3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 5/14/21
Stacks are the backbone of cashing daily fantasy baseball lineups. Correlation drives upside, creating the potential to place high or even win GPPs when your selected stacks explode offensively.
This column will do the digging and the dirty work to determine which stacks are worth rostering each day. Scoring upside will fuel the stacks that get the nod. Sometimes that will lead to chalky selections, but contrarian stacks will get their fair share of love too.
In addition to utilizing the touted daily stacks in handbuilt lineups, numberFire premium members can throw these highlighted stacks into an optimized lineup using our DFS Sharpstack tool. Our hitting heat map tool is also available to premium members looking for more stacking options. It provides valuable info such as implied total, park factors, and stats for identifying the quality of the opposing pitcher.
Let's take a look at the top stacks on today's main slate.
Toronto Blue Jays
There's a game at Coors Field tonight, and the Colorado Rockies illustrated the upside of hitting there by hanging double-digit runs on the scoreboard last night. Regardless, I'm not stacking that contest. I may take a few one-off stabs, but there's ample upside elsewhere on tonight's slate.
The Toronto Blue Jays are my favorite offense to stack tonight, and the insanely good hitting conditions largely drive that at their temporary home. According to the park factors at ESPN, TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida has the second-highest park factor for runs (1.412), third-highest for homers (1.429), and boosts doubles, triples, and walks as well.
The Blue Jays have enjoyed their home cooking, ranking third in isolated power (.216 ISO) and tied for first in weighted runs created plus (131 wRC+) in home games this year, per FanGraphs. They're also a top-10 offense against righties, ranking 10th with a 100 wRC+. The Blue Jays are equipped to rough up Vincent Velasquez.
The 28-year-old right-hander does two things I love to see when picking a pitcher to stack against. First, he issues free passes, having walked 15.2 percent of the batters he's faced this year. Second, he coughs up the long ball. Velasquez has yielded 2.28 homers per nine innings this year.
The Blue Jays have a gaudy implied total, and I'm all over it. The hitters I'm most interested in reside in the top-four lineup spots. Leadoff hitter Marcus Semien ($3,200), number-two hitter Bo Bichette ($3,900), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($4,000), and cleanup hitter Teoscar Hernandez ($3,300). It's not going out on a limb suggesting that quartet, but with 13 games on the slate and one at Coors Field, it's not necessary to get cute or contrarian with this stack.
New York Yankees
Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but after being held to one run in each of their last two games, I'm going right back to stacking the New York Yankees tonight. They have a plus matchup with Dean Kremer, and Orioles Park at Camden Yards enhances run-scoring and homers, with park factors of 1.022 and 1.171, respectively, per FantasyPros.
Kremer has the second-highest ERA (6.43) this season on tonight's main slate. He's also coughed up 2.08 homers per nine innings. Also of note, the right-handed hurler has been beaten up in same-handed matchups. He's allowed a .357 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to 110 right-handed batters faced since last year.
Additionally, I love that this is the Bronx Bombers' third look at Kremer after knocking him around twice before. They put nine runners on and scored three runs in three innings against Kremer in his first turn against them. They hung six runs on him the second time, recording 10 hits, including two taters, in 4 and 1/3 innings.
As is the case with the Blue Jays, I'm locking in on the studs in the premium lineup spots. Namely, Giancarlo Stanton ($3,600), and Aaron Judge ($3,300). Both hitters have a wRC+ above 120 and an ISO above .210 in righty-righty matchups this year.
Oakland Athletics
While I don't feel it's necessary to go out of your way to be contrarian tonight, it never hurts if you go off the beating path and have a stack blowup. The Oakland Athletics could be the club to do just that tonight.
Opposing starter Matt Shoemaker's 6.43 ERA is the highest on tonight's slate. Further, his 5.08 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) is the fourth-highest mark among tonight's probable starters. He also shares the common thread with Velasquez and Kremer of coughing up dingers, allowing 2.25 homers per nine innings this year.
Digging deeper into Shoemaker's unsightly numbers, his batted-ball data hasn't been pretty either. Baseball Savant credits him with a .384 expected wOBA (xwOBA).
This stacking suggestion is entirely about the quality of pitcher Shoemaker is. The A's have played at a below-average level against righties this year. Ditto for their road tilts. Having said that, a larger sample of plate appearances against righties paints a prettier picture.
Eight members of their projected lineup tonight have a wRC+ above 115 against righties since 2018. That group is headlined by the one player I'll tab as a must-use option if stacking the A's, Matt Olson ($3,200). He's lit up righties for a .261 ISO and 135 wRC+ since 2018.
Joshua Shepardson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Joshua Shepardson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username bchad50. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
