MLB

3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Wednesday 8/11/21

Josh Shepardson  —  @BChad50 Aug 11th, 2021
The Blue Jays are an obviously strong stack tonight. Which other teams should we look to on Wednesday?

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

Dylan Bundy's pitched terribly this year, and that might be putting it mildly. He sports a 6.14 ERA, 4.44 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and 1.90 homers per nine innings, per FanGraphs. Further, he's been nearly equally inept against lefties and righties, allowing a .349 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to the former and a .347 wOBA to the latter.

In summary, he's ill-equipped to handle the Toronto Blue Jays. Toronto's tied for second in weighted runs created plus (113 wRC+), and they're alone in second in isolated power (.197 ISO) against righties.

The vastness of Toronto's quality hitting options makes them stackable from top to bottom. Nonetheless, I'm specifically interested in their three most accomplished hitters against righties this year, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($4,400), George Springer ($4,100), and Marcus Semien ($3,900). It's likely they'll -- understandably -- be chalky selections. Still, you can swerve from the pack by completing a four-person stack with Alejandro Kirk ($2,200). Toronto's backstop offers salary relief with upside, recording a .340 on-base percentage, .225 ISO, and 120 wRC+ against righties in 2021.

Detroit Tigers

This year, the Detroit Tigers are merely a ho-hum offense against righties, ranking 17th in wRC+ (91) against righties. Humdrum might be good enough to get the better of the massively overachieving Matt Harvey.

Overachieving probably feels like sarcasm when describing a guy with a 6.13 ERA in 98 and 1/3 innings. However, a glance at his 3.25 ERA in his last seven starts spanning 36 innings might lead gamers to think he's figured it out. A look under the hood suggests that's not the case, as his 4.70 expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) and 4.87 SIERA are both markedly worse than his ERA.

So, with his advanced metrics in mind, the other shoe's likely to drop at some point. Why not tonight? My favorite options from the stack include power-hitter Eric Haase ($3,400), Robbie Grossman ($3,200), and Akil Baddoo ($3,200). I'm completely enamored with Baddoo. He has a .353 on-base percentage, .252 ISO, and 139 wRC+ against righties this year. He's also swiped 14 bases this season.

San Francisco Giants

I regularly feature the San Francisco Giants here, and they often deliver the goods. They did so last night, scoring eight runs. They're a top-10 offense against righties this year, ranking sixth in wRC+ (109). However, the number that gets my attention most is their Major League Baseball-high .201 ISO against righties.

San Francisco's ability to put a charge into the ball meshes perfectly with Merrill Kelly's pitch-to-contact approach. Kelly has a 20.2 percent strikeout rate and 9.3 percent swinging-strike percentage in 2021. However, during his last nine starts in which he's tallied a 2.44 ERA, he's struck out only 18.5 percent of the batters he's faced with a 9.6 percent swinging-strike percentage.

Ultimately, I'm not buying Kelly's recent approach paying dividends for him against the Giants tonight. I love lefties Brandon Belt ($3,000) and Brandon Crawford ($3,200) tonight. Although righties Buster Posey ($3,100) and Kris Bryant ($3,900) are superb options, too. Kelly's yielded a .484 slugging percentage and .344 wOBA to right-handed hitters this year.

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.