3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for Friday 6/23/23

Stacking is an integral part of daily fantasy baseball. Correlation drives upside, giving your lineups a slate-winning ceiling when your stacks explode.

This piece will do the digging and the dirty work each day to determine which stacks are worth rostering on FanDuel's main slate. While we want upside, we also need to factor in game theory, especially in a sport as random as baseball.

Our MLB DFS heat map is a quick way to get a feel for the overall slate and which offenses are in a good spot. You can also check out our daily fantasy baseball projections to identify the slate's best bats.

Let's look at the top stacks for this main slate. We won't cover the Coors offenses. The Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Angels have two of the night's top implied totals, but you don't need me to tell you to get exposure to Coors.

Toronto Blue Jays

The slate's top non-Coors implied total belongs to the Toronto Blue Jays, who bring a juicy 5.55 clip into a home date with James Kaprielian.

Admittedly, Kaprielian has a solid swinging-strike rate of 11.3%, which is a little scary. But everything else in his profile comes up roses. He's allowed a 49.7% fly-ball rate, leading to 1.31 homers per nine. He's also walking 11.7% of hitters, a career-worst clip.

The Jays come at lower salaries across the board. They have just one bat -- Bo Bichette ($3,200) -- over $3,000, making them a great stack to pair alongside high-salary Coors hitters.

Bichette is easy to love at that salary, assuming he returns to the lineup after being scratched on Wednesday. He's got a .383 expected wOBA (xwOBA), a career-best clip by a good distance, and is also sporting a career-best hard-hit rate (37.6%).

George Springer ($2,900) is a modest-salaried leadoff hitter who offers power (10 dingers) and speed (12 steals). Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($3,000) is carrying a meh .335 wOBA, but his xwOBA is a much more appealing .388. Daulton Varsho ($2,900) will have the platoon advantage, and Whit Merrifield ($3,000) -- who has stolen 18 bases -- has been hitting second while being eligible at both second base and outfield. Matt Chapman ($2,900) has good pop at a low salary.

In a matchup with a righty, Brandon Belt ($2,500) is a sweet value play. Our model rates Belt as the night's number-one point-per-dollar hitter.

San Diego Padres

I wrote up the San Diego Padres as a stacking option yesterday in a date with a middling left-hander, and they delivered, scoring 10 runs. Today, San Diego gets to face an even worse southpaw, as they're at home against Patrick Corbin. As such, the Padres are showing a 4.90 implied total.

Corbin is a bit of a legend around these parts because we stack against him on a regular basis. In 2023, Corbin has been even worse than usual, struggling to a 4.96 SIERA and 14.1% strikeout rate -- career-worst numbers by a mile. He should be in for a rough outing against the Padres.

Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,300), Manny Machado ($2,900), Xander Bogaerts ($3,000) and Gary Sanchez ($2,800) are a high-upside stack of righties that adds up to just $13,000 in salary. Tatis -- who our model ranks as the second-best non-Coors stick -- needs no explanation, while Machado is heating up, posting a .367 wOBA in June and going off for 34.9 FanDuel points yesterday. Sanchez has been outstanding of late -- recording identical 44.9% hard-hit and fly-ball rates since coming to San Diego -- and he has a nice track record versus southpaws.

Of course, we don't need to shy away from Juan Soto ($3,500) due to the lefty-lefty matchup. Soto is locked in right now, putting up a two-hit game in four straight. He's got a .396 xwOBA for the season.

Nelson Cruz ($2,300) is an acceptable dart throw at a homer. He's long been excellent against southpaws, and although Father Time may have finally caught up to Cruz, our model rates him as the fourth-best point-per-dollar batter.

San Francisco Giants

The Padres and Jays -- along with the Coors offenses -- figure to be among the night's chalky stacks, so I wanted to go off the grid a bit with one.

Enter the San Francisco Giants.

San Fran is at home against Zach Davies, and the Giants have been handed a 4.55 implied total. Davies is a great pitcher to pick on -- and has been for a while -- because he really struggles to miss bats. In 2023, he's recorded a meager 18.8% strikeout rate. Over a small sample, lefties are mashing him for a .378 wOBA while righties own a 42.5% fly-ball rate off him. In short, we have a lot of flexibility with Giants stacks.

Thairo Estrada ($3,800) is the lone Giants hitter salaried above $3,100. Rather than drop that kind of coin on Estrada, I'd rather focus on LaMonte Wade Jr ($3,100), Joc Pederson ($3,100), Michael Conforto ($3,000) and Mike Yastrzemski ($2,900). Yastrzemski and Wade were held out of the lineup on Wednesday, but they're smashing plays if they return tonight. If not, you can pivot to J.D. Davis ($3,000) and/or Luis Matos ($2,400).

Pederson is one of my favorite plays of the slate. While he's a pinch-hit risk if he comes up against a lefty, Pederson is hammering righties for a .388 wOBA, 47.2% hard-hit rate and 43.8% fly-ball rate.