MLB

Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Thursday 5/27/21

Josh Shepardson  —  @BChad50 May 27th, 2021
The White Sox hammer lefties and are the top stack facing a below-average one tonight. Who else joins them among the top stacks tonight?

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.

Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox are my favorite stack tonight. They're Major League Baseball's top offense against lefties by a wide margin. Their 133 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) is a whopping nine points better than the second-best mark, per FanGraphs, and their .193 isolated power (ISO) is the third-highest mark. The Pale Hose are in good form, too, ranking tied for fifth in wRC+ (112) over the last 30 days.

They should keep rolling against one of the worst pitchers on tonight's main slate. Lefty Bruce Zimmermann has a 5.59 ERA for the season and a 4.67 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA). He's also served up dingers in bunches, surrendering 2.09 homers per nine innings. Things haven't been better of late for the rookie, either. Zimmermann's coughed up a 6.88 ERA, 4.43 SIERA, and 2.69 homers per nine innings over the last 30 days.

Tim Anderson's ($3,600) scuffled this year against lefties, but he's been too good against them throughout his career to overreact to fewer than 50 plate appearances against them in 2021. He's a great stacking option from the leadoff spot.

The reigning American League Most Valuable Player, Jose Abreu ($3,900), is crushing lefties this year (.400 ISO and 175 wRC+), and he's torched them for a .268 ISO and 156 wRC+ since 2018. Get him in your Pale Hose stack, too.

To complete my favorite full, four-person stack, I'm turning to rookies Yermin Mercedes ($2,600) and Andrew Vaughn ($2,600). The former has a .488 on-base percentage, .200 ISO, and 217 wRC+ in 43 plate appearances against southpaws this season, and the latter has a .452 on-base percentage, .441 ISO, and 229 wRC+.

Note that there is rain in the forecast, though, so be sure to check how things are looking later in the day.

Arizona Diamondbacks

The Arizona Diamondbacks are an unexciting offense lacking star power. They're a matchup-driven stack I expect to be contrarian. Carlos Martinez was bombed for a 9.90 ERA in five starts totaling 20 innings last year. He's fixed his issues with a 4.18 ERA this year in eight starts totaling 47 and 1/3 innings, right?

Not so fast. The righty's strikeout rate is at a career-low 12.1 percent. A .233 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) that's considerably lower than his .299 BABIP for his career has driven his success in 2021. C-Mart has an ugly 5.23 SIERA, so the other shoe should drop at some point. Why not tonight?

My favorite stacking options start at the top with Josh Rojas ($2,500). I'm also on fellow table-setter, switch-hitter Ketel Marte ($3,200). Additionally, I'm turning to David Peralta ($2,700) and Carson Kelly ($3,600) to round out a full stack.

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.