Here’s our solver’s early read on the Draft Kings MLB Main slate:
Pitcher: Yamamoto is the raw-ceiling anchor
Yoshinobu Yamamoto — $10,600, 17.28% RST
He is the clear No. 1 pitcher if our priority is simply accessing the highest score.
| Pitcher | Salary | RST% | Proj | P95 | P99 | SACP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yamamoto | $10,600 | 17.3% | 20.03 | 38.08 | 46.36 | 32.50 |
| Schlittler | $11,000 | 18.1% | 16.64 | 32.96 | 41.06 | 28.10 |
| Peralta | $6,600 | 6.5% | 17.22 | 32.14 | 39.28 | 27.67 |
| Gore | $8,000 | 6.1% | 16.49 | 31.27 | 38.34 | 26.86 |
| Gray | $9,100 | 11.7% | 16.16 | 30.31 | 36.88 | 26.05 |
Yamamoto separates considerably from Schlittler despite being $400 cheaper. I would strongly prefer Yamamoto if spending all the way up.
The tournament decision gets more interesting after him. Freddy Peralta at $6,600 is probably the most important pitcher on the slate from a roster-construction perspective. He gives us a 39.3-point P99 at only 6.45% ownership, versus Yamamoto’s 46.4. That $4,000 savings is enormous on DK.
MacKenzie Gore at $8,000 / 6.13% is my favorite middle-ground option. His 31.3 P95 and 38.3 P99 give him legitimate tournament-winning access while staying dramatically less owned than the expensive pitchers.
So my initial pitcher hierarchy for SE/3-Max is:
Raw ceiling: Yamamoto
Best salary/ceiling combination: Peralta
Best balanced separator: Gore
Deep leverage: Matthew Boyd
Extreme salary-release dart: Will Dion
Dion is interesting at $4,000 / 3.21% RST with a 24.1 P95 and 29.5 P99, but I would treat him strictly as a roster-construction weapon rather than a pitcher comparable to Yamamoto/Peralta/Gore.
Stack hierarchy
Our pure right-tail results are very decisive:
| Stack | Team Runs | 5-man SACP | Avg RST | Approx. Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLE | 6.35 | 127.32 | 12.2% | $22,900 |
| LAD | 5.57 | 121.12 | 6.8% | $26,700 |
| ARI | 4.97 | 107.48 | 7.9% | $21,000 |
| HOU | 5.11 | 104.35 | 8.2% | $23,400 |
| CWS | 4.67 | 101.88 | 3.0% | $22,200 |
| NYY | 4.61 | 101.55 | 3.0% | $23,400 |
No. 1 ceiling stack: Cleveland
CLE is the strongest pure-production stack in the solver. A 6.35 implied team total is substantially higher than anything else, and their five-man SACP clears LAD.
The strongest CLE cluster is:
Jose Ramirez – Chase DeLauter – Nathaniel Lowe – Jo Adell – Steven Kwan
Ramirez is chalkier at 20.1%, but CLE has enough lower-owned components to prevent the entire stack from becoming chalk.
Chase DeLauter is especially attractive: $4,900, 6.89% RST, 31.5 P95 / 47.2 P99.
My favorite SE alternative: LAD
LAD loses slightly to CLE in aggregate ceiling but has a very appealing ownership profile.
Ohtani – Freeman – Muncy – Pages – Tucker
The modeled five-man group averages only about 6.8% RST, which is remarkable given its ceiling.
And Shohei Ohtani is the No. 1 hitter in the entire slate model:
$6,500 | 6.54% RST | 36.6 P95 | 53.2 P99 | 29.29 SACP
That combination makes Ohtani one of the easiest spend-ups for me to justify.
The two leverage stacks I like most
Rather than blindly chasing the absolute lowest-owned teams, I want low ownership that still preserves a credible first-place ceiling.
NYY
About 3% average ownership across the modeled five-man core while remaining sixth in pure stack ceiling.
The most interesting player is Ben Rice:
$5,800 | 1.49% RST | 28.9 P95 | 44.6 P99
His Tail Leverage is basically off the charts relative to the rest of the hitter pool.
CWS
This might be my favorite true separator stack.
Miguel Vargas – Munetaka Murakami – Chase Meidroth – Randal Grichuk – Colson Montgomery
The aggregate ownership is only around 3%, yet CWS ranks fifth in pure stack SACP.
Two pieces are particularly compelling:
Miguel Vargas: 2.76% RST, 28.7 P95, 42.0 P99
Munetaka Murakami: 1.71% RST, 26.7 P95, 40.3 P99
That is exactly the sort of low-owned right-tail profile we want for small-field GPP differentiation.
Best individual separators
The players jumping out most clearly from our Tail Leverage engine are:
Ben Rice — NYY, $5,800, 1.49%
One of the best pure leverage profiles on the entire slate.
Fernando Tatis — SD, $5,600, 3.85%
30.9 P95 / 44.8 P99. This is an unusually low ownership number for his modeled ceiling.
Miguel Vargas — CWS, $5,300, 2.76%
Excellent one-off or CWS-stack centerpiece.
Wyatt Langford — TEX, $5,000, 2.89%
27.5 P95 / 41.0 P99.
Andy Pages — LAD, $4,800, 3.14%
Excellent way to differentiate an LAD stack without fading the elite environment.
Murakami — CWS, $5,500, 1.71%
High-variance tournament profile with excellent ownership-adjusted tail access.
For salary savings, Matt McLain at $3,000 / 1.62% is one player I would keep circled. He produced roughly a 21.1 P95 / 31.1 P99, which is very useful at that salary.
My initial SE blueprint
I would build the slate around one of two philosophies:
Production-first: Yamamoto + CLE/LAD, then obtain separation through 1–2 individual hitters.
Game-theory build: Peralta or Gore + CLE/LAD, using the pitcher savings to avoid weak value hitters.
And for a more aggressive tournament construction, Peralta/Gore + CWS or NYY gives us legitimate ceiling with a massive reduction in combined ownership.
The three spots I would drill into next are (1) the single best DK pitcher pairing, (2) CLE vs. LAD for the best SE stack, or (3) the best sub-$3,500 separator values.
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