3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Wednesday 6/23/21

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.

Houston Astros

If you stacked the Houston Astros last night, you were undoubtedly left wanting more. Don't fret. You should get more tonight if you go back to the well. Thomas Eshelman is the hurler the Baltimore Orioles have tabbed to toe the slab tonight.

The 27-year-old righty has made 23 appearances (nine starts) in the majors, getting knocked around for a 5.02 ERA, 5.51 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and yielded 2.39 homers per nine innings, per FanGraphs. Moreover, Eshelman's been nearly equally inept against lefties and righties. He's coughed up a .535 slugging percentage and .369 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to left-handed batters and a .543 slugging percentage and .354 wOBA to righties.

You can stack against Eshelman with any of Houston's top hitters. Although, my two favorites are the lefties in the top four spots in the order, Michael Brantley ($3,500) from the two-hole and Yordan Alvarez ($3,800) from the cleanup spot. This year, Brantley has a .452 on-base percentage and 193 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) against righties, and Alvarez has a .213 isolated power (ISO) and 140 wRC+ against them.

Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves are facing rookie Tylor Megill tonight in his big-league debut for the New York Mets. He's pitched fairly well, splitting his time between Double-A and Triple-A this year. Still, he's leaping to The Show with fewer than 50 innings pitched combined at the Double-A and Triple-A levels in his professional career. It's a large leap, and I'm inclined to believe the Braves will greet him rudely.

My favorite options from the Braves tonight are Ronald Acuna ($4,400), Freddie Freeman ($3,900), Ozzie Albies ($3,200), and Austin Riley ($2,800). Acuna's been nothing short of phenomenal this year. He's tattooed righties for a .381 on-base percentage, .314 ISO, and 160 wRC+. Freeman has a .381 on-base percentage, .236 ISO, and 133 wRC+ against righties.

Riley and Albies have a 130 wRC+ and 113 wRC+, respectively. Riley's derived most of his offensive value against righties via his .378 on-base percentage. Albies has reached his above-average offensive production chiefly because of his power, mashing a .228 ISO. Abraham Almonte ($2,500) is another name to consider when constructing a Braves stack tonight.

Oakland Athletics

While the aforementioned Astros failed to make the most of a plus matchup last night, the same can't be said for the Oakland Athletics. They hung 13 runs on the Texas Rangers in a good old-fashioned butt whoopin'. Suffice to say; a bullpen game didn't work out in the Rangers' favor. I don't expect Mike Foltynewicz to stop the bleeding. Among tonight's probable starters, Folty's 4.94 SIERA and 5.59 ERA are both the highest marks. He's also suffered from whiplash due to turning and watching balls leave the yard at a 2.07 homers per nine innings rate.

As bad as his full-season marks are, he's been even worse of late, recording a 6.39 ERA, 5.66 SIERA, and 2.13 homers per nine innings over the last 30 days. He's also failing to strike batters out at anything approaching an acceptable rate, with a 9.7 percent strikeout rate during his recent run of futility. Finally, the veteran righty has been at his worst against lefties. In fact, he's basically been no match for them, coughing up a .680 slugging percentage and .451 wOBA to 141 lefties faced this season.

Fire up Tony Kemp ($2,400) and Matt Olson ($4,100) as my two favorite stacking options. Kemp has a .383 on-base percentage and 134 wRC+ against righties this year. Olson's been a monster against righties, recording a .392 on-base percentage, .291 ISO, and 168 wRC+. Also, don't forget about Mitch Moreland ($2,200) as a potential contrarian play.

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.