MLB DFS Picks: HRs, Stacks, Ownership DraftKings + FanDuel

Just catching up on some GPP standings, it looks like we’ve got some people doing well across MLB DFS out there tonight, so hopefully those lineups hang on. I can’t say I’ll be joining all of you in celebrating. Unless something changes dramatically, it looks like a rough slate for my lineups, but at least a few of the picks seem to have connected. I was a bit long against Merrill Kelly in the end given his public ownership and the projection I was getting for him on FanDuel. I liked it as a spot to take a position against the field. It’s a play I would make again and an angle I like to take when there’s a chalky pitcher that doesn’t come up strong for me.

The Josh Lindblom injury was another dagger. He was popping in projections for me and had cruised through three until he seemingly got hurt and gave up a few trying to pitch through it before coming out. The five strikeouts at least helped it not be a total meltdown spot, and it’s not worth worrying about what could have been. We just move on to tomorrow.

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MLB DFS Quick Hits: Top HR Options, Stacks and Pitchers

Home Run Ratings

Home runs are our holy grail when making MLB DFS picks. Finding the right combination of sluggers who will knock one, or better two, out of the park to drive in the teammates you stack with them is critical to winning GPPs. Identifying the likely home run hitters is trickier than just looking at the big names. Using a model of my own design, based on a blend of several predictive statistics for the batter-pitcher matchup, I’m going to give one of the top choices from each team.

Note: I’ll run a separate sheet for the early games and update this by sunrise if you want to check back for the games on the afternoon slate.

Another Note: I’m also including a couple boring picks as bonuses because they’re the top two in the model but I don’t want to just use them daily.

Scale: 5-10 Average; 10-20 Good; 20-25 Very Good; 25+ Great

Arizona Diamondbacks: Starling Marte – 4.96

Atlanta Braves: Freddie Freeman – 4.75

Baltimore Orioles: Anthony Santander – 7.11

Boston Red Sox: Rafael Devers – 6.20

Chicago Cubs: Kris Bryant – 6.32

Chicago White Sox: Edwin Encarnacion – 11.17

Cincinnati Reds: Eugenio Suarez – 7.16

Cleveland Indians: Jose Ramirez – 8.17

Colorado Rockies: Nolan Arenado – 5.83

Detroit Tigers: C.J. Cron – 10.04

Houston Astros: Alex Bregman – 8.67

Kansas City Royals: Jorge Soler – 14.91

Los Angeles Angels: Shohei Ohtani – 11.12

Los Angeles Dodgers: Cody Bellinger – 15.15

Miami Marlins: n/a

Milwaukee Brewers: Justin Smoak – 7.85

Minnesota Twins: Max Kepler – 8.20

New York Mets: Michael Conforto – 13.28 (bonus: Pete Alonso 18.51)

New York Yankees: Aaron Judge – 16.30 (bonus: Giancarlo Stanton 19.62)

Oakland Athletics: Matt Olson – 11.40

Philadelphia Phillies: n/a

Pittsburgh Pirates: Josh Bell – 5.39

San Diego Padres: Trent Grisham – 8.53 (Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. are higher)

San Francisco Giants: Wilmer Flores – 7.09

Seattle Mariners: Evan White – 7.54

St. Louis Cardinals: Paul Goldschmidt – 10.69

Tampa Bay Rays: Hunter Renfroe – 4.70

Texas Rangers: Joey Gallo – 11.10

Toronto Blue Jays: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. – 4.86

Washington Nationals: Eric Thames – 8.81

MLB DFS Picks: Stacks & Ownership Plays

(Quick note: if it says 1-5 it means hitters 1-2-3-4-5, otherwise I’ll specify spots)

We’re picking a few standout spots and teams to look at for potential plays here. Make sure to check out the ownership projections for critical updates and monitor the top stacks tool throughout the day for changes.

St. Louis Cardinals (4.6) at Minnesota Twins (5.5) – Suggested Stack: Twins 9-1-2-3-4

Well, the Twins reminded me that they don’t care about an opposing pitcher’s ground-ball profile at all when it comes to hitting home runs during today’s game against Carlos Martinez. I love them to continue the trend tomorrow against Daniel Ponce de Leon and whatever else comes out of the Cardinals bullpen. With one of the highest implied run totals on the slate, I expect the Twins to be popular tomorrow, but this is probably a case of good chalk. Keep an eye on how they rank in Awesemo’s stack tool and what his projections have to say about the spot.

I like the looks of Max Kepler in the home run model hitting out of the leadoff spot for the Twins. Kepler found himself in 2018, lowering his strikeout rate from the low 20s to the mid teens and improving his batted ball profile significantly. That improvement led to him coming into 2019 as a popular sleeper play, and he didn’t disappoint, hitting 36 home runs and posting a WRC+ 21% above league average. Jorge Polanco isn’t pulling the strongest projection in this group for me, but his price and positioning along with his general ability and place in this batting order will work him into a fair amount of my Twins stacks. If he were hitting sixth or seventh, I could get past him more frequently.

