MLB DFS Top Stacks: Tuesday, September 12
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.
It’s a Coors slate with the Astros facing a bad pitcher and the best leverage stacks are pricey, so we’re gonna discuss a bonus value stack to pair with these expensive stacks. But, yeah, hitting and pitching are expensive on this challenging slate.
Chalk Stack – Cubs at Chris Flexen (Coors)
It’s the Cubs. It’s Coors. It’s Chris Flexen. This is the best stack on the slate.
The Cubs projected lineup has a .179 ISO, 28.5 flyball and line drive rates with a 7.2% barrel rate on a 42.9% hard-hit rate against righties over the last 30 days. This season, Seiya Suzuki (12.0%), Dansby Swanson (10.9%), and Ian Happ (8.9%) from this lineup have had high barrel rates, along with Miguel Amaya (11.6% in 80 PAs). When Cody Bellinger hits the ball hard, it flies out and he leads the lineup with a 31.2% flyball rate against righties, but his barrel rate is low (5.7%) because his hard-hit rate is only 38.1%. This is all to say that we don’t have to play spend Aaron Judge money on Bellinger for our Cubs stacks.
Coors is Coors. We all know how historically great the run-scoring en environment is, but do we know how much Flexen’s profile boosts run production in Coors?
Flexen’s lowered his flyball rate to 22.6% from 32.6%, but it’s still 26.5% to righties. His barrel rate allowed is only 7.1% to lefties this season, but it’s 10.2% to righties. His 2.57 HR/9 is by far the worst on the slate. This is why Suzuki is my favorite bat in the lineup and we should hope and pray really hard that the huge power of Christopher Morel or Patrick Wisdom crack the lineup.
I don’t trust David Ross to make the right call here, but if he does, we have a lot of power through Morel/Wisdom with Suzuki and Swanson.
It isn’t easy to fit the Cubs bats in with expensive pitching, so we might have to pick a lane here. Outside of Justin Verlander, I’m not really inspired by the expensive pitching, so I’m likely playing the Cubs with a value or leverage stack and cheap pitching in any format.
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