MLB DW Slate Breakdown - June 19

An in depth look at the Friday Night DFS slate

Jun 19, 2026

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Big old Friday of baseball! Let’s bust into it. We’re looking mostly through a DFS cash lens. Finding the best plays to build for a high-floor lineup with enough ceiling to take us there.

But as always, we’ll cover tourneys as well. I’ll build one cash lineup and a single entry tourney lineup as well. They may share some players, but we’ll be trying to fade the high ownership in the tourney lineup while embracing some of it in the cash lineup.

Weather

All clear on the weather. One YELLOW spot from Roth with the Brewers at Braves maybe getting a little bit wet. The report is here.

YELLOW/GREEN - A cluster of storms pops up in the late afternoon, but high-res models show them firing south of the ballpark then moving farther south. I’m optimistic we play clean here, but if the storms pop farther north than what models show, we could get a delay.

We’ll certainly talk about Misiorowski. I would love an excuse to not have to fit his $12,500 into the lineup. I doubt I’ll be doing that anyways, but any delay can end a pitcher’s night very short. So that’s worth keeping an eye on.

Game Info

Four big old implications above 6.25 tonight:

Pirates in Coors [Freeland]
Dodgers vs. Gibson at home
Yankees vs. Lowder at home
Athletics vs. Soriano at home

PIRATES

My Bucs do seem to smash when they’re supposed to smash. I’ll give them that. But they usually smash against right-handed pitching, and they get the lefty Kyle Freeland tonight. It’s worth asking, though, is Freeland just so bad that his left-handedness isn’t even working anymore? That’s probably a really stupid question.

The splits:

So yes, he’s still much better against lefties. The rule remains true. A .319 xwOBA against lefties - that’s actually pretty good. So he neutralizes Lowe, O’Hearn, and Horwitz. Oneil Cruz is out of the lineup anyways. But we’ll want to look at some of these Pirates right-handed sticks.

Esmerlyn Valdez - can’t find a much better play than that, I don’t think. Just $3,100 for the guy with huge pop against one of these lefties that he has SMASHED in the minors. We like that a lot.

DODGERS

Trey Gibson has been rough. 21 innings, a 12.5% K% and a 13.5% BB% with a .389 xwOBA. It’s a smash spot for the Dodgers at home. They’re a -219 favorite, and that’s with the very volatile Roki Sasaki pitching.

YANKEES

Rhet Lowder has a 18% K% and a 12% BB% with a .337 xwOBA allowed in the Majors so far. He has given up a .376 xwOBA to lefties, so there’s a specific way to attack him. That would mean big time projections on Ben Rice, Jasson Dominguez, Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm, and Spencer Jones. Dominguez is at $3,500 and Jones is at $2,100.

This lineup is going to be pretty easy to build, methinks.

ATHLETICS

Jose Soriano got pushed back to tonight. I don’t think the A’s are a priority for me against a guy who gets a ton of ground balls. The Yankees, Dodgers, and cheap Pirates righties are the plays I want to focus on.

Three offenses that might get overlooked because of those big four:

D’Backs vs. Connor Prielipp (5.4 implied runs)
Rockies vs. Bubba Chandler (5.3 implied runs)
Cardinals vs. Seth Lugo (5.3 implied runs)

Pitchers

The Bat X might be really over-regressing Misiorowski. That system has him for 18 points. I’m at 24.6. So maybe we should focus on my projections only now. I did have a nice upgrade on them this week. Here’s what it looks like:

Ordering it by value:

On juicy pitching slates like this, we want to focus on raw projection and value. I don’t really want to play a $6,300 Jeffrey Springs, hoping for 13 points, when we have Mis, Schlittler, and deGrom all projecting around 20 with upside for 35.

That said, I don’t think you can possibly fit Misiorowski + deGrom. That would be $22,500 on your two pitchers.

THE MISIOROWSKI BLOCK

We’ve been fading Misiorowski at these prices for weeks now, and it’s punched us in the crotch every single time. But now it’s $12,500.

We like to focus on 2.5x return for the money. That’s 31 points from Misiorowski. If he gets that, it’s huge. This is an important lesson. Getting 2.5x from a $12.5K player is way more valuable than getting it from a $6.5K player. That’s a much higher percentage of your salary buying those points at the 2.5x multiplier. But the reverse is true: if Mis gets 18 points, you just spend a quarter of your available salary for a 1.5x return.

The floor is great, though. I have a question about how long he can continue throwing this hard. I’m not sure if there’s anything to this, but he does have some home/road splits going on:

→ Home: 42% K%, 5% BB%, 20.4% SwStr%
→ Road: 37% K%, 9% BB%, 16.5% SwStr%

Everything has to be pretty much perfect for me to play Mis at $12,500. And I don’t think things are perfect right now.

On the road
Some potential rain
A decent Braves lineup

That’s too many words about Misiorowski, I’ve heard ENOUGH about the guy. Although, I will be watching the game. I’ll have some people from church over tonight for a get together and I’m going to make sure they all see this dude even though I know they don’t care. But people that go to church are good are pretending that they care - they kinda have to be nice.

SCHLITTLER

He’s $10,400. Which looks a lot cheaper when you see the $12,500. It’s like restaurants putting a $10,000 bottle on the menu just to make you more likely to buy the $200 one.

The Reds go to Yankees Stadium, and they’re still without Elly. Schlittler has been better on the road this year:

That’s probably fake. It would make sense that he gives up more homers at home (which he hasn’t), but it doesn’t make much sense that his K% would be lower or his xwOBA allowed would be higher.

I just don’t really care for Schlittler as a DFS play.

