MLB DFS Top Stacks: Saturday, July 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 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.
The sites are doing things a little differently tonight. The DraftKings main slate is a 6-gamer starting at 7:05 ET, while FD is a 7-gamer that includes the Mets-Red Sox clash at Fenway. Despite a couple of solid pitchers – Max Scherzer and James Paxton – going in that one, Fenway is still the best hitter’s park on the slate. Both offenses are solid under-the-radar stacks to consider on FD, but in this article I’ll be touching on stacks we can play on both sites tonight. Without further ado, let’s uncover the top stacks for a manageable Saturday night slate.
Chalk Stack – Braves vs. Adrian Houser
Today is a day that ends in “Y,” so the Braves are one of the top stacks on the board. Atlanta will face one of the slate’s weaker pitchers in Adrian Houser tonight in Milwaukee. We can comfortably stack the Braves against legitimate aces and feel pretty good about things, and Houser is certainly nothing resembling an ace in any regard.
Houser’s strikeout rate has tumbled to just 15.5% so far this season, which is even lower than his middling career 18.4% mark. The one thing he generally does well is keep the ball on the ground, but he’s only at 47.6% groundballs on the year. That’s enough to say he has a groundball lean, but he’s still lagging well behind the game’s best groundball maestros.
Houser doesn’t yield a ton of barrels (5.2%), but this is a good park for power and the Braves are the most homer-happy offense in the league by a huge margin. Atlanta has 184 dingers already this season, which puts them 28 (!!!) ahead of the second-place Dodgers. A quick glance at PlateIQ shows a sea of green in the Braves’ columns against right-handed pitching so far this season.
Ronald Acuna, Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, and Eddie Rosario all boast ISOs of over .200 vs. RHPs, while Austin Riley (.188), Michael Harris (.185), and Marcell Ozuna (.195) aren’t far off the mark. The only hitter apparently lacking pop vs. righties is Orlando Arcia (.110), but even he has 10 homers on the year, including 3 in his last 4 games. There’s massive upside up-and-down this lineup, which gives us several different avenues for stacking.
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