MLB DFS Picks: HRs, Stacks, Ownership DraftKings + FanDuel: August 14

Honestly, it can be a bit frustrating getting (some) MLB DFS takes right and not translating it to actually producing winning lineups. Another day of getting things partially right in constructions has me wanting to really dig into some lineup reviews to see how the pieces are coming together in ways that I’m missing. Our pals at Fantasy Cruncher offer all the tools we need to review that, find it and correct it. If you haven’t checked out the recent updates to the stacking tools you’re missing out, they’re powerful. Perhaps too powerful. Although with a point total well over 300, and still climbing, up on top on FanDuel today sometimes you just have to tip your cap and move on to tomorrow.

Speaking of which, we’ve got a nice meaty 13-game Main Slate on both sites that we can really carve up in interesting ways. On such a large slate there should be plenty of opportunities to get different while still playing high quality lineups. We have a mixed bag of pitching so paying up for a starter then targeting in on some stacks against a few of the bad pitchers is a good starting point.

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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.

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

Arizona Diamondbacks: Kole Calhoun – 8.08

Atlanta Braves: Marcell Ozuna – 7.48

Baltimore Orioles: Anthony Santander – 5.66

Boston Red Sox: Rafael Devers – 9.52

Chicago Cubs: Kyle Schwarber – 7.16

Chicago White Sox: n/a

Cincinnati Reds: Eugenio Suarez – 12.31

Cleveland Indians: Franmil Reyes – 11.36

Colorado Rockies: Charlie Blackmon – 5.86

Detroit Tigers: Jonathan Schoop – 3.99

Houston Astros: Carlos Correa – 11.16

Kansas City Royals: Jorge Soler – 6.98

Los Angeles Angels: Jo Adell – 9.33

Los Angeles Dodgers: Cody Bellinger – 11.28

Miami Marlins: Matt Joyce – 6.41

Milwaukee Brewers: Justin Smoak – 6.22

Minnesota Twins: Nelson Cruz – 13.02

New York Mets: Michael Conforto – 11.66 (Alonso higher)

New York Yankees: Gleyber Torres – 6.56

Oakland Athletics: Matt Olson – 14.07

Philadelphia Phillies: Bryce Harper – 7.40

Pittsburgh Pirates: Gregory Polanco – 4.11

San Diego Padres: Fernando Tatis Jr. – 10.25

San Francisco Giants: Mike Yastrzemski – 3.47

Seattle Mariners: Kyle Lewis – 5.70

St. Louis Cardinals: n/a

Tampa Bay Rays: n/a

Texas Rangers: Willie Calhoun – 10.54

Toronto Blue Jays: n/a

Washington Nationals: Kurt Suzuki – 11.05

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 MLB DFS 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.

Oakland Athletics @ San Francisco Giants – A’s – 3-7 – Matt Olson – Matt Chapman – Mark Canha– Stephen Piscotty – Khris Davis (Robbie Grossman)

The Battle of the Bay Area is going to be a bloodbath. Johnny Cueto is just not going to fare well in this spot against the power-packed A’s lineup, despite the preponderance of right-handed hitting. Cueto is only 34 but seems to have aged several decades in the past four seasons. The starter simply isn’t the pitcher he once was and it’s likely that guy is gone forever. Cueto has only thrown 234.1 innings since the start of the 2017 season, about a season’s worth. Over that stretch he is carrying a 4.70 FIP and a 19.9% strikeout rate and has given up 36 home runs.

Matt Olson seems like a great spot to hit a home run. My model gives him a great total and Cueto has been vulnerable to lefty power for years now. Power plays well from both sides of the plate against the shaky veteran however, so the other Matt is a great option in this stack as well. Matt Chapman has been destroying baseballs since coming into the league. In his first two and a half full seasons, Chapman has put together a .258/.339/.506 slash with 80 home runs, a .248 ISO and a WRC+ 28% above league average. This is one of baseball’s killer duos hitting three-four in this lineup.

Surrounding them is a great cast of skilled bats that includes a 2019 MVP candidate in shortstop Marcus Semien. The unheralded shortstop mashed his way to a .285/.369/.522 slash with 33 home runs, a .237 ISO and a WRC+ 37% above league average in 2019. While it was a career year to this point, Semien has shown the same quality over most seasons in which he sees 600 plate appearances or more and he provides the same immense upside as more expensive and more popular options at the position. His $2,900 price on FanDuel is just absurd. (FanDuel, I’m speaking to you directly now, your MLB DFS pricing is broken. Sincerely, Everyone). Semien leads off for this team and is a must ahead of the previously mentioned mashers.

The other spots in this stack can go in several directions, depending on how the lineup falls. The A’s have a deep team and can decide to play the platoon game to a degree or roll out a standard lineup. We also have the possibility of a decision in Ramon Laureano‘s suspension appeal that could cause him to sit, though I’m honestly not sure what the time-frame on that is. If he’s in the lineup Laureano makes a great option in stacks but will be popular. We’ve covered his skill-set recently however, so I’ll move on to Mark Canha here. Canha is an underrated power bat in the A’s offense. The 31-year-old saw a career high 497 plate appearances in 2019 and responded with 26 home runs, a .244 ISO and a WRC+ 46% above league average, by far his best season. Canha has a significant amount of pop with an above average ISO against both hands for his career. His $2,600 price tag on FanDuel and $4,400 on DraftKings should make him a key part of this stack.

