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MLB DFS: Breaking down the top daily fantasy baseball hitters and team stacks on FanDuel & DraftKings for May 13, 2022
Digging into today’s MLB DFS slate to highlight your best bats to stack.
This article will cover two to three teams that we think are the most stackable for MLB contests. If you are newer to DFS or MLB or want a general refresher on the impact of stacking in MLB, check out our MLB Lineup Strategy refresher article.
Colorado Rockies (vs. Kansas City Royals)
I typed out the headline above – Colorado vs. Kansas City. I looked at the screen and then at my keyboard – and then I took the deepest breath that was also basically a sigh at the same time. Why is James being this melodramatic you ask? Because it is Zack Greinke day I just do not know what do to do with him anymore. These aren’t opinion-based articles, everything I usually have ever written on this site I lay my thoughts into words backed up by data and stats. And nothing is changing in that regard, everything is backed up by data that we both can go and find together. But sometimes you get to a pitcher whose numbers vs. what is actually happening just don’t make a whole ton of sense. The example here is Zack Greinke. Greinke has made six starts on the year covering 33.2 innings. Greinke has just an ERA of 2.67 and a WHIP of 1.10, both stats that are great. But, Greinke has allowed 34 hits in 33 innings and has only struck out 10. That number places Greinke almost dead last in the MLB for K% and Whiff%. In terms of an expected ERA, Greinke ranks in the bottom 16% of the league and bottom 6% of the league in terms of expected opposing batting average. It goes further: Bottom 15% in expected slugging, bottom 16% in expected xwOBA, bottom 6% in fastball velocity. These metrics are not good – and yet, Greinke sits with an ERA of just 2.67. So, what is working and how is this happening. Well, location – Greinke has elite pinpoint pitching and while his fastball only hits 88MPH, he maintains a high spin rate on it. With that being said, batters are still hitting .289 on the fastball with an expected average of .347. The groundball numbers are even down here, Greinke is allowing the lowest groundball rate of his entire career by over 6%. The line-drive rate is up as well, but the barrel% is down. This is an enigma – I really do concede that a lot of what is happening with Greinke’s metrics and stats feels funky. It is hard to measure luck, but that is usually what the expected averages can help us understand a bit more. Everything tells us that Greinke should be getting hammered, yet he isn’t. Greinke did allow 10 hits in 5.2 innings to Baltimore in his last start, but they only scratched across two earned. With runs down across the league and it being called another “dead-ball era” Greinke is kind of the example of, well, maybe it is? So simply put here is what we have: a pitcher who is throwing strikes and letting the ball be hit into play. Those balls in play are a higher percentage line drive or fly out, yet the expected averages on all of his stuff lies way higher than what he is allowing. Now he goes to Coors, which maybe will correct some of these issues? But a guy allowing a lot of fly balls in the Denver air could equal this out for us. I really don’t know, but I am going to keep hammering the stack against Greinke until it pays off. And if it never does, the Greinke broke the advanced statistics of MLB. Analytics are dead. Everyone go home. Righties are the play here, as they are hitting .306 on the year, as opposed to lefties just hitting .216.
Minnesota Twins (vs. Cleveland Guardians)
It is “ace day” in which we have a ton of top of the rotation arms going so while we have a large slate to navigate, we also have some arms we probably just want to straight-up avoid. So down the list, we go to find our struggling starting pitchers and Aaron Civale lands on that list pretty quickly. It’s been a weird year for Civale who carries a 9.45 ERA right now and a -1.1 WAR, despite being a career 2.9 WAR player. This is likely a spot where Civale figures it out, but targeting him while he doesn’t have it figured out is still the plus for us. On the year, Civale has made five starts and only has covered 20 innings, allowing 28 hits and 24 runs (21 earned). Civale has really struggled to get the ball on the ground with a just 25% groundball rate which is 20% down off of his career average. The flyball rate is up 12% in return with line drive up 6%. Civale leans on his cutter for 31% of his pitches but it is being smashed right now at a .360 batting average. That being said, the expected average on this pitch is just .258 so I think over time this is a correction that will happen. Correction or not though, this is an arm that is giving up hits and runs. Over the last three starts Civale has allowed 20 hits and 16 earned runs. While the strikeout numbers were high last start, the hits and runs allowed just isn’t going to cut it in general. The spin rate on his fastball and curve ball are high, which is usually a starter stat to success, but the Barrel% and exit velocity put Civale in the bottom 10% and 18% of the league respectively. There is also a velocity drop here, as the cutter is down a full 2 MPH from last year and the 4-seamer 1MPH. I think this plays heavily into some issues and Civale will need to find the velo again to continue his career success. Righties hold a big split edge here, hitting .388 and slugging .653 on the year against Civale, while lefties are only just .243. Buxton, Sanchez, Jeffers, and Miranda are guys I will be looking towards here.
