MLB DFS Top Stacks: Saturday, April 22
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 be looking 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 got baseball all day long today, though we’re here to focus on the 7-game main slate. There is some weather to deal with in the Tigers-Orioles game, but things are otherwise looking good on the weather front. The chalk should be easy to identify tonight, so let’s see if we can find some leverage elsewhere.
Chalk Stacks – Rangers vs. Shintaro Fujinami, Angels vs. Zack Greinke, Padres vs. Merrill Kelly
All 3 of these offenses have implied run totals of over 5 tonight. The Padres’ matchup against Merrill Kelly is the toughest of the 3, though he hasn’t looked quite like himself so far this season. Kelly’s walk rate has ballooned to 14%, which is a recipe for disaster against a patient San Diego lineup with a collective 11.5% walk rate vs. RHPs since the start of the 2022 campaign.
The salaries make the full San Diego stack difficult to get to on DraftKings, but these guys are awfully cheap on FanDuel. Juan Soto, Manny Machado, Matt Carpenter, Jake Cronenworth, and Trent Grisham are all hovering in the $3,000 range, which should lead to significant ownership. You’re paying a little more for Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts, but the soft pricing elsewhere should make that easy enough to do. The Padres will still attract some attention on DK, but the core bats are all up over $5,000.
The Rangers look like the most obvious team to target today. Shintaro Fujinami looks like one of the worst starters in baseball. The rookie’s 16.4% K-rate isn’t scaring anybody. He’s posted a 14.8% walk rate and a 12.5% barrel rate through his first 3 turns in the major leagues, and his 6.07 SIERA isn’t really doing his bloated 11.37 ERA any favors. Fujinami has also flashed a massive 52.5% flyball rate to this point, with his first 2 homers allowed coming in his most recent start against the Mets. The Rangers will be putting the ball in play tonight, and they’ll be hitting the ball in the air.
Marcus Semien and Jonah Heim look like dongs waiting to happen in this spot. Adolis Garcia and Josh Jung are high-strikeout bats, so a matchup against the low-strikeout Fujinami should suit them both quite nicely. You can save salary here with Leody Taveras, Ezequiel Duran, and Josh Smith, which makes this stack come together pretty easily. The Rangers’ 5.47 total is the highest on the slate, and with good reason.