MLB

3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Wednesday 5/12/21

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.

New York Yankees

The Tampa Bay Rays haven't formally announced a starter when I'm writing this, but Ryan Yarbrough makes the most sense on regular rest. He was reinstated from the COVID-19 injured list on Saturday, and he hasn't been used in a game since pitching on May 5. It's also possible he's the bulk reliever behind an opener.

Operating under the educated guess that Yarbrough is the starter or bulk reliever, his skill-set plays poorly against the New York Yankees. The lefty's kept the ball on the ground at a poor 33.9 percent, and his called strikes and whiffs percentage is an underwhelming 26.3 percent this year. He's struck out only 17.8 percent of the batters he's faced this year after fanning only 18.8 percent of them last year.

His lack of punchouts and low ground-ball rate is a recipe for disaster against the Bronx Bombers' potent lineup of lefty-killers. According to FanGraphs, since 2018, eight members of their projected lineup tonight have a weighted runs created (wRC+) plus above 105. They also bring a boatload of thump to the dish, amplifying their upside.

My favorite stacking options are exit-velocity stars Giancarlo Stanton ($3,700) and Aaron Judge ($3,300). I also love the salary-cap relief provided by Luke Voit ($3,000), Gleyber Torres ($2,900), and Gio Urshela ($2,600).

Philadelphia Phillies

While there's ambiguity surrounding who the Yankees will face, there's no secret the Philadelphia Phillies will take aim at Jon Lester. It's a mouthwatering matchup for the Phillies. Lester's made only two starts spanning 10 innings after opening the year on the injured list, and he hasn't been impressive, despite his 2.70 ERA. He has a 5.15 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) in his two starts, per FanGraphs, following a 5.02 SIERA in a dozen starts spanning 61 innings for the Chicago Cubs last year.

Lester's ability to strike batters out has eroded in recent years, resulting in a career-low 15.8 percent strikeout rate last year and a lower 14.6 percent strikeout rate so far this season. He's also walking more hitters this year with a 9.8 percent walk rate. He's flirting with disaster, and the Phillies have the hitters to punish his undesirable combo of a low strikeout rate and below-average walk rate.

It starts at the top of the order with Andrew McCutchen ($3,400). He's a stellar option, and so is fellow table-setter Jean Segura ($3,100). The former's reached base for a .380 on-base percentage against southpaws since 2018, and Segura's done so for a .357 on-base percentage. Bryce Harper ($4,000) shouldn't be dismissed from consideration based on the lefty-lefty matchup, but I don't think he's a must-use player in this stack, either.

My favorite stacking option is Rhys Hoskins ($3,200). The right-handed hitting first baseman has pummeled southpaws for a .416 on-base percentage, .243 isolated power (ISO), and 144 wRC+ since 2018.

Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox are welcoming a rookie hurler to their hitter-friendly home digs tonight. According to the ballpark factors at FantasyPros, Fenway Park has the third-highest park factor for runs at 1.103. It also amplifies doubles at the highest rate (1.404) and boosts triples (1.256) too. It's a challenging environment for top pitchers to navigate, and James Kaprielian is a rookie with a ho-hum prospect pedigree.

MLB Pipeline ranks Kaprielian 10th on the Oakland Athletics' top-10 prospect list. The righty's overall grade is a 45 on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, a smidge below average. The only pitch they grade above average is his fastball, with a 55 grade. Add in his relatively limited experience against high-caliber competition with fewer than 50 innings pitched at the Double-A and Triple-A levels combined, and 3 and 2/3 inning pitched in two relief appearances made for the A's last year, I'm expecting a bumpy road for him tonight.

You can pluck hitters from throughout Boston's lineup, but it's the stars who I'm most interested in. My favorite full, four-person stack includes Alex Verdugo ($3,100), J.D. Martinez ($4,200), Xander Bogaerts ($3,600), and Rafael Devers ($3,900),


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.