MLB DFS Picks: Stack Slants for DraftKings + FanDuel

I guess we should have focused on the Giants here instead of the mentioning them in passing from yesterday afternoon. What a whopper of a game by the San Francisco squad. By the time the dust settled, the score was 23-5. With that game exploding and a few other double-digit game on the board, including another triple-home run game, MLB DFS scoring was just a bit high last night.

Today’s slate has several advantageous looking spots. We’re drawing a ton of power against some real clunky pitchers, and there are only a few good arms to pay up for, so it appears bats are going to reign supreme once again. There is an important pitching change in the Cubs – Pirates game, however. Joe Musgrove will be coming off the IL to take the start instead of the originally scheduled explosion in waiting, Derek Holland. The Cubs are still one of the top options on the board, but their power numbers have come somewhat closer to Earth. Call them stratospheric instead of out beyond the moon where they had been. The top stacks and top pitchers tools are revelatory on a day like this. You can find very good opportunities to get different while maintaining a tightly correlated highly projected lineup just by spending five minutes with the tools.

Stack Slants

New York Yankees – 1-2-3-4-7 – LeMahieu – Voit – Hicks – Frazier – Sanchez

The Yankees are at home facing their divisional rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays have been playing better baseball than the Yankees for most of the season, and they come into this one healthier and in first place. Still, the Yankees bats bring appeal to many MLB DFS slates, and they’re trending for far less ownership than they warrant in this spot.

One of the Rays top starters, Charlie Morton, will return from the IL to take the ball in the Bronx tonight. Before hitting the injured list for the last few weeks, Morton was throwing a diminished arsenal of pitches, including a fastball that had lost a full two miles per hour. At 36, this could simply be a sign of age or nearing the end of the line for a pitcher who figured things out somewhat late in his career. Morton has wielded a spectacular strikeout rate, pushing 30% over the past four years but was down to just 22% early in 2020. He’s also expected to only go for three innings or so tonight, the Rays are firmly going to make the playoffs, so they can afford to bring Morton along slowly in the hopes of building him up for the important games. The Rays pen is good; their 4.13 collective xFIP ranks sixth in the baseball, though their strikeout rate is only middle of the pack and they’ve been poor at stranding runners at just 69.6%, 21st out of the league’s 30 teams. The bullpen has also taken some major hits from injuries in recent weeks, so they’re somewhat diminished.

The Yankees can take advantage of this spot. It will help if they can hang some runs on Morton early and make the game a bit one-sided, pulling a weaker long man out of the bullpen. Regardless, the power this team has even without Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres is ungodly. Luke Voit has done nothing but mash baseballs since coming to the Yankees. Voit has hit 48 home runs and driven in 121 in 775 plate appearances. For 2020 he’s carrying a .308/.368/.701 slash with a .393 ISO, a WRC+ 83% above average, 13 home runs and 26 RBIs. Voit is filling in admirably for about half of the Yankees usual offense at this point. He should be in Judge’s usual two-spot in the lineup again tonight and makes a great option at just $4,100 on DraftKings; $4,000 on FanDuel is high in their current pricing model, but simple to afford regardless.

D.J. LeMahieu and his amazing hitting skills are back at the top of the Yankees lineup following some recovery time from injury. Through his 99 plate appearances on the season, the second baseman is carrying a .402/.444/.587 slash with four home runs and a WRC+ 84% above average. With LeMahieu getting on base nearly half the time ahead of him, it’s no wonder Voit is pounding out the RBIs.

Aaron Hicks and Clint Frazier should be hitting in two of the next three spots in the lineup. Hicks has been struggling mightily in 2020 after missing a ton of time last season. The outfielder has juts a .220/.360/.418 slash with three home runs — including a game-tying ninth inning shot on Sunday in a big spot — but his ability to work a count and get on base are keeping him high up in the lineup for now. His $3,400 on DraftKings is very appealing here. Frazier has performed well as a fill-in option while most of the Yankees outfield stars are on the IL. The blocked prospect always shows his talent when called upon and would be a regular for most teams in the league. In his 57 plate appearances, he’s at .292/.404/.563 with three home runs and a .271 ISO. Frazier has always been a high-end prospect, and no one should be surprised that he delivers. At just $2,900 on FanDuel and $3,800 on DraftKings, he can deliver for our MLB DFS purposes tonight as well.

Gio Urshela and Mike Tauchman are not your typical big Broadway names that you get in New York, but there’s no arguing with their production when they’re in the lineup. Urshela came in as a no-hit, all-defense (and overrated at that) third baseman to fill in when Miguel Andujar was injured last season, and he never looked back after learning to hit somewhere. Since joining the Yankees, Urshela has hit 27 home runs and driven in 96 in his 587 plate appearances over 161 games, which is almost exactly a full season. His .303/.351/.528 slash supports everything about the counting stats and suggests the changes are real and repeatable. At just $3,200 on FanDuel he’s easily in play, though there is opportunity cost on DraftKings with several extremely high-end third baseman on the board. Tauchman is yet to hit one out of the yard in 2020 but is doing other things well enough to keep his bat in the lineup. His .354 on-base percentage over 82 at-bats keep the lefty in play for mix and match options in the outfield.

Gary Sanchez is hitting just .124 this season. Anyone who pays attention to just batting average and other simple stats is likely to skip over the catcher, and that’s fine. What they’ll be missing is that Sanchez is still absolutely smoking the ball when he does make contact. The catcher has six home runs on the season and is carrying a .213 ISO and 14 RBIs, though his inability to do much else with the bat or get on base more than 23% of the time has suppressed his WRC+ to 45% below average. Still, Sanchez is in the 89th percentile in exit velocity, 83rd in hard-hit rate and 89th in barrels. Just hope you get the weekly game where he makes contact.

