Chicks dig the long ball. This is a theme that has dominated headlines across Major League Baseball this year and in honor of the combined home run record being well within reach - just 17 shy of the record 5,693 set back in 2000 - entering today’s games; we’re going big for our DFS MLB Stacks article today. That’s right. We’re going back to the “Power Stack” that is best utilized in GPP contests, due to the inconsistent nature of most pure home run hitters. Sure, we know that getting a bomb or two from your DFS lineup is a huge boost to the chances of cashing, so why not load up on the most players with the best odds to delivering? Again, this may not be the most sound strategy for cash games.
So, how are we going to approach this, you ask?
Let’s go ahead and get started by identifying the five top games for run expectancy. We can do this by dialing up the Vegas Odds tool and take a look at the “totals” column. In doing so, we see that the following games are at the top of the list:
Oakland at Detroit
Texas at Seattle
New York (N) at Miami
St. Louis at Cincinnati
Chicago (A) at Houston
We will then head to the Pitching Coach tool and enter the “Advanced” stats section to sort by HR/FB% to see which of these pitchers is giving up the highest number of homers this year. The top five from this list are:
Jack Flaherty (STL) - 23.1%
Chad Bell (DET) - 19.6%
Lucas Giolito (CWS) - 19.4%
Daniel Gossett (OAK) - 18.9%
Mike Leake (SEA) - 14.7%
Alright, so we know that we are going to now target the big boppers from the Reds, A’s, Astros, Tigers and Rangers. To do this most effectively, let’s pull up the Hitting Coach tool and then open the “Advanced” tab and then choose these five teams from the game/team picker at the top. We’ll sort by ISO (Isolated power) column and since we have some lineups already in, we can start to see which players we can be targeting from each position with the increased homer odds.
C - Robinson Chirinos (TEX)
1B - Matt Olson (OAK); Joey Votto (CIN)
2B - Scooter Gennett (CIN); Jose Altuve (HOU)
3B - Matt Chapman (OAK); Adrian Beltre (TEX)
SS - Zack Cozart (CIN); Marwin Gonzalez (HOU)
OF - Khris Davis (OAK); Scott Schebler (CIN); George Springer (HOU); Adam Duvall (CIN)
Here is what I’ll be playing as my power stacked lineups on both DraftKings and FanDuel tonight:
DRAFTKINGS
C - Robinson Chirinos - $3,300
1B - Matt Olson - $5,000
2B - Scooter Gennett - $4,000
3B - Matt Chapman - $3,000
SS - Marwin Gonzalez - $3,800
OF - Khris Davis - $4,400
OF - Scott Schebler - $4,100
OF - George Springer - $4,800
That leaves $17,600 ($8,800 per) for two pitchers on DK.
FANDUEL
C - Robinson Chirinos - $3,100
1B - Joey Votto - $4,200
2B - Jose Altuve - $4,000
3B - Adrian Beltre - $3,000
SS - Zack Cozart - $3,700
OF - Khris Davis - $4,200
OF - Adam Duvall - $2,400
OF - George Springer - $3,700
That leaves $6,700 for your one starting pitcher on FD and I’d go with Trevor Williams