I’m here all day for Josh Donaldson, Nelson Cruz and Eddie Rosario in the heart of this order, though. That means we’re going to need to get different with parts of it. I expect that to include Miguel Sano and his prodigious power from the bottom of the order as well as more than a fair share of Byron Buxton if he’s hitting ninth with the potential to be a sneaky power and speed wrap-around to the top of the order. There’s a reason teams started looking at the nine spot as a place to plant a more capable hitter than in the old days of baseball, it’s a spot that sets the table for the top of the lineup quite frequently throughout the game. Making a play like this, we knowingly sacrifice a plate appearance to get different while hopefully maintaining some upside from that correlation.

That Buxton play is in the suggested stack for now, which includes: Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, Josh Donaldson, Jorge Polanco and Nelson Cruz

Kansas City Royals (4.4) at Detroit Tigers (5.2) – Suggested Stack: Tigers 2-6

I wasn’t really thinking about the Tigers coming in or focused too much on these bats during the Early Bird Podcast with EMac, but the 5.2 implied run total has me at least a little intrigued against a middling lefty like Danny Duffy. He might just be a guy who has let me down too many times in past MLB DFS seasons, but my home run model and projections right now are supporting what Vegas is telling me with the line here. I want to look into some of the cheap Tigers power here because Duffy gives it up.

Trivia Time: Did you know that Jonathan Schoop has hit more than 20 home runs each of the last four seasons? One of those years he went over 30 and he hit 25 in another. Schoop actually profiles more as a reverse-splits guy over his full career but two of his last three years have been stronger against southpaws. With a projected .226 season-long ISO from Steamer, I feel like there’s a good shot he can get to Duffy and drive the ball here. C.J. Cron seems like a no-brainer home run pick from this team and should be included in your Tigers stacks. Like a bottle of platinum blonde hair dye, he’ll be owned where Tigers are, but it’s a team where we can get different elsewhere, and I think it’s a mistake to skip him here with the limited general quality.

Jeimer Candelario is not a high-quality hitter, he strikes out too often and doesn’t generate quite enough power to justify it in the advanced numbers. His WRC+ has been below league average each of the last two seasons, and he has a weak ISO history, though Steamer has him targeted for a more respectable .190, which is pushing him toward being playable in my overall projections. As a $2,300 third baseman on FanDuel, he could help you get some big bats in your second stack or a stud starting pitcher. Don’t go haywire rostering him, though. Remember the part about him not being good.

The suggested stack here includes Schoop, Miguel Cabrera, Cron, Cameron Maybin, and Candelario and runs through the middle of this order.

New York Yankees (5.8) at Baltimore Orioles (3.9) – Suggested Stack: Yankees 9-1-2-3-5

In a hectic pivot, the Yankees have been rescheduled to play a series in Baltimore over the next few days instead of their originally scheduled games against Philadelphia. This comes on the heels of the incident with the Marlins, Phillies and COVID-19. The Orioles are yet to post a starting pitcher, but truthfully, I don’t care who it is. I have Asher Wojciechowski in my current projections since it feels like he’s been the Orioles’ scheduled starter for about a week now. The Yankees profile amazingly well in both my projections and my home run model, and while I’m sure they’re going to be a chalky popular play, it’s a spot that I think is totally reasonable to get over the top with. On a slate with a lot of good pitching and lower run totals, you can make things different elsewhere. Just get unique with it, not by being stupid but by using an undervalued asset in your second stack and your pitching spot.

The home run ratings I provide in this column can generally be used as a team power index for MLB DFS that night. If the highest or second-highest guy is a 5.0, we know that team isn’t looking like a great home run option that night — Twins performance tonight aside. Tonight, the Yankees have four hitters in the top eight in my home run model. They look like absolute killers here, so find a way to work them in. You can reliably look to construction plays with this lineup starting from the bottom with Brett Gardner, who is constantly under-owned for his quality. Gardner is inexpensive and still generates runs. The outfielder posted a WRC+ 15% above league average last season while hitting a career-high 28 home runs. Using him in place of one of the more popular outfielders is a way to differentiate quickly here. If he’s hitting ninth, we can use him as a wrap-around play to the top of the lineup; if he’s hitting higher up, he works on the back end, but keep an eye on the ownership.

I don’t like Gio Urshela‘s bat so much. I think last season was an outlier, and he’s even overrated defensively, but if he’s not drawing a ton of popularity, he makes sense on variance in this lineup alone. The projection is fine here, but it’s the guys above him that you really want, so get creative as you mix and match.

Aaron Hicks, Luke Voit and Gary Sanchez are all under $3,000 on FanDuel. That’s absurd. You can build a stack that I like better than most options from most teams with just those three and Gardner, then get to basically anything else you want. That feels like cheating.

The suggested stack is a bit on the safer side here. Starting with Gardner in the wrap-around we go: Gardner, D.J. LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres and Hicks. Obviously, you can swap Giancarlo Stanton in for any of those. We skip him here in an attempt to tie with fewer people running popular Yankees stacks when they hit 47 home runs tomorrow.

HR Call: Jorge Soler (Royals)

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Author

Terry McBride

Terry used to do other things, now he writes words on the internet. He hopes his more than 20 years’ experience in season-long and daily fantasy sports and his custom models for MLB, NBA, and NFL don't steer you too wrong when he writes columns and makes picks on Awesemo.com. A lifetime of experience keeping odd hours make Terry ideal to cover KBO baseball overnight until the world returns to normal. Most of those late night hours have been spent on the couch watching sports, T.V., and movies; just try to shut him up about any of the above. You can find his pop-culture ramblings and more on Sideaction.