MLB DFS Top Stacks: Wednesday, June 21
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.
Lots of the action on this Wednesday will take place in the afternoon, but we’ve still got a couple of solid little slates this evening. The FanDuel mainer is a 7-gamer starting at 6:40 ET, while DK is rolling with 6 games starting at 7:05. That first game (SEA/NYY) has some weather concerns, which could make things dicey for the would-be chalk SP1, Luis Castillo.
Chalk Stack – Guardians vs. Paul Blackburn
“Chalk Guardians” sure sounds awful given how poorly this offense has performed for much of the year, but they’re in a good spot tonight. Cleveland will welcome Paul Blackburn and the A’s to town, which is a huge park downgrade for Oakland’s right-hander.
Blackburn’s been holding down a spot in the A’s rotation since the Kennedy Administration, so we know his deal by now. For his career, he’s a guy with a 16% strikeout rate and a groundball rate pushing 50%. Through 4 starts this year, however, the K-rate is up over 25%, while the groundballs have tumbled to around 38%. He’s throwing his sinker a lot less than he did earlier in his career, which helps to explain the declining groundball rate.
Still, 4 starts is too small a sample for me to think this guy can suddenly miss bats. That’s also not particularly relevant in this matchup considering the Guardians simply do not strike out (18.1%) against right-handed pitching. They’ll be putting the ball in play, it’s just a matter of whether they’ll be doing so with much gusto.
Jose Ramirez (.213 ISO) and Josh Naylor (.174) are the standouts in any Guardians stack considering they’re the only bats here hitting for any power against right-handed pitching. Blackburn is a little on the reverse-splitsy side of things, however, which keeps Amed Rosario and Myles Straw in play for value. Most of Cleveland’s lineup is left-handed, but I’m not overly concerned.
The Guardians called up Bo Naylor the other day, which should add some much-needed juice to the lineup. Naylor is a top prospect with cheap salaries around the industry, which makes him an easy way to fill catcher in your stacks. Steven Kwan, Will Brennan, and Andres Gimenez are affordable, while Josh Bell is all the way down into the mid-$2,000s on both DraftKings and FanDuel. Not being able to stack Bell with the senior Naylor on DK is a little annoying, but you can spread your exposure there if you’re entering multiple tournament stacks.
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