MLB DFS Top Stacks: Wednesday, August 30
Taylor Smith 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.
We’ve got quite a bit of afternoon baseball on the schedule for Wednesday, which leaves us with a small 6-gamer for the main slate this evening. Please note the slate on both DraftKings and FanDuel starts a bit earlier than usual at 6:40 ET to include NYY-DET, TEX-NYM, and TB-MIA. This is also yet another slate that’ll be headlined by the Braves in Coors Field, and it’s much tougher to stomach the fade on a slate with fewer alternatives.
How should we be stacking ‘em up tonight?
Braves in Coors Field – Braves at Kyle Freeland
Last night, there was more than enough viable cheap pitching to make it very easy to pay up for all the Braves. That isn’t at all the case tonight, however. Punting tonight requires risking it with luminaries like Brandon Pfaadt (against the Dodgers), Andre Jackson, and Daniel Wentz. I’d also imagine the $4,000 Denyi Reyes will get a lot of attention by default on DK.
Going down to Reyes does give you access to the best offense on the board, so I’d expect that to be what much of the field will do. It’s obviously a glorious spot for Atlanta against Kyle Freeland, a pitcher who has sure made more cameos in the Top Stacks article than he’d like. As of this writing, the Braves have an implied run total of 8.28, which is the highest I’ve seen all year, and maybe the highest I’ve ever seen.
Freeland has been a respectable real-life pitcher in the past, but he just hasn’t had it this season. His ERA is sitting right at 5.00, while his 5.18 SIERA is even worse. His strikeouts have tailed off all the way down to just 14.7%, while he’s yielding a barrel rate north of 9% for the second year running. Freeland also used to be able to generate enough groundballs to survive the mile-high elements, but his 39.3% groundball rate so far this year is well below his career 45.9% mark.
It’s worth noting Freeland has still found some success against lefties, holding them to a .286 wOBA with just 3 homers on the year. Unfortunately for him, he’s only likely to see 2 of them in the Braves’ lineup tonight, and one of them – Matt Olson – has the third-highest ISO (.288) of any left-handed hitter against left-handed pitching this season.
Playing Olson is one way to make your Braves stack a little different, as the lefty-lefty matchup and the salary will scare people away. You can say the same of Michael Harris at the bottom of the order. Most will flock to the righties, and rightfully so. RHBs have a .381 ISO with 22 homers at Freeland’s expense, while all of Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Marcell Ozuna, Orlando Arcia, and even Kevin Pillar have ISOs over .200 against lefties. This is really a match made in hell for the Rockies’ southpaw.
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