3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Thursday 5/6/21
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, which starts earlier than usual at 1:05 PM ET.
Minnesota Twins
The Minnesota Twins stranded an army of baserunners last night, but they have a plus matchup that will allow them to erase that bad taste from their mouth this afternoon. Jordan Lyles toes the slab for the visiting Texas Rangers today, and he's sporting a 7.39 ERA, 4.83 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and 2.57 homers per nine innings allowed that all scream to stack against.
The veteran right-handed pitcher has been pummeled by lefties and righties alike. According to FanGraphs, since last year, he's coughed up a .343 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to left-handed batters and a .395 wOBA to righties. As if his gaudy wOBA yielded to righties isn't enough, the bloated .604 slugging percentage he's surrendered is the number I'm fixated on.
The Twins have ample right-handed pop that can take advantage of Lyles' shortcoming in same-handed matchups. Josh Donaldson ($3,100) has a .247 isolated power (ISO) against righties since 2018. Nelson Cruz ($3,900) has been even more potent with a .262 ISO. Better yet has been Byron Buxton ($4,400) with a .270 ISO.
For all the excellence of that trio, there's a man who stands tall above them all. Miguel Sano ($2,500), for all of his faults (namely his high strikeout rate), he's muscled up for a .273 ISO in 730 plate appearances against righties since 2018.
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox also flubbed a plus matchup last night after I touted them as one of my three favorite stacks. I'm going back to the well today. Spencer Turnbull opened the year on the injured list, and he's performed progressively worst in each of his three starts. He's allowed seven runs on 10 hits and three walks in 11 innings over his last two turns. He'll have tough sledding turning it around at Fenway Park against the Red Sox today.
According to the three-year-average park factors used at FantasyPros, Fenway Park has the third-highest park factor for runs (1.103) and leads the park factor for doubles (1.404). As for the matchup, the Red Sox are tied for second in weighted runs created plus (wRC+) against righties in 2021, 18 percent better than the average offense.
As is often the case when I suggest stacking the Red Sox, my two favorite options are Xander Bogaerts ($3,700) and J.D. Martinez ($4,100). Rafael Devers ($3,700) returned to the lineup last night after a one-game absence, and he's also in the stacking mix. Devers has a .227 ISO and 117 wRC+ against righties since 2018.
Alex Verdugo ($3,100) was scratched from last night's lineup, but if he's back in the lineup today, he's a stellar selection, too. The left-handed-hitting outfielder boasts a .353 on-base percentage, .174 ISO, and 120 wRC+ against righties since 2018.
New York Mets
The New York Mets round out my favorite stacks, and there's potential for it to be contrarian. Opposing starter John Gant has a 2.16 ERA in five starts spanning 25 innings. The righty's ERA overstates how well he's pitched, as evidenced by his 5.78 SIERA.
The 28-year-old righty is flirting with a meltdown. He's struck out only 18.3 percent of hitters he's faced while walking a whopping 16.5 percent of them. A near one-to-one strikeout to walk ratio will result in an ugly start sooner rather than later, and I'm banking on that happening today.
I'm not crazy about stacking the Mets' entire lineup, but I dig their top five hitters. Jeff McNeil ($2,800) is moonlighting as the team's leadoff hitter with Brandon Nimmo on the injured list. Francisco Lindor ($2,900) is the other table-setter from the two-hole, and while his first year with the Mets is off to a brutal start, his plate discipline and contact skills are still great. Further, he's been good for too long against righties to overreact to scuffling out of the gate.
Pete Alonso ($3,800) doesn't hold the platoon advantage, but the right-handed slugger has had no problem wrecking righties with a .296 ISO and 140 wRC+ against them since debuting in 2019.
Michael Conforto ($3,100) and Dominic Smith ($2,800) round out the hitters I'd roll with in a stack. They collectively have the skills to work walks and the power to punish Gant's self-inflicted damage.
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.
