MLB

Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/15/21

Josh Shepardson  —  @BChad50 Apr 15th, 2021
The Nationals look like a team worth stacking on Thursday. What other spots should we look to?

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.

Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals have a cushy pitching matchup tonight in their hitter-friendly home digs. Opposing starter Merrill Kelly pitched well in just five starts spanning 31 and 1/3 innings last year, but his 2.59 ERA overstated how well that was when compared to his 3.92 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA). The regression monster has more than reared its ugly head for Kelly this year, as he's been rocked for an 8.10 ERA and 5.46 SIERA through two starts totaling 10 innings. Including his first season in the majors (2019) results in a 4.65 SIERA in 224 and 2/3 innings pitched, which is probably a fair barometer for his talent level.

This year, he's responsible for the 17th-highest expected weighted on-base average (.454 xwOBA), per Baseball Savant, out of 292 qualified pitchers. Making matters worse for him, he's inducing a lower percentage of chases out of the strike zone and generating fewer swinging strikes. He's also homer-prone, coughing up 1.80 homers per nine innings this year and 1.44 homers per nine innings for his career. Kelly is a poor fit for Nationals Park.

The Nationals' home ballpark has the fifth-highest park factor for runs (1.066) and sixth-highest park factor for homers (1.135), according to the three-year average at FantasyPros. Everything lines up favorably for the Nationals to hang lots of runs on the scoreboard tonight.

The integral pieces of a Nationals stack start with Juan Soto ($4,400). According to FanGraphs, among hitters with a minimum of 350 plate appearances against righties since 2018, Soto ranks 2nd in on-base percentage (.436), 12th in isolated power (.272 ISO), and 4th in weighted runs created plus (161 wRC+).

Ranking a few spots higher than Soto in a tie for ninth in ISO is Kyle Schwarber ($3,300), with a .275 ISO. He's a top stacking option, too. The other most appealing stack selections are Trea Turner ($4,000) and Josh Bell ($3,400). The quartet makes for my favorite full Nationals' stack.

Oakland Athletics

The Oakland Athletics won't be taking cuts in a hitter-friendly park like the Nationals. On the contrary, the Oakland Coliseum depresses runs (0.871) and homers (0.790). The stack-unfriendly nature of the Oakland Coliseum is more than offset by a Charmin-soft pitching matchup.

Second-year big-leaguer Tarik Skubal has yet to demonstrate the ability to translate his minor-league success to the game's highest level. In 10 appearances (nine starts) spanning 41 and 1/3 innings, he owns a 6.10 ERA, 4.56 SIERA, 56.3 fly-ball percentage, and has coughed up an almost inconceivable 2.61 homers per nine innings.

Skubal hasn't been all bad, however, holding left-handed batters to a .154 wOBA. Unfortunately for him, he's been a punching-bag for right-handed hitters, yielding a .616 slugging percentage and .396 wOBA to 143 right-handed batters faced. The left-handed pitcher's success against lefties eliminates Matt Olson ($2,900) and Mitch Moreland ($2,300) from consideration for my top A's stack if they return to the lineup tonight.

The hitters I'm most interested in using are Mark Canha ($3,000), Ramon Laureano ($3,200), Matt Chapman ($3,200), and Sean Murphy ($2,200). Canha and Chapman are the standouts from the quartet, steamrolling southpaws for a 143 wRC+ and 124 wRC+, respectively, since 2018. Laureano and Murphy aren't slouches, either, with a 118 wRC+ and 106 wRC+. Laureano further bolsters his upside with elite wheels, swiping eight bags already this season.

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.