3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Wednesday 4/28/21

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 main slate.

San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres will look to start the regression process for Taylor Widener tonight. The 26-year-old righty's 2.82 ERA through four starts spanning 22 and 1/3 innings isn't validated by his underlying number or batted-ball data. According to FanGraphs, he has a 4.51 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) and has exceptional batted-ball luck.

Baseball Savant credits Widener with a .298 weighted on-base average (wOBA) that's in stark contrast to his .393 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA). Even with good luck, the fly-ball pitcher has coughed up 1.61 homers per nine innings this year. The Friars have huge homer potential tonight.

It starts at the top of the order with Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,500). He's mashed seven taters with a .377 isolated power (ISO) this year. He's also laid waste to right-handed pitchers in his career. Tatis is a foundational piece of any Padres stack.

Number-two hitter Trent Grisham ($3,900) is the other batter I believe is a must-use option in Padres stacks. He has the platoon advantage, and Widener's been rocked for a .358 wOBA since reaching The Show last year. He's leading the team in weighted runs created plus (139 wRC+) this year against righties, and he increases his ceiling with his speed, having stolen five bases this season.

Toronto Blue Jays

Holy smokes, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Any talk of stacking the Toronto Blue Jays must begin with him. Vlad the Impaler's son went deep three times last night, pushing his total to seven on the season. According to multiple outlets, he was once the game's top prospect, and his bat was his carrying tool. It's come up huge this year, producing a .333 ISO and 229 wRC+. He's turning into a superstar.

Another son of a former major-leaguer, Bo Bichette ($3,400), is my second-favorite stacking option. He made a more seamless transition to the Majors, and he's in the midst of a stellar season at the dish with five homers, three stolen bases, a .218 ISO, and 110 wRC+.

Both Vladito and Bichette hit righties at a well-above-average clip in their young careers, and Erick Fedde is no great shakes in same-handed matchups. In fact, Fedde has been nearly as inept against righties as lefties in his career, yielding a .352 wOBA to lefties and a .347 wOBA to righties. The 28-year-old righty has had no answer for righties since 2020, ceding a .354 wOBA to them.

Fedde's a thoroughly below-average pitcher. He has a 5.51 ERA and 4.25 SIERA in four starts totaling 16 and 1/3 innings this year, and he has a 5.13 ERA and 5.07 SIERA in 210 and 1/3 innings pitched in his career.

He's ill-equipped to contain the Blue Jays' offense in their hitter-friendly temporary home. According to ESPN's park factors, the ballpark in Dunedin has park factors of 1.536 for runs and 1.210 for homers this year.

New York Yankees

It appears Dean Kremer will be toeing the slab for the Baltimore Orioles tonight.

The young righty has failed to impress in his 29 and 1/3 innings pitched for the O's in his career. He's responsible for a 5.52 ERA, 4.60 SIERA, 1.60 WHIP, 13.5 percent walk rate, and 35.4 percent ground-ball rate in his career. His high walk rate creates blowup potential, and his lack of grounders is a recipe for disaster in his home digs. Oriole Park at Camden Yard has the fourth-highest park factor for homers (1.171), per the park factors at FantasyPros.

Because I'm fully enamored with the pricey stacks of the Padres and Blue Jays, my preference is to turn to the lower-salary options on the New York Yankees. I'm focused on Rougned Odor ($2,400) and Gio Urshela ($2,600) in particular.

Odor has hit cleanup in New York's last two games against right-handed pitchers. That's a great starting point for using him at only $2,400. Odor's .335 xwOBA runs laps around his .261 wOBA, which offers another compelling point for using him.

Urshela's case for usage is even more cut and dry. He rakes in same-handed matchups. Urshela's slugged three homers with a .235 ISO and 131 wRC+ in 56 plate appearances against righties this year. Using a larger sample of 519 plate appearances versus righties since Urshela joined the Yankees in 2019 provides even more impressive results, including a .360 on-base percentage, .216 ISO, and 136 wRC+.

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.