Digging into today’s MLB DFS slate to highlight your best bats to stack.
This article will cover two to three teams that we think are the most stackable for MLB contests. If you are newer to DFS or MLB or want a general refresher on the impact of stacking in MLB, check out our research done this off-season, where we analyzed over 2,000,000 lineups to determine how many times a team of four or five hitters stacked from the same team won contests. In brief, 80.3% of winning lineups across 71 Main Slate tournaments (from 2020) had a stack of at least four players. 71.9% of that 80.3% had a stack of five players. Stacking is the main strategy to focus on when it comes to MLB. Therefore we will be approaching our hitter’s content from a stacking perspective.
Angels (vs. Rangers)
Every time Kolby Allard is on a slate my tune stays the same – Allard has been a fine pitcher with a relatively low WHIP (mostly due to low walk numbers) but ultimately he is someone who is still allowing way too much hard contact and hard contact that leaves the ballpark. Despite the 1.23 WHIP, Allard carries a 5.01 ERA and has allowed two home runs in each of his last four starts. He also has allowed six or more hits in three of his last four starts and at least three earned runs in each of his last three. As mentioned, the WHIP remains lower as Allard ranks in the top 10% of the MLB in BB%, but he is still allowing a decent amount of hits. Allard ranks in the bottom 11% of the league in Barrel% and bottom 20% in K%, Velocity, and Whiff%. Allard is allowing a 29% fly ball rate on balls in play and while he has allowed 23 homers on the year, as mentioned eight of them have come over his last 24 innings pitched. Righties are hitting Allard for a slightly higher average, though lefties have a slugging advantage. This allows us to target the power bats here in Walsh, Fletcher, and Adell.
Mariners (at Dbacks)
While this isn’t a matchup I originally thought I was going to target, there are just some really good pitchers on this slate and a ton of matchups that we need to avoid (on paper). Tyler Mahle faces the Tigers, Valdez and Musgrove face off in San Diego while Urias goes for the Dodgers. Ian Anderson and German Marquez face off in Coors which takes that game off the board for me too – or at least off the board outside of tournaments. Merrill Kelly was originally listed as the starter here when I started this article last night but it now looks like that has shifted to Humberto Castellanos. Humberto Castellanos, who has only 31.2 IP at the MLB level, but has shown plenty of struggles against LHB in that time. He has a 5.98 xFIP against them so far in his young career, with a 55.3% fly ball rate in the split. The numbers at face value for Castellanos are solid, but outside of his last start he has only gone past five innings one time. Getting into the Dback bullpen is always a winning equation as they carry one of the lowest bullpen ERAs in the majors. Castellanos MLB numbers have been better than his Minor league ones, so I think it’s only a matter of time before he starts evening out. Lefty bats are the ones to target here.
