MLB DFS Top Stacks: Tuesday, April 18
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.
Nice-sized 11-gamer on the docket tonight. We can’t cover all 22 teams, but we can whittle it down a bit. First off, we have Coors splitting ownership four ways. What a big Coors slate gives us is a lot of underowned teams, because Coors noise fills the room and drowns out some signals. Today, those pivots are more appealing to the field than normal. We’ll discuss the best spot to pivot , despite the bad ballpark. To close, we’ll look at two teams so low-owned that we can pair them up with Coors chalk, if we wanna go that route.
Chalk Stacks – Pirates, Rockies, Twins, and Orioles
It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. And on this day, we have Jose Urena and his near 1:1 K:BB ratio against the Pirates against Vince Velasquez and his history of power prevention struggles against the Rockies.
The Pirates will be the more-owned tonight, but not by much. Urena is the worse pitcher of the two and the Rockies crapped the bed last night when everyone and their momma were playing them.
That said, Velasquez isn’t much better. He has a far lower contact rate than Urena, which matters a lot in Coors because of the quantity of balls available to go out and the fact that the ballpark carries a high BABIP. But Urena has a 1.61 GB:FB ratio since 2022, while Velasquez’ is 0.68. Velasquez is an extreme flyballer, so I’d rather target him and his career 1.51 HR/9 than Urena’s 1.21.
Velasquez’ HR/9 is down to 1.32 since 2022, but his slate-leading 12.7% barrel rate allowed suggests that he’s been lucky.
Coors should thumb its nose at Velasquez tonight. Between the two teams, I’d rather play the Rockies in single-entry. In MME, we can go overweight or underweight. A fade might be foolish and being even with the field plays it a little too safe.
The Twins and Orioles are actually currently projected to be the top-owned teams, but I — personally — don’t buy it.
Sure, the Twins draw Chris Sale, who’s been really bad. And they’re armed with Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa….. Bueller? Bueller? If we wanna stack the Twins, we can go with the power of Ryan Jeffers, Ryan Garlick, and the still-decent Michael A. Taylor, but this is ugly. The idea of stacking Chris Sale will feel sexy, but the field should not want to play these guys as chalk. And if they do (if we see pOWN% not budge), we can easily fade in all formats.
All bringing us to the Orioles against Josiah Gray — the worst power prevention in MLB. His 2.29 HR/9 on a 47.5% FB rate and 10.6% barrel rate are over 165.1 IP, so we’re not just talking about bad HR/FB luck. That’s 50 barrels in 31 starts.
Initially, I wanted to land on the Orioles to pivot off of Coors, but we lose edge with similar ownership to Coors. We can play them more flexibly than the Twins and their talent is greater than the Pirates and Rockies, but I — personally — want an ownership discount when I fade Coors.
That isn’t to say that we can’t play the Orioles. As the day goes on and we start building we’re gonna find sexier-looking +EV Orioles lineups than any other team, as our projections have them way ahead of the pack.