MLB

3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Thursday 8/26/21

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.

Boston Red Sox

I'm going back to the well, stacking the Boston Red Sox again tonight. They face another below-average righty tonight. In fact, John Gant might be the worst of the three starters I've suggested stacking them against this week.

Gant's 3.77 ERA in 88 and 1/3 innings this year is extremely lucky. According to FanGraphs, he has a 5.58 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) that's a better indicator of his caliber of work. Gant blends too many walks with too few punchouts, a combination that's bound to result in an offensive explosion against him. Further, he's been merely good against righties and below-average against lefties, putting the righties in Boston's lineup in the stacking mix in addition to the lefties who hold the platoon advantage.

With that in mind, righties Xander Bogaerts ($4,100), J.D. Martinez ($3,800), and Hunter Renfroe ($3,700) are viable options. Still, lefties Kyle Schwarber ($3,400), Rafael Devers ($4,000), and Alex Verdugo ($3,100) are my favorite stacking options. Schwarber and Devers pack a serious punch, owning a .294 isolated power (ISO) and .277 ISO, respectively, against righties since 2018.

San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants are a top-10 offense against righties this year and since the Major League Baseball trade deadline, ranking tied for sixth in weighted runs created plus (108 wRC+) for the former and seventh in wRC+ (114) in the latter. Further, their matchup is drool-inducing tonight.

Carlos Carrasco has been a shell of his previous dominant self since his activation from the injured list. To that point, in five starts lasting only 16 and 1/3 innings, he's been rocked to the tune of an 8.82 ERA and 2.76 homers per nine innings. The righty's yielded a .336 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to lefties. Remarkably, he's been even worse against righties, coughing up a .469 wOBA to them.

As usual, the entirety of San Francisco's deep lineup is stackable. However, I'm fixated on LaMonte Wade Jr ($3,400), Brandon Belt ($3,200), Brandon Crawford ($3,300), and Kris Bryant as my preferred four-person stack. Among them, Bryant's .205 ISO against righties this year is the lowest. They're collectively smashing righties.

Oakland Athletics

The Oakland Athletics are a contrarian stack, which feels like a crazy assertion to make given their hitting of late. Oakland ranks first in wRC+ (131) since the trade deadline. However, the appeal of using them is offset by Jameson Taillon's heater.

Taillon has a 2.48 ERA in his last 11 starts. However, he also has a less impressive 4.64 expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) and 4.36 SIERA. Further, he hasn't dominated righties (.305 wOBA allowed) and has surrendered a .322 wOBA to lefties.

My favorite stacking options from the A's are headlined by Starling Marte ($4,000) and Matt Olson ($3,900). Marte has a .391 on-base percentage, 148 wRC+, and 17 stolen bases in 24 games played for the A's. Meanwhile, Olson's hammered righties this year for a .243 ISO and 146 wRC+.


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.