MLB DFS Picks: Stack Slants for DraftKings + FanDuel

With Sunday slates not really counting these days for MLB DFS, I’d like to welcome you to the last week of the baseball season. The regular season schedule ends a week from tomorrow, which means our MLB DFS year will wind down a week from today, before getting into playoff baseball coverage of course. If you’re looking to pop one of those big GPPs or turn your year around with some solid results, now’s the time. With big wins being elusive through most of the season so far, your (ninth? twelfth? least?) favorite fantasy columnist here has to get his act together fast as well.

The 11-game main slate looks stacked with offensive options and pretty light on pitching tonight. The Dodgers are a giant black hole at the top of the stacks swallowing all the ownership that comes near them. They look fantastic again tonight, last night they put up a 15-run total in a laugher but were upwards of 30% owned across the board, this makes them very challenging to roster. If you take pieces of what you find here and put it together with the Dodgers and some value pitching that could be one path toward winnowing the pool of similarly constructed lineups, but it will be tough to get entirely afield with them today.

At the top of the stacks tool, the Yankees and Braves are both looking juicy and significantly under-owned. Since I don’t want to punch up the same write-ups we’ve done over the past few days, you can refer back to Quick Hits from yesterday for coverage on both teams and adapt accordingly.

MLB DFS Stack Slants | DraftKings + FanDuel | Sept. 19

Minnesota Twins – 1-2-3-4-6 – Max Kepler – Josh Donaldson – Nelson Cruz – Eddie Rosario – Mitch Garver

The Twins have fallen out of favor a bit in our MLB DFS coverage. They haven’t quite been the destroyers of baseball worlds that they were in setting the team home run record last year, though the power certainly hasn’t been out in the Twin Cities either. The team is sixth in baseball with 81 total home runs and the active roster is 10th with a .184 ISO.

The Twins are in Wrigley with Alec Mills on the hill for the Cubs. Apparently I like this game for some offense, I wrote up the Cubs side in their matchup with Michael Pineda in Quick Hits last night. The Twins have the higher implied team total, though neither is quite where I was expecting. They rank eighth on the top stacks tool and are drawing around half the ownership their probability of success warrants and the difference between their chances and those of the third-ranked Braves are fairly insignificant.

Alec Mills is a right-handed sinkerballer who cracked the rookie innings threshold this season, after seeing a few cups of coffee over the past few years. Mills has pitched to a 4.79 xFIP in his 52.2 innings so far in 2020, striking out just 17.5% of hitters with a swinging strike rate of just 7.7%. Mills relies on limiting hard contact, something that is difficult to do against several of these Twins bats.

The projected lineup for the Twins kicks off with big lefty masher Max Kepler. For his career, Kepler has feasted on right-handed pitching with a .225 ISO and a WRC+ 10% above average and 81 of his 99 career home runs. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Max pick up number 100 if he’s in the lineup today. Did you know that he’s already the record holder for Major League home runs by a German-born player?

Veteran third baseman Josh Donaldson doesn’t have the prettiest line in the world this year with a .217/.353/.464 over his 85 plate appearances, but there’s nothing wrong with his .246 ISO and WRC+ 22% above average in his limited action this year. The slugger hit 37 home runs in 659 opportunities in 2019 and has 39 in 722 same-handed plate appearances dating to the start of 2018. At a combined $8,500 on DraftKings, Kepler and Donaldson are a great one-two punch to get this stack rolling.

Nelson Cruz is Nelson Cruz. He costs $5,400 on DraftKings and $3,900 on FanDuel. Pay it.

Eddie Rosario should be in the lineup and his underrated left-handed bat could be a major part of the Twins assault tonight. The outfielder has a .247/.315/.462 slash on the season with 11 home runs and a WRC+ six percent above average. All 11 of Rosario’s home runs have come against right-handed pitching, tying him with Byron Buxton for the team lead in the split.

Miguel Sano has immense raw power but is another of our “when he connects” specialists with his lowly .216/.294/.512 slash. His .296 ISO and WRC+ 11% above average show plenty of quality for the $4,400 he costs on DraftKings and he’s probably too cheap at $3,000 on FanDuel. Sano has 12 home runs on the season, that’s what we’re paying him to do for us in MLB DFS.

Catching hero Mitch Garver is back in the Twins lineup and bringing some pop from the right side of the plate. Garver has made just 64 plate appearances this season and has hit one home run. In his 359 plate appearances in 2019, the backstop hit 31 and had a .357 ISO for the season. This is one of the best hitting catchers in baseball when he’s right.

Jorge Polanco mans shortstop ably for this team, though he’s yet to truly break through to the heights of some of the top options at the position on a consistent basis. Polanco hit 22 home runs in his 704 plate appearances in 2019, this year the switch-hitter has just four and has struggled against right-handed pitching. Three of his home runs have come in the split, but Polanco is at just .227/.297/.318 with a .091 ISO and a WRC+ 30% below average, making him a bit of a tough roster even at $3,900 when there are so many strong options at his position. At under two percent ownership, however, he makes sense to work into some of our Twins stacks.

