MLB DFS Top Stacks: Friday, September 29
Taylor Smith walks you through the top stacks for the upcoming MLB main slate. Should we eat the chalk? Which team is a good pivot? Where can we find leverage? Find out below!
MLB DFS is complex. Most articles on MLB DFS picks are about the individual players most likely to succeed on any given day, but the MLB DFS picks most likely to succeed aren’t always the MLB DFS picks we should be most likely to play.
In this space, we will look at the MLB DFS process over the MLB DFS picks. And we’re looking at teams over individual players, using the features of the RotoGrinders Top Stacks tool. We’ll still look at the player projections available in LineupHQ. Still, we’ll be more focused on collective ownership, optimal scores, and matchups of full stacks within the context of game selection and leverage.
We’ve reached the final week of the 2023 regular season. It’s been a fun ride, but the grind isn’t over yet. Tonight’s main slate is a doozy, with 13 games and another Coors Field game. The prize pools around the industry aren’t amazing, but we’ll take what we can get at this point in the baseball season. Plus, there’s still money to be made.
Here’s how I’ll be stacking on Friday night.
Chalk Stacks – Twins at Ty Blach, Braves vs. Trevor Williams
Obviously, the ownership on tonight’s beefer of a slate will be a lot more spread out than it was on last night’s wee 5-gamer. Even with the Twins in Coors, they won’t be as overwhelmingly popular as the Dodgers were yesterday, for example.
Still, those Twins are projected to be the most popular stack to target on both DraftKings and FanDuel, and with good reason. Minnesota is pulling about 9% projected stack ownership on DK, while they’re at 10.4% on FD as of this writing. They’ll face veteran Ty Blach, a journeyman lefty with a 5.42 ERA and a 5.17 SIERA on the year.
Blach has good control (6.7% walks), but that’s really it. He won’t be racking up many Ks (14%), even against a strikeout-prone Twins bunch, while his barrel rate is north of 10%. A .344 BABIP won’t do him any favors, but Coors is a terrible place to pitch if you have to rely on BABIP to begin with. Blach has been in particularly rough form lately, with a ghastly 8.28 ERA so far in September.
The Twins aren’t playing for anything with the division title already under wraps, but we’re projecting close to a typical lineup tonight. They’re also affordable. The $5,200 Jorge Polanco is the only bat above $5,000 on DK, while there isn’t anyone topping $4,000 on FanDuel. Polanco is a worthwhile spend in stacks to fill that generally thin second base spot, while Ryan Jeffers (.297 ISO vs. LHP) is a stellar catcher play projected to hit third.
There’s a lot of multi-positional eligibility here, too. Polanco, Kyle Farmer, Donovan Solano, and Willi Castro will all hold the platoon edge over Blach, and you can roster them at several different positions. Michael A. Taylor is a useful value on DK ($3,200) with impressive power numbers (.307 ISO) against opposite-handed pitching on the year.
On paper, though, this isn’t the sexiest stack with bigger alliterative names like Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton missing from the lineup. Royce Lewis and Joey Gallo are also on the shelf. Ther stack comes together more affordably as a result, so there’s your trade-off. Minnesota is projecting for positive leverage on both sites, with a 13.9% opto rate on DK and a 10.99% mark on FanDuel.
Another offense in a fine spot is the Braves, who will face the woeful Trevor Williams at home. Atlanta is another team just playing out the string before the postseason, but they’re running out regular lineups in order to stay as fresh as possible.
Clearly, this lineup is a lot more talented than this iteration of the Twins, and Williams’ numbers across the board are quite comparable to Blach’s. The right-hander’s ERA and SIERA are both well over 5.00. His 16.7% K rate won’t scare anyone, while his 10.5% barrel rate makes him susceptible to major damage. In related news, this guy has allowed 34 homers across 29 outings.
The Braves’ 6.44 implied run total rivals the Twins’ devilish 6.66 mark for the highest on tonight’s slate. Of course, Atlanta is considerably tougher to stack as a result of their salaries. I’d love to cram Ronald Acuna, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, and Ozzie Albies into every lineup, but that requires significant sacrifices elsewhere in the build. I don’t know about you, but rostering Blach and Jordan Lyles doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend a Friday night.
Williams has only whiffed 12.6% of LHBs thus far, so Olson, Albies, Michael Harris, and Eddie Rosario are standouts from the left side. It’s not like his numbers are much better against righties, though, so everyone here is playable if you can find a way to make the salaries work.
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