Tyler Wade and Brett Gardner provide more than filler from late in the lineup. Wade costs just $2,000 on FanDuel and $2,200 on DraftKings. He’s been struggling at the MLB level so far this year with just a .171/.255/.293 slash, but he’s only seen 47 plate appearances. The kid has both mid-range power and good speed, and he could be a sneaky option at either second base or shortstop on DraftKings. The aging outfielder is also having a rough year so far. He’s at just .169/.302/.338 with three home runs after hitting a career-high 28 long balls last season. At just $2,500 on FanDuel and $2,800 on DraftKings, I can still work with Gardner as a wraparound in some lineups.

Houston Astros – 3-4-5-6-7 – Brantley – Gurriel – Tucker – Correa – Reddick

This one is more a DraftKings play based on the pricing for the Astros star-studded lineup. The pricing on FanDuel is such that you can play most of whoever you want from Houston without much concern, but on DraftKings they are very high ticket and difficult to work with. That’s the exact kind of thing I like to see with an extremely high-end offense. Anything to make it difficult for the public to put them in lineups works in our favor here. The matchup against Kolby Allard should also be working in our favor in this one. Allard has a 5.65 xFIP and is walking 12.1% of hitters with a 1.56 WHIP so far this season. This is a pitcher we can target with bats all day.

The Astros are a team we’ve touched on in both columns through the season. They were a chalky featured team the other night but they tend to bounce around the ownership board and I love getting them when they’re unpopular. At just 0.3% ownership on DraftKings, Yuli Gurriel is the definition of unpopular tonight. The slugging first baseman has a $5,000 price tag but delivers for the money. For 2020 he’s riding a .280/.336/.496 slash with five home runs, 23 runs scored, a .216 ISO and a WRC+ 25% above average. I like clicking a star-caliber player that no one else is going to as my first choice. When he’s hitting cleanup in what I expect to be an explosive spot, there’s nothing in MLB DFS I like more.

The most popular bats on the team will be up top with George Springer and Jose Altuve, who are both trending just a touch north of 10% on DraftKings, more popular on FanDuel. Both star players have been struggling in 2020. Springer is at an ugly .200/.333/.400 on the season and is in danger of slipping below a .200 ISO and below-average WRC. He currently sits at exactly .200 and at 106 in those stats. Altuve is now at 150 plate appearances on the season and has struggled his way to a .225/.287/.326 slash with three home runs. The second baseman has been sub-standard in the runs-created department, sitting 28% below average. Both stars are priced down on FanDuel, while Springer is cheap for him at $4,400 on DraftKings. Altuve’s $5,000 is interesting on that site given his struggles and the way their pricing seems to work. I’m surprised to see that much public ownership on him at that price as well. We could see that come down as we approach lock, which would make me want more.

Michael Brantley and Kyle Tucker are a pair of lefty outfielders who can get to a bad lefty like Allard. Tucker has prospered in same-handed matchups so far in his young career, owning a .311/.378/.595 slash in the split, with a .284 ISO and a WRC+ 63% above average against southpaws. The veteran Brantley loses most of his power against lefties but still offers a quality hit tool and a WRC+ that is just barely below average across his entire career. Over the last three seasons, he’s been 5% above average in WRC+ in the split with a .282/.353/.392 slash. Brantley is in play if he’s in the lineup, and I’m hopeful he slips notice given the handedness.

Josh Reddick struggles a bit more in same-handed matchups, but he’s not completely inept. The veteran outfielder has a WRC+ just 7% below average over his career in the split. Reddick has actually been good against lefties since the start of 2018, with a WRC+ 27% above average, a .204 ISO, a .289/.340/.493 slash and 12 home runs against fellow southpaws.

Carlos Correa has never met a bad lefty against whom he didn’t want to drive the ball. The shortstop is down to just $3,000 on FanDuel but remains $4,800 on DraftKings, where he’s drawing just a 1.5% ownership share so far. The power has been slow to arrive for Correa in 2020, but he continues to make good contact and do other things well, with a .292/.370/.417 slash and 20 RBIs for a WRC+ 19% above average despite just a .125 ISO and three home runs.

Catcher Martin Maldonado should be in play for us as well. His ownership is trending for next to nothing on DraftKings, where he costs $4,300 and you’re required to roll out a catcher. The option makes sense as a part of Astros stacks, but I wouldn’t sacrifice a higher-end catcher I could afford just to include Maldonado here. For the season he’s seen 96 plate appearances and has a .260/.394/.403 slash with three home runs and a WRC+ 29% above average.

Twenty-nine-year-old minor-league journeyman Jack Mayfield is mostly roster filler if he’s in the lineup at all. You can mix and match him in as needed. He costs just $2,600 on DraftKings and the minimum on FanDuel, and his third base/shortstop eligibility helps on DraftKings. Still, this is a hitter with minimal ability carrying a .171/.181/.305 slash over his first 82 plate appearances. He did hit 26 home runs in 431 plate appearances in AAA last year. If you’re looking for a reason to roster him for MLB DFS, there it is.

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Author

Terry McBride

Terry used to do other things, now he writes words on the internet. He hopes his more than 20 years’ experience in season-long and daily fantasy sports and his custom models for MLB, NBA, and NFL don't steer you too wrong when he writes columns and makes picks on Awesemo.com. A lifetime of experience keeping odd hours make Terry ideal to cover KBO baseball overnight until the world returns to normal. Most of those late night hours have been spent on the couch watching sports, T.V., and movies; just try to shut him up about any of the above. You can find his pop-culture ramblings and more on Sideaction.