MLB DFS Top Stacks: Sunday, August 6
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 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.
Dallas Keuchel is back in our lives, and stacking against him could get underplayed, because there are a few has-beens pitching this afternoon. It’s a loaded slate with top-notch pitching but also with about a dozen stacks to play. In this space, we’ll go over the highest-owned stacks without calling them chalk because they won’t really be 20% chalk. We’ll look at my top pivot while listing a few other options, and we’ll look at an under-owned elite stack against a struggling pitcher who’ll catch some ownership himself despite his struggles and a great home run ballpark.
Highest-Owned Stacks – Diamondbacks at Dallas Keuchel and Phillies vs. Zack Greinke
Even at the worst we’ve seen of Dallas Keuchel, he was a massive groundballer. His 50.7% groundball rate in 2022 should’ve been tough to crack. It wasn’t.
It seemed like every time hitters got underneath the ball, it was flying out of the yard. In 2022, Keuchel gave up 1.63 HR/9.
Keuchel’s a soft tosser who only had 6.68 K/9 to go with a whopping 4.60 BB/9 in 2022, so my personal thoughts are that his 8.8% barrel rate allowed goes up, as his power prevention should get worse, and the Diamondbacks are the lucky ducks to get first crack at him this season.
That said, the projections (THE BAT, ATC, Depth Charts, and Steamer) all have Keuchel giving up 1.09-to-1.26 HR/9 for the remainder of the season. However, they’re only projecting around ~22.0 IP, so one horribad outing — a blow-up that we’ve seen from Keuchel as recently as the last time he pitched — tilts him from a replacement level pitcher to a total gas can. These D-Backs are more than equipped to mash a pitcher who might as well be throwing underhanded.
The guy I want most is lefty Corbin Carroll. His numbers against lefties have been good, but Keuchel’s stuff is so bad, and Carroll has so much power and speed that he should get it done. Then I like the three right-handed flyballers: Tommy Pham, Christian Walker, and Emmanuel Rivera. For the full stack on DK, we can literally play whoever we want or need to plug in. We’d love to get Ketel Marte in there, but we might need to save a little coin on a Nick Ahmed type of bat.
The D-Backs won’t be chalk because the Phillies are facing a has-been themselves in Zack Greinke and doing so in a nice hitter’s park in Philly. Greinke has surrendered 1.77 HR/9 on an 8.7% barrel rate. And he’s giving up a whole mess of contact.
With only 5.82 K/9 and 1.27 BB/9, Greinke’s 85.3% contact rate this season is second-highest only to the 85.6% rate of Jake Irvin. The Phillies are just in a great spot to have a high frequency of hard contact. With a 5.61 implied run total, the Phillies have the second-highest projection on the slate. We can review every hitter, but let’s just be concise and say to play everyone, starting with the double-digit barrel rates of Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Nick Castellanos. After that, there are some salary savings at the bottom of the order if we can’t afford the mid-range.
I don’t like calling either of these teams chalk, as they’re owned low enough to be played together. I’m only wary to do so in single-entry because we can go down in ownership to find similarly strong stacks.
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