Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Thursday 9/9/21
Stacks are the backbone of cashing daily fantasy baseball lineups. Correlation drives upside, and that creates the potential to place highly or even win GPPs when your selected stacks explode offensively.
This column will do the digging and the dirty work to determine which stacks are worth rostering each day. Scoring upside will fuel the stacks that get the nod. Sometimes that will lead to chalky selections, but contrarian stacks will get their fair share of love too.
In addition to utilizing the touted daily stacks in handbuilt lineups, numberFire premium members can throw these highlighted stacks into an optimized lineup using our DFS Sharpstack tool. Our hitting heat map tool is also available to premium members looking for more stacking options. It provides valuable info such as implied total, park factors, and stats for identifying the quality of the opposing pitcher.
Let's take a look at the top stacks on today's main slate.
Toronto Blue Jays
The Toronto Blue Jays don't have the cushiest matchup tonight because Nestor Cortes has pitched well as a starter. However, the lefty's 3.18 ERA in seven starts totaling 39 and 2/3 innings overstates how well he's pitched.
According to FanGraphs, he owns a much less impressive 4.92 expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) and 4.49 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA).
Additionally, another statistic on his ledger provides optimism for the Blue Jays to beginnhis regression process in earnest tonight. The lefty is a fly-ball pitcher, inducing a grounder on only 27.9 percent of his balls in play as a starter. Cortes's batted-ball profile could be his undoing at homer-friendly Yankee Stadium against an offense responsible for the fourth-highest isolated power (.183 ISO) against southpaws in 2021.
I believe the ideal move when stacking hitters against Cortes tonight is to load up on their most powerful hitters. Surprisingly, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($4,500) isn't near the top of that list with just a .163 ISO against southpaws this season. My favorite options include Marcus Semien ($4,400), George Springer ($3,900; if he's back from his knee injury), Alejandro Kirk ($2,600), and Teoscar Hernandez ($4,100), ranked in order of ascending ISO against lefties this year: .243, .246, .289, and .387, respectively.
Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves are getting their fourth look at Erick Fedde this season in tonight's matchup, and their results against him have been nothing short of excellent.
The below-average righty has permitted 16 runs on 19 hits, 6 walks, and 2 homers in only 11 and 1/3 innings.
Beyond Fedde's struggles with the Braves, he's been largely terrible this year overall as well. In 23 starts, he has a 5.27 ERA, 4.14 xFIP, and 4.44 SIERA. In addition, he's in terrible form lately, recording a 6.22 ERA in his last 10 starts. The righty has been mediocre against fellow righties, as he has ceded a .320 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to them this year, but he's even worse against lefties, with their mark jumping to a .349 wOBA.
I won't dissuade players from using anyone in Atlanta's lineup as part of their stack. Still, my favorite options are Adam Duvall ($3,500), Austin Riley ($3,700), and Freddie Freeman ($3,900). Duvall has muscled up to a .292 ISO this year overall for the top mark amongst the group, but Riley has hammered right-handed pitching for 155 weighted runs created plus (wRC+), and Freeman has also torched righties for a 144 wRC+ himself.
Joshua Shepardson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Joshua Shepardson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username bchad50. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
