With a Coors game on the slate today there are two obvious names at the top of the Stacks Tool for Monday MLB DFS. At this point it looks like both teams will be owned, which isn’t a surprise. We do have an ownership advantage on each site in that game, however, with the Rockies currently trending for slightly less popularity than their probability of being the top choice on DraftKings, while the Diamondbacks are in that situation as the second-ranked team among FanDuel stacks. Keep an eye on both spots if you’re inclined toward playing the Coors bats here.
Our goal, of course, is to look for less popular angles into the slate that we can attempt to exploit to our advantage. There are several very good looking spots on the board tonight.
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Stack Slants
Minnesota Twins – 1-3-4-5-7 – Kepler – Cruz – Rosario – Sano – Garver
The Twins appear to be going under-owned on both sites at this point in the afternoon. The top stacks tool has them ranked in the top half of teams on both sites tonight, while their ownership is roughly 25% of what it “should” be. The Twins are a team that we already know can mash, and their prices aren’t outrageous on either site. The opposing pitcher, Adrian Houser, has been good but not great as a starter. He ranks seventh among pitchers in the top stacks tool and doesn’t appear to popular, so it isn’t a matter of the public taking the other side of this one. It just seems as though people aren’t looking at the Twins at all here. This intrigues me.
In his 92 innings pitched as a starter, Houser has allowed 13 home runs, which translates to a 1.26 HR/9, to go along with his 23.9% strikeout rate and 8% walk rate. There isn’t much special about Houser’s numbers so far as a starter. In his extremely limited 12-inning 2020 sample, Houser’s strikeout rate is down and the walks are up. This is basically meaningless, but it is something to monitor as we move forward.
The Twins are second in the league in fly ball rate over the last three seasons. Houser is an extreme ground ball pitcher when he allows contact on both his power sinker and his four-seam fastball. There appears to be enough data to support the notion that extreme fly ball lineups are on the plus side of this split, with the upward plane of their swing matching the downward plane required to successfully execute those pitches in a way that yields hard contact and power. This suggests to me that if Houser doesn’t have his A+ stuff against this homer-happy Twins lineup, we could see some fireworks from a low-owned team tonight. This is exactly what we’re looking for.
The power names in this lineup are obvious and they are all trending for under 5% ownership on both sites. Take the obvious approach here. Max Kepler, Nelson Cruz, Eddie Rosario and Miguel Sano are all projected for ISOs of .219 or higher from Steamer and make for a killer stack at the top of this lineup. Kepler, Rosario and Sano are all near 50% fly balls so far in 2020; all three have trended around 40% over the last three seasons, while Cruz has been at 41.1% over that stretch.
We can work shortstop Jorge Polanco into the stack or look later in the lineup with bats like Mitch Garver, who provides tremendous catcher quality where required and is another fly ball hitter. I still like mixing in Marwin Gonzalez and Byron Buxton in a few lineups even with insanely low ownership on this team overall. This is a lineup we can mix and match all over the board tonight with this little popularity. Keep an eye on them in the top stacks tool as we get toward lock. So far this is a play I really like tonight.
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DraftKings: Oakland Athletics – Lineup Dependent – Semien – (Laureano) – Olson – Chapman – Canha
FanDuel: Chicago White Sox – Lineup Dependent – Moncada – Abreu – Grandal – Robert
Both of these teams are yet to post lineups and there are some questions about how constructions will come together. The Athletics could be without Ramon Laureano, but I’m not positive that his suspension will kick in before the game, and with MLB’s strange suspension objection process, he could be in the lineup. The White Sox have been shuffling things around a bit, so I’m not entirely sure the order in which we’ll see their hitters.
Ultimately, I don’t much care what the lineups look like in terms of deciding to go to these teams in these spots. Neither is offering the same ownership appeal on the opposite site, hence the split second call here, but I would definitely play both of these teams across MLB DFS tonight regardless.
The spot for the A’s is tremendous, taking on the ghost of Julio Teheran here. Teheran was never entirely reliable and is now downright bad. For his career Teheran has yielded a 1.36 HR/9 to left-handed hitters while only striking out 17% of them. If that doesn’t translate to the words Matt and Olson in your head I’m not sure we speak the same MLB DFS language. Most of the Athletics quality is on the right-handed side of the dish, but that doesn’t dissuade me from taking hitters like 2019 MVP candidate Marcus Semien or the always solid Matt Chapman or Mark Canha here. Canha in particular is currently pulling under 5% ownership on DraftKings. He should be hitting in the middle of one of the night’s higher-producing lineups. Get him in while others are skipping him.
On the blue site, the White Sox are going to be facing a few innings of Michael Fulmer and his bionic elbow before the recovered starter yields to the shaky Tigers bullpen. This is a spot we can load up on bats that you and I both know we like to get to a lot in this space. Depending on how things fall in the batting order, I am comfortable playing anyone from one through at least seven. That should include some version of Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez, Jose Abreu, Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnacion and Luis Robert.
Since this is a FanDuel play, we can make things immediately different by combining Grandal with one of the other first basemen. Both look solid in projections and in my home run model tonight, but we have Abreu projected for lower popularity, so he’s my choice here. Dynamic rookie Luis Robert could be back in the later spots in the lineup here, and the ownership has come back to Earth on him after briefly popping skyward over the last week or so. I like starting in the upper-middle part of this lineup and playing the ownership game. I would also consider Nomar Mazara as a lefty power bat from late in this lineup for differentiation purposes if making multiple versions.
