3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 5/21/21

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 main slate.

Milwaukee Brewers

The Milwaukee Brewers rank 29th in weighted runs created plus (78 wRC+) against righties this year, per FanGraphs. Their lineup lacks star power, save for Christian Yelich ($3,900), who recently returned from the injured list, so gamers might be reluctant to trust him right yet. This sounds like a recipe for a potential contrarian stack that checks two other integral boxes.

First, Jeff Hoffman -- their opposition -- is a below-average pitcher. He has a 4.67 ERA, 4.90 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), 1.50 WHIP, and 11.5 percent walk rate in eight starts spanning 34 2/3 innings pitched this season. Hoffman also does a poor job of inducing grounders with a 35.3 ground-ball percentage in 2021, which brings me to the other motivating factor for stacking the Brewers.

Great American Ball Park is a launching pad. According to FantasyPros park factors, Cincy's home stadium has the highest park factor for homers (1.347) and second-highest for runs (1.106). You have to look back to just Thursday to see the scoring potential Great American "Small" Park provides an offense, as the San Francisco Giants blew up for 19 runs.

My preferred Brewers stacking options all have the platoon advantage as lefties, providing them a crack at Hoffman's unsightly .373 weighted on-base average (wOBA) allowed to left-handed batters since 2020. The aforementioned Yelich is my favorite option. He's joined by leadoff hitter Kolten Wong ($3,300) and cleanup hitter Omar Narvaez ($2,600).

Cincinnati Reds

The Cincinnati Reds are hosting the Brewers, so they'll enjoy their home cooking. This year, they rank third in wRC+ (121) and second in wOBA (.359) at home. Their pitching matchup against Adrian Houser isn't as tantalizing as Milwaukee's matchup, but Houser's not the caliber of pitcher you avoid at Great American Ball Park.

Houser owns a pedestrian 4.01 SIERA in eight starts spanning 39 2/3 innings this season. Sticking to the theme of mediocrity, Houser's allowed a .311 wOBA to lefties and a .324 wOBA to righties this year. He's far from lights out against either lefties or righties. Further, while I'm not a huge fan of pitcher splits by park, his 5.40 ERA in three starts (13 1/3 innings) pitched at Great American Ball Park, per Yahoo! sports, is a cherry on top for stacking against him.

Injuries have removed a few notable players from the Reds' lineup, so I'm not enamored with the bottom part of the order. Instead, I'm focused on Jesse Winker ($3,700), Nick Castellanos ($4,300), Tyler Naquin ($3,100), and Eugenio Suarez ($3,100). Suarez's 69 wRC+ against righties this year is horrendous, but his .215 isolated power (ISO) plays. Naquin, Castellanos, and Winker have hammered righties this season with a 137 wRC+, 176 wRC+, and 197 wRC+, respectively.

Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies are at home tonight. You know what that means -- the upside of double-digit runs in the premier venue for scoring. Coors Field leads the way in park factor for runs (1.362), singles (1.230), and triples (2.177) while ranking second for homers (1.257) and doubles (1.345).

The odds of a monstrous offensive showing are enhanced by opposing Seth Frankoff. The 32-year-old righty has pitched only 9 1/3 innings in the majors. He didn't debut in The Show until making a two-inning relief appearance for the Chicago Cubs in his age-28 season in 2017. He spent the next two years pitching in the Korean Baseball Organization before returning stateside to join the Seattle Mariners last year, pitching only 2 2/3 innings across two relief appearances. He's made one start for the Arizona Diamondbacks, allowing two runs on three hits, four walks, and four strikeouts in 4 2/3 innings. The odds of an underwhelming, journeyman pitcher avoiding the pitfalls of Coors seem slim.

Usually, I'd highlight a few players who are my favorites, and the likes of Raimel Tapia ($3,600), Trevor Story ($4,300), Charlie Blackmon ($3,800), C.J. Cron ($3,300), and Ryan McMahon ($3,900) fit the bill as the projected top-five hitters in the lineup. Having said that, when things snowball at Coors Field, having exposure to the bottom of the order can pay off in spades as a contrarian move. Even if you're not fully stacking the Rockies, getting some exposure sprinkled in around other stacks can be the ticket to the top of a GPP.

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.