MLB DFS Picks: DraftKings Main Slate | September 25, 2026

The September 25, 2026 DraftKings MLB Main Slate starts at 7:07 PM ET. The slate gives us a true ace at the top, several strong mid-range arms and enough cheap hitting to decide whether we want to pay for pitching or load up on the Dodgers and Astros.

CTS Slate Board

Top pitcher: Tarik Skubal $11,000
Favorite SP2: Hunter Brown $8,900
Favorite value pitcher: Robert Gasser $7,200
Favorite stack: Los Angeles Dodgers
Favorite GPP stack: Houston Astros
Favorite value stack: Chicago White Sox
Favorite one-off: Julio Rodriguez $4,400

Pitchers

Tarik Skubal, Dodgers, $11,000

Skubal is the premium arm we want most. The matchup with San Francisco gives him a path to both innings and strikeouts, and the salary is manageable enough that we do not have to abandon premium bats completely. If we spend $11K here, the rest of the lineup needs to be intentional rather than simply filling the cheapest available hitters.

Jacob deGrom, Rangers, $9,700

deGrom remains a ceiling play whenever he is on the mound. Minnesota gives him a more difficult environment than some of the cheaper arms, but the strikeout path keeps him in tournament builds where we want to pivot away from Skubal.

Hunter Brown, Astros, $8,900

Brown is our favorite SP2 price point. He gives us real strikeout upside without forcing the lineup into multiple punts, and pairing Brown with Skubal still leaves enough room to build a coherent stack.

Sean Burke, White Sox, $8,500

Burke is another useful mid-range tournament arm. His 3.62 FIP and 16.8% K-BB rate have produced multiple 20-plus DraftKings-point games, and he gets a Colorado offense that has been much less dangerous away from Coors.

Value Pitcher: Robert Gasser, Brewers, $7,200

Gasser is the value arm we prefer when salary matters. He does not need to match Skubal’s raw ceiling. At $7,200, he lets us move from the bottom of a stack into another premium Dodgers or Astros bat while still giving us a legitimate starting-pitcher workload.

Favorite Stack: Los Angeles Dodgers at San Francisco

The Dodgers are expensive, but the ceiling is obvious against Yunior Marte. Shohei Ohtani $6,300, Mookie Betts $5,500 and Freddie Freeman $5,300 are the premium anchors. Teoscar Hernandez $5,000 and Kyle Tucker $4,800 add power, while Will Smith $4,400 can solve catcher inside the stack.

The useful part of this stack is the bottom end. Dalton Rushing $3,300, Miguel Rojas $2,900, Kike Hernandez $2,800, Alex Freeland $2,700 and Alex Call $2,500 can create salary relief if they are in the starting lineup. We do not need five expensive Dodgers to get five-man correlation.

Other Stacks

Houston Astros at Athletics

Houston is our favorite GPP stack. Yordan Alvarez $6,500 is the ceiling piece, followed by Jeremy Pena $5,200, Isaac Paredes $4,700, Jose Altuve $4,500, Christian Walker $4,100 and Yainer Diaz $4,000. The middle of the order is priced well enough to build Houston without needing Yordan in every lineup.

Chicago White Sox vs. Tomoyuki Sugano

This is our favorite salary-conscious stack. Sugano enters with a 5.19 ERA, and Chicago offers Miguel Vargas $5,400, Munetaka Murakami $4,800, Colson Montgomery $3,900, Randal Grichuk $3,600, Andrew Benintendi $3,500 and Kyle Teel $3,500. The stack gives us a way to spend heavily at pitcher or use Ohtani as a one-off.

Seattle Mariners vs. Reid Detmers

Seattle is our smaller-stack option. Randy Arozarena $5,400, Cal Raleigh $4,900, Julio Rodriguez $4,400 and Josh Naylor $3,600 create a compact four-man group with real home-run upside.

Best One-Off Hitters

Julio Rodriguez $4,400: our favorite price-adjusted standalone hitter.

Cal Raleigh $4,900: elite catcher power without needing a full Seattle stack.

Shohei Ohtani $6,300: the raw-ceiling one-off when salary is available.

Christian Yelich $4,200: a useful mid-range bat when we are not stacking Milwaukee.

Value Bats

Alex Call $2,500 and Alex Freeland $2,700 are our favorite Dodgers salary bridges if starting. Kyle Teel $3,500 offers affordable catcher exposure in the White Sox stack. Josh Naylor $3,600 is inexpensive relative to his role and works as either a one-off or Seattle stack piece.

GPP Construction

Skubal plus Brown is our preferred raw combination. Gasser is the salary-release SP2 when the savings materially improve the hitters. In tournaments, we like using two or three premium Dodgers with cheaper lineup mates rather than automatically building the most expensive five-man version. Houston and Chicago are the cleanest full-stack pivots.

CTS Core

Tarik Skubal $11,000
Hunter Brown $8,900
Value SP: Robert Gasser $7,200
Mookie Betts $5,500
Julio Rodriguez $4,400