MLB DFS Top Stacks: Saturday, September 28th
MLB DFS is complex. Most articles are about the individual players most likely to succeed, but the MLB DFS picks most likely to succeed aren’t always the MLB DFS picks we should be most likely to play. With some help from our Top Stacks tool, we will aim to look more at the process instead of just the picks and the teams instead of just the players. We’ll still analyze the MLB player projections that are available in our MLB optimizer, LineupHQ. However, we’ll be more focused on collective ownership, optimal scores, and matchups of full stacks within the context of game selection and leverage.
Well, folks, we’ve made it. Today is the penultimate day of the 2024 MLB regular season, and it’s the last day for Top Stacks until 2025. I appreciate you if you’ve been keeping up with this article all season, and I’m pleased to announce that I don’t have to write about Chris Flexen today. We’ve got a nice little 7-game main slate on tap for tonight, once again headlined by the Dodgers visiting Coors Field.
Let’s figure out how to stack ‘em up one last time for 2024.
All stats cited are since the start of the 2024 season unless otherwise noted.
MLB DFS Picks: Top Stacks for Friday, September 27th
CHALK STACK
Dodgers at Antonio Senzatela
The Dodgers racked up 11 runs against Cal Quantrill and friends last night as the most popular stack on a 12-gamer, so we can expect a little more ownership to flock their way on tonight’s 7-game docket. Dave Roberts rested a few regulars in Max Muncy and Will Smith yesterday, while Freddie Freeman will miss the entire series. We know Shohei Ohtani will be playing in all 3 games of this series as he continues to rack up numbers, but it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the lineup looks. We saw Mookie Betts start last night, but he was yanked in favor of Kevin Kiermaier after 3 at-bats with the Dodgers out to a huge lead.
I suppose that’s the risk of rostering Dodgers at this stage of the season, as they really have nothing left to play for. Just one more LA win or one more Philadelphia loss means the Dodgers will lock up the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the NL postseason. If I’m stacking the Dodgers tonight, however, I won’t get myself too twisted into knots worrying about pinch-hit risk. Betts still had 3 opportunities to do damage yesterday before he was lifted.
Tonight they’ll take their swings against veteran righty Antonio Senzatela, who’s making just his 3rd start of the season after coming off the IL earlier this month. He’s only allowed 3 earned runs across his first 8 innings of action, including a start back on the 22nd against these very Dodgers. While Senzatela isn’t a terrible real-life pitcher, he is an extremely low-strikeout one. His K rate of 12.1% so far this season isn’t all that much worse than his career 15.2% rate. He’s also been plagued by some poor control (12.1% walks) through 2 games, but he’s historically much better in that regard.
Senzatela typically gets by by keeping the ball on the ground, which is a dangerous skill to rely on in a park as hitter-friendly as Coors Field. He’s sporting a career 50.5% ground ball rate at the MLB level, and LA does have a couple of high-groundball bats in Gavin Lux and Teoscar Hernandez in the projected lineup, but there’s also a lot of thunder here if Muncy and Smith return to the starting lineup here.
Ohtani (.409 ISO, .471 wOBA) is obviously the headliner, as there’s nothing in Senzatela’s arsenal that leads me to believe he’ll be the one to stop Shohei’s ridiculous hot streak. The potential stumbling block is that Ohtani is all the way up to $8,100 on DK and $5,400 on FD, but there is enough viable cheap pitching out there to make the Dodger stack affordable even with Ohtani. Senzatela’s splits are almost entirely neutral for his career, so there isn’t a clear dividing line between the other high-end plays in Betts, Muncy, Smith, and Hernandez. Andy Pages (10.6% barrels) is a cheaper source of power who’ll carry some appeal if he cracks the order, too.
The slate is small enough to where the LA ownership should be significant, and it’s obviously scary to fade a guy like Ohtani in this spot. It’s baseball, though, and we know even the best hitters in the best matchups are fully capable of flopping. The Dodgers are projected for about 14% stack ownership on DraftKings, though their optimal rate is only half as high. On FanDuel, they’re checking in around 14% pOWN% with just a 4% Opto%.
OPTO STACK
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