Welcome to our MLB DFS Top Stacks for 4/7/22! In this article, I’ll break down by top overall stacks for today’s main slate. Last year was an extremely big year for the Karma team in MLB, and we are looking to continue that success in 2022. I will be providing Core Plays for every main slate this season — you can gain access to the Core Plays as well as our premium discord here. You can also try out the Core Plays package with a $5 daily pass. Let’s get to the stacks…
We have major weather concerns across the slate for Opening Day, with multiple games already getting moved to Friday. I’ll do my best to highlight my favorite spots, but be sure to monitor the weather prior to lock. It looks likely that at least a few more games get PPD.
Atlanta Braves
The Braves are coming off a World Series Championship and looked primed for another postseason run. Their projected lineup is loaded, averaging a .341 wOBA and .217 ISO as a team since the start of the 2020 shortened season. I like Tyler Mahle as a pitcher, but we would be fooling ourselves to think he is an Opening Day caliber arm. It’s tough to fill out stacks early in the year, with most of the top arms all throwing on the same days for the first few weeks. Mahle falls into the category of someone I’m fine picking on to begin the season. He’s a fly-ball pitcher that has been susceptible to power to both sides of the plater throughout his career. Since the start of 2020, he has been worse in same-handed match-ups — allowing a .344 wOBA and .218 ISO to right-handed batters. Power is no problem for this Braves team, with heavy hitters up and down the lineup. Given Mahle’s pitching style, we want guys that hit the ball hard and in the air…which happens to be almost this entire lineup. Atlanta does have several righties with power in same-handed spots including Austin Riley, Marcell Ozuna and Adam Duvall. Mahle is primarily fastball/slider — and Riley is their best slider hitter with a .460 xwOBA. He is my favorite bat overall, but the Braves are arguably my top-stack for the first slate of the year. I wouldn’t ignore the lefties, Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies have big power in their own right and I’m very bullish on Olson in this park this season. The full stack is certainly in play here.
San Diego Padres
The Padres are likely to be very chalky on a shortened Opening Day slate, matching up with Madison Bumgarner and the horrific Diamondbacks bullpen. Bumgarner saw one of the biggest velocity jumps of all pitchers this spring training, point to a potential renaissance season in Arizona — but we have two years of lackluster data to go off of. Since the start of the shortened season in 2020, Bum has allowed over a .200 ISO to both sides of the plate with seemingly no ground ball ability to speak of. He’s been able to get by vs left-handed batters, but has been victimized by righties and is allowing over 40% hard-contact over that span. San Diego has plenty of right-handed power in Manny Machado, Luke Voit and Wil Myers. Righties are definitely the target, but with how bad this bullpen projects to be that opens it up to a full-stack. I don’t want to go all-in on chalk for the first week of the year with so many unknowns, but there’s no doubt this is a top spot.
St Louis Cardinals
I don’t even mind JT Brubaker as a pitcher, and he pitched pretty well for the Pirates down the stretch of last season. That being said, with these games getting PPD we are dealing with a condensed player pool and above-all, the Pirates have the worst bullpen in baseball. Like Mahle, Brubaker is vulnerable to power, so we want to target the heavy hitters against him. Tyler O’Neill is is the best option here as a one off, owning a .255 ISO over the last two seasons. I will also note that Brubaker has used his sinker as his second-most used pitch over the last two seasons. The surface numbers look mediocre for the Cards vs sinkers, but if you dig deeper, all of their top hitters have 40% of greater hard-contact rates vs the pitch. Overall, we have to consider a full-stack here due to the state of the bullpen, and STL could leapfrog San Diego for me if the ownership gets crazy.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
