MLB DFS Top Stacks: Sunday, April 16
Alex Sonty 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.
Ten-game slate with 20 teams to stack and everyone’s on about two or three because there aren’t many obvious spots to target. We’ll, first, look at those three options and then a way to somehow pivot off of that chalk. For maximum leverage at the end, you’re just gonna have to trust me. Or not. Play whoever you want. Because after those top-three teams, the stacks just all kinda’ blend together.
Chalk Stacks – Guardians, Phillies, and Angels
Of the 20 starters on the slate, only two have HR/9 over 1.40 since 2022 — Patrick Corbin (1.62) hosting the Guardians and Luis Cessa hosting the Phillies in the Great American Ball Park.
Of the 20 starters on the slate, three have allowed barrel rates over 9.0% — Corbin (10.9%), Cessa (9.9%), and Garrett Whitlock (9.2%) hosting the Angels in Fenway.
Corbin is just well-known as bad, so everyone will be chasing the Guardians. And without Coors Field on the slate, the ballpark in Cincinnati sticks out like a sore thumb as the location to target. And any time we have power upside being served up to the Angels, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani will catch huge ownership. Usually, though, we can just stack them four- or five-deep and get a lot of leverage in the correlation. But today, Taylor Ward, Hunter Renfroe, and even Brandon Drury are all looking higher-owned, telling us that the stack will catch a lot of ownership.
On the flip side, it looks like the Philly stack can be played in a contrarian manner. Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner will be megachalk (along with J.T. Realmuto on DK), but the power of Nick Castellanos with leadoff man Bryson Stott will be in the single digits, while no one will be playing Jake Cave and Brandon Marsh, despite their strong power data on Statcast. The Phillies stacks really do build themselves, but we have to full stack. I can’t stress that enough. To offset the Schwarber and Turner ownership, we have to full-stack the Phillies or omit both Schwarber and Turner from our secondary stacks.
Bringing it back to the Guardians, they’re just behind the Angels in Opto% by a hair, but they’re expected to carry a bit more ownership. In single-entry, this justifies just crossing the Guardians off the list. Why take a slightly lesser projection for slightly more ownership? In MME, this is a classic spot to go underweight, while using our portfolio to more heavily target the Angels or Phillies.
Quick side note: the Braves are projected with similar team ownership as the Phillies. The appeal here is little more than recency bias, but it’s pretty convincing recency bias, as Greinke’s allowed an 8.9% barrel rate to start the season on an 81.0% contact rate. Zack Greinke, historically, has command that’s gonna put him in the Hall of Fame. But his high contact rate against the immense power of the Braves lineup is a legitimate spot to attack. Personally, I’m not attacking Greinke with this much ownership. I’d rather the Braves were a rung down in pOWN% so I could get some leverage in the play.