We need 25 points for that 2.5x, and he’s done that once in his last five.

deGROM vs. SD

The only baseball player in the league with a last name that starts with a lower-case letter. We have to embrace the home/road splits in this case.

Smashing deGrom tonight at $10,000. He has Misiorowski upside for $2,500 less. And this is a perfectly good matchup against the Padres who have made some sort of vow to not score too many runs this year.

BRYCE MILLER

$8,900 vs. Boston here. That’s an elite matchup. The Red Sox are dirty water dog crap. And look how good Miller has been:

BUT the piggy-back is in effect. Last time they did this, Miller threw 83 pitches and Castillo finished the game with 68 pitches. That limits the ceiling here. I really do think this is a situation where they bring Castillo in for the 5th or 6th inning no matter how well Miller is doing. They want both of these piggy back guys to throw around 60-80 pitches. The projection is based on 88 pitches, which is probably too high. I suppose we can’t really play him in cash for that reason.

But with a 26% K-BB%, he’s capable of going for 20+ even in five innings. It’s just not as likely.

RANGER SUAREZ vs. SEA

Good projection for Suarez in the friendly environment in Seattle. But he has a way lower K% than the guys we’ve already talked about. That’s always tough to play at $8,600. He’s just $300 less than Miller.

JEFFREY SPRINGS vs. LAA

If you need an SP punt, it’s Springs. Trout is on the IL, this Angels lineup is horrible. The game’s in Sacramento though, and Springs isn’t very good. I’m not going there in cash, but it makes a lot of sense in a tourney build. You could throw him in there with Misiorowski.

BUBBA CHANDLER vs. COL

Not a good spot, but a good price at $5,500. The Coors effect takes away the iVB on his four-seamer, and that hurts. He should probably be a bit more than $5,500 though.

His last five starts: 27% K%, 10% BB%, .291 xwOBA allowed. He’s been a lot better.

Let’s run the sims!

The only guy I haven’t mentioned that shows here is Tanner Bibee. And he has pitched better in the last five.

Still a couple of less-than-great outings there, and he’ll have to deal with Yordan tonight. But it’s fine at $7,200.

The optimal lineup has Misiorowski + Miller in it using my own projections. That’s pretty interesting. But you can’t pay up for a big bat.You can’t get the Dodgers, and you have to stick to the lower-priced Yankees and do a couple of punts.

Hitters

Yankees and Cardinals, it looks like!

CATCHERS

The guys I’m focused on:

Carter Jensen $3,600 vs. McGreevy
Ivan Herrera $4,300 vs. Lugo

Hard to argue with Jensen with the HR+SB upside as a lead-off man against a bad pitcher in McGreevy. I think that’s clearly the cash play tonight.

Tourneys: Goodman, Raleigh, Langeliers

FIRST BASE

Ohtani is in such a juicy spot but we can’t pay $6,800 for him if we’re paying money for pitchers, which we want to do very much. Same with Kurtz at $6,500 against the ground ball pitcher in Soriano.

So the plays I’m looking at:

Alec Burleson $4,100 vs. Lugo
Grissom $3,300 vs. Springs
Ben Rice $5,800 vs. Lowder
Kyle Manzardo $2,700 vs. Imai

SECOND BASE

Lots of mid-range Cardinals looking very nice against Lugo.

JJ Wetherholt $4,500 vs. Lugo
Ketel Marte $5,400 vs. Prielipp
Jazz Chisholm $4,400 vs. Lowder
Travis Bazzana $3,900 vs. Imai

THIRD BASE

The model likes Sal Stewart, but it is Schlittler, so I don’t really want to go there.

Junior Caminero is in a fine spot against Cavalli, but he’s more expensive than I’m comfortable with.

Ryan McMahon ($2,300) is the punt of the day. And it makes sense to punt at this position without much to love in the other spots.

Denzar Guzman ($3,000) is another play I like. He has a ton of power, and that will play nice in Sacramento.

So the guys I’m focused on:

McMahon $2,300 vs. Lowder
Guzman $3,000 vs. Springs
Schneemann $2,500 vs. Imai

SHORTSTOP

Bobby Witt might sit this one out after getting hurt yesterday, and he’s really expensive as usual.

Zach Neto ($5,500) is a high-upside play in Sacramento against the lefties. SO I like him if we can jam it in. But probably not enough to make him a priority play.

The punt options:

Cooper Pratt $2,100 vs. Martin Perez
Guzman again vs. Springs
Tristan Gray $2,200 vs. Soroka

I like Pratt a little bit. We’re getting that newly-debuted price near the minimum. I think the cash build is going to gravitate towards punting at 3B/SS.

OUTFIELD

So yeah, the model is pretty hot on Jones & Dominguez.

Jones has a big strikeout problem, but that is muted against Lowder, who didn’t even strike out minor league hitters very often. Awesome spot for Jones, no doubt. I can use him in cash.

Dominguez has a bad .191/.240/.404 slash, but a .281 xBA. He is rarely striking out (16%) and has both power and speed as part of his game. If he’s really hitting #2 as projected, that’s a great play.

There are a ton of other plays in the outfield on a 12-game slate, obviously, but I’ll leave it to you to go through them all. The projections are totally free today - don’t forget about that.

Check out the app here. Use password “friday”.

THE SIMS

Priority pay-ups:

Ohtani
Rice
Bellinger
Walker

Priority value plays:

Jones
McMahon
Manzardo
Pratt
Dominguez

John Rave $2,000 is certainly in play as well, as we see there. He hit a couple bombs yesterday, showing some of his power. And the price didn’t budge off the minimum!

And don’t forget about Esmerlyn Valdez ($3,100) against the lefty in Coors.

So we have a ton of value to choose from. I think we could build some super high-scoring lineups for this one if we’re going multi-entry build.