Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 05/19/17

*Chris Durell*

Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks – Thursday, May 19

Welcome back for another exciting day of daily fantasy baseball stacks. After a couple of days of smaller slates, we are back with a full slate on Friday. The pitching is also a lot more inviting with a nice mix of high-end aces and value options if you are looking to make a pivot in GPP’s. Put your favorite stacks from the article below in our lineup optimizer and hit calculate. You can let it fill in the rest of the spots for you or choose your personal favorites from the MLB Player Lab.

**STARTING PITCHERS**

Chris Sale
Opponent – @ OAK
Park – Oakland Coliseum (Pitcher Positive)
Vegas Favorite (BOS -200)
Vegas Total (7.5)

There is no debate who the ace is on the slate tonight with Chris Sale on the bump. He comes into tonight with a 4-2 record through his first eight starts as a Red Sox and that could be better had it not been for the offensive support or lack thereof. That part of the equation is out of his control so let’s focus on the things that are fully in his control, like his K rate. Sale has now struck out 10+ batters in seven straight starts to give him an elite 13.04 K/9 rate, just slightly behind league leader Danny Salazar. The difference between the two pitchers is clearly control as Sale walks half the batters Salazar does and sits with a much better ERA that sits at 2.15 on the season. Although he works with just three pitchers (Fastball, Slider and Changeup), he is utterly ruthless with them and is creating a rather high 16% swing and miss right now. Tonight he gets the pleasure of traveling to Oakland Coliseum where he receives a huge park boost and faces an A’s team that ranks 21st in wOBA vs. left-handed pitchers and strikes out just under 24% of the time. Lock Sale into your lineups in all formats.

Luis Severino
Opponent – @ TB
Park – Tropicana Field(Neutral)
Vegas (NYY -130)
Vegas Total (8.0)

My second pitcher option of the night lacks the safety of others in his price range, but that should help keep his ownership down, making him a terrific risk/reward GPP target. For safety, you can roll out Jacob deGrom or even Alex Wood who is a big favorite tonight, but I like risk and will ride or die with Luis Severino. He has improved each year in the bigs and currently sits with a 10.1 K/9 rate to go with an above average 50.9% ground ball rate. Through seven starts in 2017, he has held opponents to three earned runs or less five times and has really improved his walk rate (2.1 BB/9). The risk comes with the fact he can get hit hard and when he is a little off his game the balls start flying out of the yard as his 20% HR/FB clearly show. The Rays have been slightly better at home this season, but the good news is they have been striking out over 30% of the time over the past seven days and 26% of the time vs. left-handed pitching this season. Like I said earlier, he isn’t a safe play in cash games but a good pivot off the other more attractive “safe” plays in tournaments.

**OFFENSIVE STACKS**

Arizona Diamondbacks vs. San Diego Padres (Jered Weaver)
Park – Petco Park (Pitcher Positive)
Vegas (ARI -135)
Vegas Total (8.5)

The park is certainly a downgrade going to Petco, but the matchup is good enough that we can ignore the pitcher’s environment tonight. The D-Backs travel to San Diego to take on the Padres and gas can Jered Weaver, who should be targeted against EVERY time he is on the mound. He strikes out less than five batters per nine and of all the pitchers on the bump today, Weaver leads them all with an awful 26.4% HR/FB rate after allowing 14 long balls through eight starts. Even his 6.05 ERA doesn’t appear to have much upside as the xFIP sits just a run lower at 5.09 and now he gets to face a top 5 hitting team against right-handed pitching. The D-Backs also lead all teams with a .397 wOBA and 141 wRC+ over the past seven days and have also clubbed 14 home runs along the way. Center your stack around Paul Goldschmidt at first base and then wait for the lineup card to come out to see which players to fit in around him.

Chicago White Sox vs. Seattle Mariners (Ariel Miranda)
Park – Safeco Field (Pitcher Positive)
Vegas (CWS +100)
Vegas Total (8.0)

Don’t get me wrong; there are other stacks with a higher projected run total tonight.With Sale on the mound, I wanted to find a more affordable option to pair with him without giving up too much upside along the way. Enter Sale’s former team the White Sox who have been disappointing overall sitting five games under .500 but have hit well against southpaws. They currently rank 5th in wOBA (.338) and 3rd in wRC+(113) vs. left-handed pitching while only striking out 16.7% of the time (2nd fewest against LH). Although the wins haven’t been coming on a regular basis, they have also been hot offensively lately scoring 35 runs over their past five games coming into tonight’s matchup. They will face Ariel Miranda who has shown some K upside (8.3 K/9) but has been somewhat wild (3.05 BB/9) and gives up a ton of fly balls(44.6%). Even though the park is forgiving, a flyball pitcher vs. a hot hitting team is a recipe for disaster. Let’s take advantage and center our White Sox stack around Jose Abreu, Todd Frazier, and Avisail Garcia. For value, pay attention to the lineup card as Yolmer Sanchez makes a top value play in the stack if he is again near the top of the order.