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.
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Soxdidn't exactly showcase top-notch pitching in their opening series, but their bats did the talking, allowing them to take two of three from the Orioles. Perhaps their hitters can keep the momentum going tonight against Johan Oviedo, as the Sox are showing the slate's highest implied team total (5.13).
Oviedo has pitched 143 innings across the last three seasons, and his underlying numbers have left a lot to be desired. Over those innings, he's posted a 4.90 xFIP, 18.8% strikeout rate, and 10.9% walk rate. While he did get better results in 2022, he still managed just a 4.53 xFIP as a starter.
The best way to attack the right-hander is with left-handed bats. In the split last season, Oviedo allowed a 4.93 xFIP, 17.8% strikeout rate, and 12.9% walk rate, and if we narrow that down to just his innings as a starter, those numbers get even uglier with a 6.29 xFIP, 13.4% strikeout rate, and 17.9% walk rate.
Boston's success over the weekend has bumped up some salaries, but outside ofRafael Devers ($4,000), we can still get the other key lefties at fairly reasonable salaries between Alex Verdugo ($3,400), Masataka Yoshida ($3,200), and Triston Casas ($2,800). Yoshida has shown promise as an on-base machine, logging just a 6.7% strikeout rate to open his MLB career.
While Oviedo was effective versus righties in 2022, Justin Turner ($3,100) is a value as the number three hitter, and Adam Duvall ($3,300) has come out of the gate firing after averaging a ridiculous 35.7 FanDuel points across his first three games.
Houston Astros
The Houston Astros are another team sporting an implied team total hovering around five runs (4.99), and they should be able to take advantage of their matchup against left-hander Matthew Boyd.
Boyd pitched in only 13 1/3 innings out of the bullpen last season, so we have to look to the year prior for his last data as a starting pitcher. While his 2021 results were solid, he otherwise produced an underwhelming 4.79 xFIP and 19.9% strikeout rate over 15 starts. He was especially vulnerable to righty sticks, as he allowed a 5.12 xFIP in the split.
While home runs weren't an issue in 2021, a career-low 9.3% homer-to-fly-ball rate suggests it was mostly due to luck. Boyd has always been a fly-ball pitcher, and over his career, he's given up 1.60 home runs per nine innings.
Alex Bregman ($3,500), Jose Abreu ($3,300), and Jeremy Pena ($3,000) are the obvious righties to build around, and then Chas McCormick ($2,600) is an appealing value play lower in the order. McCormick has achieved a double-digit barrel rate in each of the past two seasons and owns a career .173 ISO.
Boyd is predictably tougher in lefty-lefty matchups but still only managed a 20.3% strikeout rate in the split two years ago, so standout lefties Yordan Alvarez ($4,300) andKyle Tucker ($4,100) remain firmly in play, as well.
Los Angeles Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers round out our trio of high-implied-total games at 4.95. They get to take their hacks against right-hander Ryan Feltner, who put up a modest 4.43 xFIP and 19.6% strikeout rate in 2022. Most importantly for DFS, he also coughed up 1.48 home runs per nine innings.
Feltner's easy to attack on both sides of the plate, but we should particularly like our chances of a dinger for the Dodgers' lefties. In the split, he posted a 19.1% strikeout rate while allowing a 42.5% fly-ball rate and 38.6% hard-hit rate.
That being said, the right-hander still gave up a whopping 1.51 homers per nine innings in same-sided matchups, so it's hard to go wrong here.
LeftiesFreddie Freeman ($3,700) and Max Muncy ($3,200) should be prominently featured in lineups, and Mookie Betts ($4,000) is always a welcome sight regardless of the matchup. David Peralta ($2,400) andJames Outman ($2,600) give us a pair of value lefty bats, as well.