3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 4/21/23

Stacking is an integral part of daily fantasy baseball. Correlation drives upside, giving your lineups a slate-winning ceiling when your stacks explode.

This piece will do the digging and the dirty work each day to determine which stacks are worth rostering on FanDuel's main slate. While we want upside, we also need to factor in game theory, especially in a sport as random as baseball.

Our MLB DFS heat map is a quick way to get a feel for the overall slate and which offenses are in a good spot. You can also check out our daily fantasy baseball projections to identify the slate's best bats.

Let's look at the top stacks for this main slate.

Philadelphia Phillies

The Philadelphia Phillies flopped as chalk last night. Hopefully that scares people away today, because they're in another superb matchup.

Philly is hosting Noah Davis and the Rockies, and the Phillies' 5.51 implied total is a slate-best clip. There's not much in Davis' profile that points to him having success tonight. He has a whole six innings of MLB experience under his belt, so we can't pull much from that. But back in 2022, Davis gave up a 46.1% fly-ball rate and 1.76 dingers per nine over 133 1/3 innings in Double-A.

Kyle Schwarber ($3,100) and Trea Turner ($3,600) will be my core bats in Phillies stacks. Just like yesterday, a modest-salaried Schwarber is going to be very chalky in this matchup with a right-hander. In the split in 2022, Schwarber racked up a .381 wOBA and 54.6% fly-ball rate.

Nick Castellanos ($3,200) also comes at a friendly salary while Alec Bohm ($3,600) and Brandon Marsh ($3,700) are salaried up after their hot starts to the campaign. Marsh is torching righties for a .488 wOBA so far.

Bryson Stott ($2,900) is a value leadoff hitter, and Jake Cave ($2,600) had a 40.6% hard-hit rate versus right-handed pitchers last season.

Los Angeles Angels

The Los Angeles Angels carry the night's second-best implied total (5.24) into their date with Taylor Clarke.

Clarke hasn't worked more than two innings in a game this season, so this is a bullpen day for the Kansas City Royals. That's great news for the Halos as KC sports the fifth-worst bullpen xFIP (4.69). Kansas City's relievers have been mauled for a 40.5% hard-hit rate and 43.4% fly-ball rate.

Bullpen games make it tough to predict the handedness of hitter-pitcher matchups, which makes hitters who are in a platoon with someone else pretty scary to roster. So I'm going to stick to the guys we know will (in all likelihood) play the full game.

Unfortunately, we can't use Shohei Ohtani at hitter today (because he's pitching), which is a bummer, but we can still get access to upside through Mike Trout ($4,000), Taylor Ward ($3,200), Hunter Renfroe ($3,600) and Anthony Rendon ($3,100). All four are right-handed and should play the whole game.

That's also the case for Gio Urshela ($2,900) and Zach Neto ($2,200), with Urschela being eligible at both short and third.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Given that the aforementioned Ohtani ($11,400) is on the slate and in a fantastic matchup, I wanted to highlight a value stack for those who are using Ohtani at pitcher. The Arizona Diamondbacks fit the bill.

Arizona doesn't have anyone salaried over $3,300, and they hold an appealing 4.54 implied total versus Seth Lugo. A righty, Lugo has transitioned back to a starting role after two seasons in the 'pen. While it's gone decently well so far, his swinging-strike rate is only 8.8%, and oddsmakers are backing the Snakes' offense to have some success.

Christian Walker ($2,700) is my favorite play in this stack. Lugo showed reverse splits last season, giving up a .339 wOBA and 1.51 homers per nine to righties, and while Walker has started slowly, he popped 36 jacks in 2022.

Lourdes Gurriel ($2,800) is another value righty who will likely be in the middle of the order. He's posted a mouth-watering 42.1% hard-hit rate this year.

We can use Arizona's lefties, too. Josh Rojas ($3,100) and Ketel Marte ($3,200) are forecasted to be atop the lineup, and they're easy to like at their salaries. Pavin Smith ($3,200) has been on fire since being recalled, putting up a .456 expected wOBA (xwOBA) over a small sample of 25 plate appearances. Alek Thomas ($2,400) is a fantastic value play as he's got a .369 xwOBA that is well above his actual wOBA of .273.