MLB

Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Thursday 4/29/21

Josh Shepardson  —  @BChad50 Apr 29th, 2021
The Dodgers are a clear top option on tonight's smaller main slate. Do any other teams stand out?

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.

Los Angeles Dodgers

For full disclosure, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the only offense I'm interested in using a four-man stack with. Freddy Peralta was initially listed as the probable starter at MLB.com on Thursday, but Eric Lauer is being promoted from the alternate site to start instead. The downgrade in quality of pitcher from Peralta to Lauer is massive.

The 25-year-old lefty, Lauer, was nothing short of a disaster last year. He made only four appearances (two starts), but a 13.09 ERA, 5.81 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), 14.8 percent walk rate, and 1.64 homers per nine innings in 11 innings were dreadful. According to FanGraphs, he has a 4.75 ERA and a nearly identical 4.73 SIERA in 272 and 2/3 innings pitched over his career.

Lauer yielded a .341 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to righties as a rookie in 2018, held them to a .300 wOBA in 2019, and coughed up a .455 wOBA to righties last year, bringing his career mark to a .325 wOBA. Lefties have beaten him like a drum, recording a .377 wOBA in his career. In other words, don't dismiss the notion of using Corey Seager ($3,900) and Max Muncy ($3,700) because of the same-handed matchup.

Justin Turner ($4,000) is my favorite stacking option, though, followed closely by Mookie Betts ($4,400). The svelte Turner hasn't missed a beat against lefties with his new physique this year, ripping them for a .410 on-base percentage, .313 isolated power (ISO), and 178 weighted runs created plus (wRC+). Betts' power hasn't shown up against lefties this year in an admittedly small sample of 23 plate appearances, but his .435 on-base percentage is what you love to see from a leadoff hitter.

Factoring in salary, A.J. Pollock ($2,600) is my favorite value in this stack -- and, frankly, on the entire slate. Pollock's ripped southpaws for a .255 ISO since 2018.

Arizona Diamondbacks

I'm not sure I'll roll with any full, four-person stacks of the Arizona Diamondbacks. However, I like pieces of the offense, and picking on a bad pitcher is always appealing.

Antonio Senzatela qualifies as bad, no matter how you slice it. He has a 5.76 ERA and 4.71 SIERA in five starts totaling 25.0 innings this year, and he has a 5.04 ERA and 4.91 SIERA in 448 innings pitched in his career. You might be asking, are his numbers a product of pitching his home games at Coors Field? The answer is no.

Senzatela sports a 5.18 ERA in 205 innings pitched on the road. He's also been rocked for a .340 wOBA in road tilts. Referring to him as a below-average pitcher understates his poor pitching. He's bad. Period.

The offense's top dog is breakout catcher Carson Kelly ($3,800). He's white-hot this year with 6 homers, a 21.7 percent walk rate, 14.5 percent strikeout rate, .507 on-base percentage, .408 ISO, and 222 wRC+.

Beyond Kelly, I'm willing to mix up the stacking options. David Peralta ($3,400), Pavin Smith ($3,100), and Asdrubal Cabrera ($2,800) all have the platoon advantage and should call fantasy-friendly lineup spots home.

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.