3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Tuesday 8/31/21
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.
Toronto Blue Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays are likely in store for another impressive offensive showing tonight. Opposing starter Keegan Akin has an ugly 7.26 ERA and 4.82 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) for the year, per FanGraphs. Further, when he's lifted, the Baltimore Orioles' bullpen is unlikely to stop the bleeding. Their 7.56 ERA for the bullpen is the highest since the trade deadline.
Circling back to Akin, he's coughed up 1.66 homers per nine innings, and he's destroyed by right-handed hitters. Righties have teed off for a .515 slugging percentage and .381 weighted on-base average (wOBA). Toronto's righty-laded lineup should lay the wood to the young southpaw.
The lineup's crown jewel is last night's two-homer hero, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($4,500). However, Teoscar Hernandez ($3,700) is actually their most accomplished hitter against lefties this year. He has a .383 on-base percentage, .366 isolated power (ISO), and 193 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) in 107 plate appearances against southpaws in 2021. Beyond these two, the entirety of the lineup is stackable, as well.
Minnesota Twins
The Minnesota Twins set their sights on below-average hurler Zach Davies tonight. The veteran righty has a 5.00 ERA and 5.23 SIERA in 27 starts. He's also surrendered 1.44 homers per nine innings, and he's giving to lefties and righties alike.
To that latter point, lefties have recorded a .332 wOBA against him this season. However, righties have done even more damage, amassing a .490 slugging percentage and .361 wOBA. Davies' lack of answers for all hitters thrust Minnesota's lefties and righties into the stacking picture.
Luis Arraez ($2,300) lacks power and speed. Still, his 129 wRC+ against righties since reaching The Show in 2019 is superb. He's an excellent stacking option who also offers salary-cap relief.
Byron Buxton ($3,700) is rounding back into form after his recent reinstatement from the injured list. Yet I'm fixated on his .429 ISO against right-handed pitchers this year.
Jorge Polanco ($3,800), Josh Donaldson ($3,200), and Max Kepler ($3,200) are others to consider stacking with Arraez and Buxton.
New York Yankees
Shohei Ohtani isn't ready to take the bump for the Los Angeles Angels, so the New York Yankees will take cuts against the much less imposing Jaime Barria. The 25-year-old righty has a 5.56 ERA and 5.53 SIERA for the Halos this season. Additionally, he struggles to miss bats (12.6 percent strikeout rate) and keep batted balls on the ground (41 percent ground-ball rate). That combination may be his undoing against the Bronx Bombers.
Further, Barria's been knocked around by lefties and righties. Left-handed batters own a .471 slugging percentage and .351 wOBA against him. Conversely, righties have done more damage with a .494 slugging percentage and .362 wOBA. As you might've deduced, the entirety of New York's lineup is viable for stacking.
Whittling the lineup down to my favorites, Aaron Judge ($4,200), Giancarlo Stanton ($3,800), and Joey Gallo ($3,500) are who I'm inclined to hitch my wagon to. All three have enormous power. Still, it's Stanton who's unconscious of late. He homered again last night, running his total to nine this month and five in his last seven games.
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
