Welcome to Razzball DFS, Easter Monday edition!
The DFS bunny has you covered with a new strategy session and some great picks.
Today we’re going to discuss stacking and why it should be our preferred method for picking out hitters for a tournament-style (GPP) lineup.
New to DFS? You can start playing right now on FanDuel and put our picks to the test. If you’re scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray, it helps support your Razzball team!
Let’s start with the two basic approaches we can use to select our hitters. The first is to pick from a pool of players across various teams who are likely to hit home runs that day. It makes intuitive sense to go this way because of the overpowered impact of the home run event on DFS scoring. On DraftKings, a home run is worth a minimum of 14 DraftKings points (10 for the HR + 2 each for the run and RBI).
The second approach is to stack a bunch of hitters from a single team. This is the superior way to go for many reasons but the best, simplest argument might be this: When was the last time you hit an 8-event parlay bet?
Home runs are not an easy proposition at the best of times. Aaron Judge, who was hitting them at a historical pace last season, hit a bomb less than once every nine plate appearances, or in just under 40% of games. Most players will not be anywhere near that, but you’re going to need several of them to do it in the same day to finish in the money and even more to get to the top.
You may recall that last week we discussed how we can expect a larger share of DFS scoring to occur outside of the home run event. Let’s take advantage of that.
When we stack hitters, we’re looking for a single outcome to happen: the team we stack scores a pile of runs. We’re looking to replicate most or all of those 14 DK points through an accumulation of events and correlation. If one of our hitters drives in another, we catch a run and RBI with the same event. Rinse, repeat.
It’s important to note that on full slates we’re still going to need some bombs from our stacks to win. The fewer home runs our stack hits, the more runs they will ultimately need to score to become the top stack of the night. So we still want to stack teams that can be expected to hit some bombs and guys on those teams who are capable of hitting them.
Position is important to consider when completing our stacks. On a typical slate, 2B and catcher (and to some extent SS and 3B) tend to have fewer desirable hitters than 1B and OF, and ownership typically congregates on those few, talented hitters. Stacking presents a great opportunity to get away from those highly-owned players while maintaining some upside through correlation. Ultimately, I want every guy in my stack to be either a power hitter, fill a scarce position, or, ideally, both.
Stacking represents the easiest and most consistent means to finding your way to the upper tier of the leaderboard. Just do it. Every time. And stack the maximum number of hitters. That’s five on DraftKings and four on Fanduel.
Now that we’ve tuned up our approach, let’s look at the 8-game DraftKings slate that starts at 7:05 ET.
Luis Castillo, P $9,600 – A notoriously-slow starter, Castillo has come out firing this season. His walks are down, his swinging strikes are up, and he gets a nice matchup against the Cubs. He’s the pitcher I trust the most on this slate.
Julio Urias, P $9,400 – Pricing is loose enough on DraftKings to afford a double-pay up at pitcher, and thank goodness because I don’t like the cheaper guys tonight. Urias should have little trouble with the Giants, who were overwhelmed by Kris Bubic last night.
Willson Contreras, C: $4,300 – One of the terrific tools featured in the DFSBot is Stackonator (nice segue!). Stackonator loves itself some Cardinals stacks tonight, and I can’t say I blame it – they’re the road team at Coors and they carry the highest team total on the slate.
Shohei Ohtani, 1B/OF: $6,200 – Contrarian play. Sure, we can use Paul Godschmidt at 1B. Or we can pony up another $300 to get Ohtani at a fraction of the ownership.
Elehuris Montero, 3B: $3,100 – Yes, Nolan Arenado is a great play tonight, but on the other side of the game, we have Montero, who looks to be on the verge of breaking out. Montero gets the platoon advantage against Steven Matz at Coors. Too cheap.
Jordan Walker, OF: $3,000 – The Cards won’t go unnoticed by the field tonight, but Walker actually might. He’s been en fuego all season (just ask Grey) but has been drawing meager ownership even when the Cards have been popular. Also consider Alec Burleson for $2900.
Mike Trout, OF: $6,100 – The Angels are my favorite stack tonight. Patrick Corbin was bad in 2022, has been even worse to start 2023, and is backed by one of the worst bullpens in MLB. In comes Trout who is rocking a 1.609 OPS over the last 7 days. Yeesh.
Teoscar Hernandez, OF: $5,100 – Drew Smyly is susceptible to the home run ball from right-handed hitters. Enter lefty-killer Hernandez, who gets favorable hitting conditions to boot.
I’m Only Happy When It Rains
Then you’ll be disappointed because we’ve got nothing but clear skies tonight.
Doing Lines In Vegas
Give me Mike Trout over everything tonight but especially over 1.5 total bases, which I’m seeing at -1.05 on several sites.
I’ll take the Brewers money line (+120) against the D-Backs and Zac Gallen, who is struggling with velocity and location. I like that game to go over 8.5 runs as well.
