We’re back with another eight-game MLB Friday night slate and no real weather concerns anywhere. Utilize Stokastic’s MLB DFS Top Stacks Tool and Top Pitchers Tool to explore the player pool and discover the most effective contrarian picks and stacks for today’s MLB games.
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MLB DFS Contrarian Picks Today: Friday, August 16
MLB DFS Contrarian Pitcher
Braves-Angels: Jose Soriano
Stokastic’s Top 2 Pitcher Rate
DraftKings: 12.3%
DFS Salary
DraftKings: $8,400
With eight games in play and weak pitching options across every price point, ownership at pitcher is expected to once again be pretty condensed. As of this writing, Spencer Arrighetti, Sean Manaea and Gavin Williams are projected to be a combined 95.3% owned on DraftKings. While Arrighetti will undoubtedly end up the highest owned of the bunch, expect to see a lot of lineups with some combination of those three pitchers. Arrighetti, Manaea and Williams are all solid plays at affordable price points. However, that leaves a bunch of pitchers who are falling through the cracks on DraftKings.
Jose Soriano is in good form right now, posting a combined 43.8 DraftKings points over his past two starts. On the season, Soriano is sporting a 3.37 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 92 strikeouts and 42 walks across 109.2 innings. Although Soriano’s 4.12 xERA calls for a bit of regression, he finds himself in a really good spot tonight against a Braves team that has struck out more than any other team in the big leagues aside from Colorado over the past month.
Stokastic’s Top Pitchers Tool projects Soriano to be a top-2 pitcher 12.3% of the time this slate plays out on DraftKings. With only 8.2% of lineups expected to roster him, Soriano is one of the top differentiators on the board.
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MLB DFS Contrarian Stack
Padres-Rockies: Rockies
Stokastic’s Top Stack Projection
DraftKings: 6.8%
Ownership Projection
DraftKings: 4.2%
Similar to ownership at pitcher, where three players are projected to get the majority of love, the Padres, Dodgers and Mets are projected to be a combined 33.2% owned on DraftKings, per Stokastic’s MLB DFS projections. While the Padres will be the highest-owned team, pretty much every other offense will be somewhat contrarian. Among these, the Rockies stand out, with the field once again uninterested in stacking Colorado.
Rostering the Rockies in the year 2024 is more often than not tough to swallow. It rarely works, and despite being in Coors, it’s never exciting to stack them. All that being said, Colorado is in a sneaky good spot tonight against a volatile pitcher in Matt Waldron. While Waldron has been really good on the whole this season, he’s coming off one of his worst starts of the year, surrendering five runs on five hits and two walks over 4.1 innings against the Marlins in Miami. When Waldron has a feel for all of his pitches, he can carve any lineup. When he doesn’t, teams like the Marlins and Rockies can get to him. Though it’s still unlikely that Colorado will be the top stack on the board tonight, that’s the case for every offense, and the Rockies are projected to be one of the lowest-owned stacks on the entire slate.
The Rockies are projected to be the top stack 6.8% of the time this slate plays out on DraftKings, but only 4.2% of lineups are expected to stack them.
Other Contrarian Stacks to Consider
White Sox, Marlins, Braves, Red Sox