Marwin Gonzalez is roster filler who can, at times, get to some of the league’s lower-end pitching. Still living off the fat of a year he had a few seasons back when with the Astros, the switch hitting utility man costs $4,000 on DraftKings and $2,500 on FanDuel. there’s not much to love about his .212/.285/.325 slash or his WRC+ 44% below average.

A player on the back-end of the lineup who is having a dynamite season and is going untouched on both sites is Byron Buxton. The right-handed outfielder is tied for the team lead with 11 of his 12 home runs this season coming against right-handed pitching. Buxton is a player firmly on the one good year in three plan, but it looks like 2020 is that season. The outfielder is holding a .272/.280/.614 slash with a .342 ISO and a WRC+ 30% above average over his 118 plate appearances this season. As should be obvious, the .280 on-base percentage doesn’t exactly make him an ideal wrap-around in terms of setting the table for the top of this lineup, but Buxton is a workable play at just $3,700 on DraftKings and $3,000 on FanDuel.

San Diego Padres – 1-2-5-7-8 – Fernando Tatis Jr. – Manny Machado – Tommy Pham – Jorge Mateo – Jurickson Profar

The Fathers have been so good and so popular that I feel like we’ve barely had the opportunity to discuss them in this space since the season was in its infancy. With a matchup against Justus Sheffield on deck this evening, the Padres rank among the top teams on the stacks tool and they’re drawing slightly less ownership than they should on both sites. This could be a very solid opportunity, despite the improved version of Sheffield that they’ll face.

The young lefty hurler is having a nice season for the Mariners, he’s pitched his way to a 4.19 xFIP that is in-line with his 4.06 ERA in his 44.1 innings and he’s managed a 22.2% strikeout rate while limiting power, giving up just two home runs. With a below-average ability to induce swinging strikes with his sinker-slider mix, Sheffield relies on keeping the ball on the ground which he’s done at a 50% clip this season.

The Padres lineup actually got better last night, with the return of Tommy Pham. Originally feared to be out for the rest of the year with his hamate bone injury, Pham pushed his way back to the lineup and should be hitting in the middle of the order tonight. Hamate injuries have been notorious for being a challenge for hitters to return to form, so it will be interesting to watch Pham’s performance in the early going. The outfielder left hitting just .212/.323/.294 in his 99 plate appearances earlier in the season, but he’s been a reliable option for at least 20 home runs and at least 15 stolen bases for each of the past three seasons. Since the start of last year, Pham has a .341/.466/.486 slash against lefties with an 18.1% strikeout rate and an 18.6% walk rate. His WRC+ is 62% above average in the split and it wouldn’t be the wildest idea to suggest that Pham should leadoff in this spot instead of hitting fifth.

Two superstars occupy the leadoff and second spot in the projected batting order tonight, with Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado hitting one and two respectively. The duo has been nearly unstoppable for MLB DFS purposes this season with a combined 31 home runs and 15 stolen bases, which explains their combined $10,800 sticker price. It’s difficult to swallow and build to good lineups with, but the pair are basically mandatory parts of this stack. Tatis is drawing far more ownership than his third base counterpart, if I had to choose between the two I would likely play Machado at under two percent ownership instead of Tatis at well over 10%, though neither number is tragic.

Catcher Austin Nola is penciled into the three spot in the projected lineup, another spot that I question in terms of who will actually hit where now that Pham is back, but regardless Nola makes a reasonable catcher play when he’s drawing under 10% ownership and costs just $4,200 with the way we expect this lineup to produce. The catcher has hit seven home runs this season and had 10 in his 267 plate appearances in 2019.

Working Wil Myers into the lineup at just $4,200 is another way to get inexpensive while maintaining a high projection with this team. Myers is drawing under five percent ownership despite hitting cleanup in the projected lineup and carrying a .291/.351/.611 slash with a WRC+ 53% above average and a .320 ISO. Myers is smashing everything he connects with this season, I’m not sure why he’s neither more popular nor more expensive, but take advantage.

Jake Cronenworth‘s primary skill this season has been to make me think of “Cronenberg Rick and Morty” every time I see his name. On the baseball side of things he does have a nice .311/.372/.534 slash with four home runs and a WRC+ 42% above average this season. As a left-handed mix and match second baseman at no ownership and just a $4,600 price on DraftKings, I’m happy to work with some Cronenworth.

Jorge Mateo and Jurickson Profar should be a dynamic duo of speed and pop from the end of the lineup for this team. Mateo’s 80-grade speed has been long anticipated as his bat tries to catch up, so far in his 25 plate appearances in the Show that hasn’t really happened, he’s at just .130/.167/.217 so far but if he gets on, watch out. The second baseman/outfielder costs $2,600 on DraftKings but is minimum price on FanDuel. Profar has shown some of what he’s capable of with his seven home runs and five stolen bases in 177 plate appearances this season. While his speed doesn’t top out where Mateo’s does, Profar has the better bat of the two and can connect from both sides of the plate.

Bringing up the bottom of the projected order we may or may not see Trent Grisham who has struggled in lefty-lefty matchups, with a .256/.312/.407 slash, three homers, a .151 ISO and a WRC+ eight percent below average since the start of 2019.

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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.