat Slate By Design, Not By Accident

Seven different teams carry a sub-4-run implied total tonight: Arizona, San Diego, Milwaukee, Toronto, Colorado, Baltimore and Cleveland all sit at 3.6 to 3.9. Only one game on the board, Texas Rangers-Athletics at Sutter Health Park, clears a 5-run total for either side. That's a real departure from the bigger, hotter slates of the past couple weeks, and it shapes almost every decision below: with no obvious smash spot, the show's own builds ended up naturally split across a dozen different arms and stacks rather than jammed into one or two. That flatness is the actual story of the night, and it shows up clearest in the one matchup where an ace is arguably in the wrong spot.

The Outlier: Why Chris Sale Isn't The Top $10K Arm

Three pitchers sit above $10,000 tonight: Chris Sale (ATL) at $10,700, Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LAD) at $10,200 and Gavin Williams (CLE) at $10,500. The show's rankings don't follow the price tags. Sale draws the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Arizona is a genuinely bad platoon matchup for a left-hander: the Diamondbacks carry the majors' second-best wRC+ and third-best ISO against left-handed pitching, with a league-low 16.2% strikeout rate against lefties, a full 1.7 points better than the next-closest team. That's a real platoon-split outlier hiding behind an otherwise unremarkable Arizona offense, which is a much worse team against right-handers. Sale's 6.5 strikeout prop is fine on its own, but it's the matchup, not the stuff, that has the show ranking him third of three.

Gavin Williams (CLE) is the pick instead. He's the cheapest of the trio, and he's facing a San Diego Padres lineup that's sub-100 wRC+ against right-handers this year, 22nd in ISO, without the platoon red flag attached to Sale. Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LAD) lands in the middle: a fine matchup against Milwaukee, but not one the show is jamming. His strikeout prop sits at the same 6.5 as Sale's, at a lower price, without a standout reason to force him in over Williams.

The Real Value Tier: Roupp, Freeland And Jump

Below the $10K tier, the show skipped the entire $8,700-to-$9,700 range outright. George Kirby (SEA) at $8,700, Gerrit Cole (NYY) at the top of the board, and Peter Lambert (HOU) all drew zero Sims exposure. Instead, the money went straight down to three cheaper arms the show argued are underpriced for their matchups.

Landen Roupp (SF) at $7,500 draws the Colorado Rockies, and Colorado's offense is considerably worse on the road than it is at Coors: their strikeout rate climbs more than two points away from home, and their wRC+ drops to 99. Roupp's game is at pitcher-friendly Oracle Park, not Coors Field, a distinction the show flagged directly. Kyle Freeland (COL) at $5,500 draws the return leg of that same series, facing a San Francisco lineup that's carrying more swing-and-miss than the market has priced in: six different Giants hitters own a strikeout rate above 25% this year, a number the show says it flagged before it showed up in ownership. Gage Jump (ATH) at $7,000 is the third value arm, facing a Texas Rangers lineup that still owns the slate's highest team total near 5.0 runs, with a 5.5 strikeout prop juiced to the over.

How To Force More Value Arms Into Your Build

The show ran a live boost test on the two cheaper arms sitting just below its top three, and the exposure math is worth stealing directly: a 10% Sims boost on Gage Jump (ATH) nearly doubled his exposure, from 7% to 13%, and a 15% boost pushed him to 19%. A 10% boost on Seth Lugo (KC) moved him from roughly 5% up to 8%, a smaller jump because his matchup grades a step behind Jump's. Because so many of these cheaper arms are projected within a tight band of each other tonight, small boosts move real exposure, and you don't need to force a lineup constraint to get there.

No Team Clears 7%: The Real Stack Story

This is the most fragmented stack picture the show has run in a while. In the top-stacks simulations, not a single team clears 7% true stack probability, with most bunched between 4% and 6%, a far cry from the 18-20%-plus a slate's top stack usually commands. On raw ownership, Washington Nationals leads at 26%, with the New York Yankees at 17% and the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals tied around 13%, six teams total carrying double-digit exposure. Fourteen different pitchers are sitting in single-digit ownership behind the five or six named above. The takeaway: there's no team to jam and no team worth fully fading. San Francisco doesn't clear the bar as a stack either, even with Freeland drawing extra pitcher exposure against them; the Giants' own contact profile keeps their raw upside capped.

The Bats: Wyatt Langford Stands Alone

Wyatt Langford (TEX) is the outlier on the hitting side, sitting at 39% ownership, by far the slate's highest individual number, and a direct extension of the Rangers carrying the day's best team total against Jump and the Athletics. Behind him, ownership is spread thin: Bobby Witt Jr. (KC) at 25%, Salvador Perez (KC) at 23%, José Tena (WAS) at 27%, Shohei Ohtani (LAD) at 20%, Jazz Chisholm Jr. (NYY) at 19%, CJ Abrams (WAS) and Bo Bichette (NYM) both around 17%, and Ryan McMahon (NYY) at 10%. One name worth a warning: Cal Raleigh (SEA) is still priced at $3,900 off last year's production, but he's been cold enough that the show isn't interested in him again until that price bottoms out, a reminder that a stale salary tag doesn't mean a real discount.

Run today's full board, MLB DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the Data Hub, before you lock a lineup, especially if you're deciding how far to push Williams, Roupp and Freeland relative to the field.

The Bottom Line

There's no smash spot tonight, and that's exactly why the show is running zero uniques: the field is already this spread out on its own. Gavin Williams is the top arm because he's the cheapest of three good-not-great options and dodges the platoon trap that has Sale ranked third; Roupp, Freeland and Jump are the real value plays getting overweighted below him; and with no team clearing 7% true stack probability, Wyatt Langford's 39% ownership is the closest thing to a chalk play on the entire board.

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Every number above came off the same MLB Data Hub run pulled up live on today's show.

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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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