MLB

3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/5/21

As usual, the Padres look to have plenty of great stacking options tonight. What other teams can we target?

Stacks are the backbone of cashing daily fantasy baseball lineups. Correlation drives upside, creating the potential to place high 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.

San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres face the worst pitcher on tonight's slate, at least as measured by 2020 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA). According to FanGraphs, Anthony DeSclafani struggled last year, recording a 7.22 ERA and 5.52 SIERA in 33 and 2/3 innings. The San Francisco Giants brought him aboard in the offseason with a rebound in mind, but the Friars are a tough challenge to open his 2021 campaign.

Six of the eight projected starting hitters for the Padres have a weighted runs created plus (wRC+) above 100 against right-handed pitchers since 2018. Jurickson Profar ($2,200) is one of the two hitters who fall short of that benchmark, but his 96 wRC+ isn't horrible, and his .202 ISO and modest salary put him in the stacking mix anyway. It's a deep lineup with high-end talent at the top.

Jake Cronenworth's ($2,900) salary isn't that of a high-end hitter, but his .382 on-base percentage, .265 isolated power (ISO), and 156 wRC+ are the marks of a stud. The left-handed hitter also holds the platoon advantage against DeSclafani. The right-handed pitcher has ceded a .485 slugging percentage and .350 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to 459 left-handed batters faced since 2019.

Eric Hosmer ($3,700) is the other left-handed hitter in the top half of the order, batting cleanup. He's off to a fast start this year, clubbing a pair of homers with a .667 on-base percentage, 727 ISO, and 397 wRC+. Hosmer managed career-best marks in ISO (.266) and wRC+ (160) against right-handed pitchers last year. He and Cronenworth are my two favorite stacking options from the Friars.

Tommy Pham ($3,200) and Wil Myers ($3,400) are defensible stack inclusions. Still, Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,200) and Manny Machado ($4,000) are the obvious stars who offer gargantuan ceilings despite the lack of a platoon advantage in a righty-righty matchup with DeSclafani.

Houston Astros

Stacking the key players from the Padres around the premier ace on the slate -- Jacob deGrom ($11,000) -- can be done utilizing a few punts. It's borderline impossible to do the same and flesh out a legitimate roster with the integral players from the Houston Astros. Blending stacks with the top players from both rosters isn't possible with deGrom as the starting pitcher.

You've probably deduced I don't believe rostering deGrom is a must-do move in GPPs tonight. You're correct. I'm digging Carlos Rodon ($6,300) as a high-upside, low-salary GPP option at pitcher.

The Astros' scoring upside provides an alternate avenue to the top of a GPP than bargain stacking with deGrom. Jose Quintana was limited to 10 innings last year because of injury. The year before, he pitched to his worst ERA (4.68) and WHIP (1.39) as well as his second-worst SIERA (4.50) in his career. The lefty's ability to avoid hard contact has been trending in the wrong direction, and Houston's lineup has a few hitters capable of furthering Quintana's hard-contact woes.

Alex Bregman ($4,500) is the top option in the stack, pummeling lefties for a .420 on-base percentage, .312 ISO, and 189 wRC+ since 2018. On an admittedly significantly smaller sample, Yordan Alvarez ($4,100) hasn't been far behind with a .390 on-base percentage, .353 ISO, and 176 wRC+ since debuting in 2019, despite batting left-handed. Jose Altuve ($3,800) and Carlos Correa ($3,100) join the Bregman and Alvarez duo as my favorite full-stack. Although, Yulieski Gurriel ($2,800) and Kyle Tucker ($3,000) are excellent options for gamers multi-entering GPPs with various Astros stacks.

Tampa Bay Rays

The Tampa Bay Rays have the most deGrom-lineup-build friendly stacking potential. Randy Arozarena ($3,700) is the priciest hitter on their roster, and Austin Meadows ($3,500) is the only other hitter on the team with a salary of $3,500 or more. Beyond them, Brandon Lowe ($3,300) is the only other hitter on the club with a salary above $3,000.

I expect them to be chalky in a plus matchup with Nick Pivetta. Frankly, they should be chalky. Pivetta yielded the second-highest hard-hit percentage (44.7 percent) among today's probable starters in 2020, and he was tattooed for a 6.89 ERA and 4.46 SIERA. He's responsible for a ghastly 5.40 ERA in 406 and 1/3 innings in his career and his more palatable 4.10 SIERA seems to give him a full pass for his complete inability to strand runners.

MLB odds lists the Rays as -126 favorites in a game with an over/under of 9.5 runs. The betting odds support stacking the Rays. The venue -- Fenway Park -- for tonight's game supports stacking them too. It has the third-highest park factor for runs (1.103), per the three-year average used at FantasyPros.

The aforementioned Meadows and Lowe are two of my favorite hitter selections tonight. I'm enamored with tacking them onto an Astros or Padres stack or fully stacking the Rays using the power-hitting-lefty duo.


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.