3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 4/23/21

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.

Oakland Athletics

The Oakland Athletics are the first of three non-Coors Field stacks in today's piece. Oakland's offense receives a sizable park-factor bump on the road tonight in Oriole Park at Camden Yards. According to FantasyPros, it sits 11th in park factor for runs (1.022) and 4th for homers (1.171).

Oakland's hitters should also be licking their chops over a matchup with Jorge Lopez. The 28-year-old righty has no business in a big-league rotation. He's sporting an 8.56 ERA and coughing up 3.29 homers per nine innings through three starts lasting 13 and 2/3 innings. You have to go back to 2018 for a season in which he recorded an ERA under six, and he has a 6.17 ERA in 242 innings pitched in his career.

The A's are stackable from top to bottom, and my favorite options are in the middle to bottom of the order. The potentially sneaky stacking option is Seth Brown ($2,600). Brown smashed his way up the minor-league ladder, and he's slugged three homers in just 34 plate appearances for the A's this season. The left-handed hitter's sample of 105 plate appearances against righties is admittedly small. Still, he's made them count with a .371 on-base percentage, .237 isolated power (ISO), and 147 weighted runs created plus (wRC+), per FanGraphs.

Matt Olson ($3,700) is the other key hitter who I'll call your attention to. He's tearing the cover off of the ball this year with 6 homers, a .394 on-base percentage, .368 ISO, and 201 wRC+. Additionally, he's been a beast on the road against righties in his career, ripping off a .354 on-base percentage, .284 ISO, and 144 wRC+ in that split.

Boston Red Sox

At this point, it might appear like I'm a glutton for punishment. I've suggested stacking the Boston Red Sox the last two nights, and they've rewarded my confidence with back-to-back games scoring three runs. Sound the sad trombone.

As I've said before, and I'll almost certainly say again during the marathon of an MLB regular season, short memories are paramount in daily fantasy. Further, going back to the well repeatedly with an offense that posts a few duds can have the added benefit of gamers getting players on a lower percentage of rosters than they normally would be under the same conditions following an even average performance. On a gargantuan 14-game slate, the odds are even higher of this stack avoiding chalk status.

The Red Sox are home again tonight, and that means taking hacks in MLB's third-highest run-scoring park with a park factor of 1.103 for runs. Understandably, the game's over/under total is listed at a fantasy-friendly -- at least for hitters -- 9.5 runs at MLB odds, and the Red Sox have a tasty implied total as -144 favorites. Opposing hurler Yusei Kikuchi gives up loud contact, resulting in a .364 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) per Baseball Savant and 1.42 homer per nine innings.

I'm chasing power in this stack, and that means J.D. Martinez ($4,400) is the stack's crown jewel. He's slugged six homers with a .361 ISO in 80 plate appearances this year. Additionally, since 2018, he's connected for 30 homers with a .331 ISO in 400 plate appearances against southpaws.

Hitting directly behind Martinez in the cleanup spot is Xander Bogaerts ($3,300), and I'll go ahead and lock him into my stacks, too. Bogaerts saw his two-game homer streak snapped last night, but he recorded a hit and owns a .413 on-base percentage, .186 ISO, and 169 wRC+ in 75 plate appearances this year. The right-handed-hitting shortstop is a thorn in the side of southpaws with a .387 on-base percentage, .213 ISO, and 136 wRC+ against them since 2018. Even on teams where I don't unleash a full Red Sox stack, I'll gladly hook Martinez and Bogaerts together.

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees run the total to three suggested stacks in offensive environments tonight. Progressive Field in Cleveland is 4th in park factor for runs (1.067) and 13th for homers (1.040). Despite the hitter-friendly digs, gamers could overlook this stack thanks to the Bronx Bombers' sluggish start at the plate and unexciting implied total.

I'm fixated on the silly-good numbers their active roster has posted against lefties since 2018. The cliff notes version for those who didn't click the link is that nine active roster members have a wRC+ over 100, six are north of 120, and four are above 150. Wowza.

Three members of the 150-plus wRC+ club comprise my favorite Bronx Bombers stack. DJ LeMahieu ($3,100), Giancarlo Stanton ($3,700), and Aaron Judge ($3,800) have obliterated southpaws over the last three-plus years. LeMahieu isn't living up to the lofty standards he's set since first donning the Yankees' pinstripes in 2019, but his 114 wRC+ this year is acceptable.

Judge has easily been the best hitter on the Yankees this year with a .224 ISO, 146 wRC+, and 4 homers. His Statcast data is jaw-dropping as usual, too.

Stanton's struggled mightily with a 33.3 percent strikeout rate and 58 wRC+, but he's hitting the ball as hard as ever. Among hitters with a minimum of 25 batted-ball events this year, Stanton ranks first in fly-ball and line-drive exit velocity at 104.4 mph. I'm weighting his gaudy Statcast data and track record of being one of the game's top lefty-mashers more heavily than less than a month of plate appearances. I love this stack tonight, and I'm willing to fade the aces for the requisite cap space to mix this stack with the A's and Red Sox.

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.