Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Wednesday 4/21/21

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 six-game main slate, which starts at 6:10 PM ET.

Cincinnati Reds

Tonight's main slate features six games. Typically I'd mix and match three stacks on a slate of this size, but I'm laser-focused on only two. The Cincinnati Reds are my favorite of the two stacks I'm locked in on. MLB odds lists them as -188 favorites in a game with an over/under of 8.5 runs. That's a decent starting point for a stack.

The venue for tonight's contest works in this stack's favor, too. Runs and dingers are instrumental for flying up a GPP contest, and they come in bunches at Great American "Small" Park. According to the ballpark factors at FantasyPros, Great American Ball Park ranks second in park factor for runs (1.106) and first for homers (1.347).

Perhaps the most compelling argument for loading up on Reds is made by pointing to Merrill Kelly's numbers this year. The righty's 13.5 percent strikeout rate is the lowest among today's starting pitchers. According to FanGraphs, Kelly's 48.3 percent hard-hit ball rate is the highest among today's probable pitchers. Does that sound like a combination that's likely to lead to success in such a hitter-friendly park?

Kelly's hard-hit-ball percentage doesn't tell the whole story, either. Baseball Savant credits him with a .681 expected slugging and .450 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA). He enters tonight with an 8.44 ERA, 4.95 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and yielding 2.25 homers per nine innings.

The Reds, even without Nick Castellanos (serving a suspension) and Mike Moustakas (injured list), are poised to pummel Kelly. They're stackable from top to bottom, but it's the top that features my three favorite options, starting with Jesse Winker ($3,700). Winker dominates righties in his home digs, smacking 21 homers with a .404 on-base percentage, .251 isolated power (ISO), and 153 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) in 386 plate appearances since 2018.

Tyler Naquin ($4,000) is filling in for Castellanos in the two-hole, and while I don't love his salary, it's hard to ignore his 6 homers in 52 plate appearances this year. He's a defensible stacking selection.

Eugenio Suarez ($3,100) and Joey Votto ($2,800) are my other favorite stacking options. Suarez's power has shown up at home in same-handed matchups to the tune of a .259 ISO in 564 plate appearances under those splits. Votto isn't what he once was, but his reinvention this year resulted in electrifying batted-ball data. I trust the results are going to follow.

Boston Red Sox

I'm ready for fireworks at Fenway Park tonight, courtesy of the Boston Red Sox offense. Sitting directly behind previously discussed Great American Ball Park in park factor for runs is Fenway Park (1.103). The historic park suppresses homers (0.934), but it greatly enhances doubles (1.404). That's a trade-off I'm willing to accept.

The pitching matchup should be favorable, too. Right-handed reliever Trent Thornton is the opener for tonight's contest. However, it appears one of the lefties, Tommy Milone and Anthony Kay, is the primary candidate to do the heavy lifting as a bulk-reliever.

Thornton has a 4.94 ERA and 4.79 SIERA in 167 and 2/3 innings pitched since debuting for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2019. Milone has pitched well this year, however, in only 8 and 1/3 innings. Last year, he was rocked for a 6.69 ERA, 4.12 SIERA and coughed up 2.08 homers per nine innings.

Kay has yet to get his footing in the majors, getting torched for a 5.87 ERA and 4.62 SIERA in 38 and 1/3 innings. This motley crew of pitchers is unlikely to keep the Red Sox in check.

J.D. Martinez ($4,400) is easily my favorite option in this stack. He's been an unstoppable force at the dish this year, ripping pitchers for 6 homers, a .429 on-base percentage, .391 ISO, and 231 wRC+.

Xander Bogaerts ($3,000) is an easy pick to stack from the cleanup spot. He hit his first homer of the year last night, but he was already raking before reaching the seats. He's up to a .439 on-base percentage and 180 wRC+ for the year.

Alex Verdugo ($3,300) and Rafael Devers ($3,400) might need to do their damage early before a lefty comes in since they'll lose the platoon advantage at that point, but they're viable stacking options as well.

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.