Getting toward the back-end of the lineup we still have options with the Athletics. Like I said, deep team. We should have Stephen Piscotty and Robbie Grossman in the back half here although we could see the struggling Khris Davis. Piscotty only played in 93 games in 2019, following an excellent first year with the team in 2018 that saw him hit a career high 27 home runs. He appears to be healthy and on-track in 2020 so far, making a lot of quality contact. Grossman has had a few sneaky games already in 2020 but ultimately we know who this player is. He doesn’t pack much punch but he can work a count and doesn’t give away at bats with the strikeout. If the quality contact is for real or just continues as a brief trend we could see late-lineup upside again from a player that is unlikely to be popular and is definitely inexpensive. I would prefer to see Khris Davis continue to get opportunities to round into form for the season. The slugger’s power was sapped last year by a wrist injury and he seems to be the victim of some decision making that is more related to the sprint nature of the season. In a normal year there would be time to allow Davis to sort things out at the plate. In a 60-game season the A’s simply can’t afford to wait.

Ultimately this is still the same hitter who destroyed baseballs for MLB DFS players for the three seasons before last year’s injury ravaged clunker and this year’s slow start. From 2016 through 2018 Davis hit 133 home runs. He also somehow hit exactly .247 for four seasons in a row while seeing more than 600 plate appearances in three of them and more than 400 in the other, which is insignificant for our purposes but statistically astounding. Ultimately, if Davis is in the A’s lineup he’s in mine.

Don’t sleep on Sean Murphy on catcher-mandatory sites either. The 25-year-old has quality power potential but has not been truly able to translate it to game action reliably. He hit four home runs in limited action in 2019 and has shown some power quality over his short minor league sample as well. Ultimately, we need to see more plate appearances from the young catcher to know who he will truly be at the plate but while he’s cheap and under-owned he works for what we need.

Cleveland Indians @ Detroit Tigers – Indians – 2-3-4-5-7 – Jose Ramirez – Francisco Lindor – Carlos Santana – Franmil Reyes – Oscar Mercado

Speaking of gas-can pitchers: Ivan Nova, everyone! If you don’t speak Spanish, “no va” translates to “doesn’t go” which is the opposite of what baseballs tend to do when this pitcher is on the mound. His 1.43 HR/9 over the past three seasons ranks 26th-worst among qualified starters. It’s noteworthy that several of the names above him on that list are now pitching in the KBO or are out of baseball entirely. This pitcher is a target for MLB DFS. Nova is capable of posting a start every now and then in which he doesn’t get blown up, but his strikeout rate has been reliably below 17% for the past four seasons and his 1.34 WHIP since the start of 2017 tells us all we need to know about the opportunities that will be available to this Indians lineup.

You’ve heard and read me on the top of the Indians lineup several times by now but it’s worth repeating that the top four hitters in this lineup are projected for an average projected (Steamer) strikeout rate of 15% and an average projected ISO of .212, which is dragged down by Cesar Hernandez‘ .126 mark. The massive .257 ISO projection for Franmil Reyes hitting fifth balances Cesar’s lack of power in the same way that the latter’s low strikeout rate helps balance Franmil’s absurdly high amount of whiffs. Both are hitters that we can work into this stack and it becomes very easy to just get this lineup from one through five both in hand-builds and in optimizers.

Getting different with the Indians for MLB DFS purposes becomes an effort but it’s worth it to work in a few changes to get away from the pack. The back-end of this lineup is definitely a step down in quality and a step up in strikeout rate. They aren’t comfortable to roster against a good pitcher, fortunately we don’t have to worry about that here. Oscar Mercado quietly went 15-15 in his rookie year in 2019 and offers a solid blend of speed and pop for a major salary and ownership discount. Zimmer is a post-hype 27-year-old former top prospect in a major show-me spot. The power has always been tantalizing but hes never quite put things together and has been mostly blocked at the major league level. Since hitting eight home runs over 332 plate appearances in 2017, Zimmer has seen only 171 and done little with them. Still, the price is right and this is a left-handed bat with known power lurking in it against a power-happy pitcher in Nova. I like the spot to be a bit sneaky, just be careful how much of it you roll out there.

Sandy Leon offers another sneaky catching option on this slate. I’m not sure how much of him I’ll get to on FanDuel, but where you’re required to play catchers you could certainly do worse. The switch-hitter is $2,100 on FanDuel and $2,000 on DraftKings, which would justify the play as part of a high-end stack like this on its own. There’s not much to brag about in the bat but we’ve seen some limited power upside from Leon over the course of several seasons in a part time role in Boston, he hit seven home runs in each of 2016 and 2017 in just 283 and 301 plate appearances respectively. His 17 doubles in 2016 pushed his ISO to a career high .167 that season. No one is going to mistake the 31-year-old career backup for Johnny Bench but in limited deployments as part of a team with some of his pals in the lineup who are better than him at baseball? I can get to some Leon where I must.

HR Call: Matt Olson (A’s)

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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.