3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 5/7/21
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.
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are my co-favorite stack tonight. Patrick Corbin has pitched two quality starts in his last three outings, but he's still not missing many bats, his control is poor, and he's serving up dingers aplenty. He's walked three or more batters in four of five starts, struck out no more than five batters in any start, coughed up at least one homer in four starts, and multiple homers in a pair of them.
Dating back to last year, Corbin is responsible for a 5.56 ERA, 4.71 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and 1.72 homers per nine innings allowed in 16 starts spanning 89 innings, per FanGraphs. Right-handed batters have demolished him. The 316 of them he's faced since 2020 have ripped 15 homers with a .547 slugging percentage and a .394 weighted on-base average (wOBA). The Yankees' lineup is chock full of right-handed hitters who pummel southpaws.
Eight of their hitters have a weighted runs created plus (wRC+) above 105 against lefties since 2018, four are above 125, and three are above 150. The lineup's loaded with power, too, headlined by Gleyber Torres ($3,000), Giancarlo Stanton ($3,800), and Aaron Judge ($3,700). Torres has a .252 isolated power (ISO), Stanton boasts a .299 ISO, and Judge leads the way with a .311 ISO against southpaws since 2018. They're my three favorite stacking options, while DJ LeMahieu ($3,200) is my preferred fourth option from the leadoff spot to round out a full four-person stack.
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals are my other co-favorite stack, and they blend perfectly with the Bronx Bombers. Former Cardinal Austin Gomber returns to his old stomping grounds, and he's coming off of a ho-hum effort after getting shellacked two starts back. Gomber's control can get away from him in starts, and he lacks the necessary high strikeout and ground-ball rates to bail him out when it gets sideways.
The Cardinals have a lineup of patient lefty-mashers who can exacerbate Gomber's shortcomings. Beyond his bad control, Gomber isn't especially adept at managing quality of contact. He's yielded a .355 expected wOBA (xwOBA) this year, per Baseball Savant.
I'm expecting the Cardinals to hammer him tonight, and my four favorite players in their stack are Tommy Edman ($2,800), Dylan Carlson ($2,600), Paul Goldschmidt ($3,000), and Nolan Arenado ($3,600). All four have a wRC+ north of 140 against lefties since 2018 (or since debuting in 2019 in the case of Edman and debuting in 2020 for Carlson), starting with Edman's 142 wRC+, followed by Carlson's 150 wRC+, Goldschmidt's 154 wRC+, and headlined by Arenado's 160 wRC+.
Minnesota Twins
Byron Buxton ($4,500) exited yesterday's game early with a hip injury, putting his availability tonight in question. His absence would take a lethal hitter out of the lineup, but it could also serve to detract gamers from fully stacking the Minnesota Twins in a plus matchup against lefty Tarik Skubal.
Skubal owns a pair of noteworthy slate-high marks, namely his 6.01 SIERA and 3.27 homers per nine innings allowed. With or without Buxton, the Twins have hitters who can pile onto his season-long struggles.
Kyle Garlick ($2,000) has punt appeal with a .246 ISO and 111 wRC+ against lefties since 2018 and the minimum salary. Miguel Sano ($2,500) and Mitch Garver ($2,700) offer huge power to offset their gaudy strikeout rates, making them boom-or-bust options. The top two options, however, are Josh Donaldson ($3,100) and Nelson Cruz ($3,900). The former has a .392 on-base percentage, .226 ISO, and 129 wRC+ against lefties since 2018. The latter has a .422 on-base percentage, .362 ISO, and 188 wRC+ in that split.
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.
