In this space each week I’ll take a look at which teams, as a whole, are trending up through the lens of of our advanced stats. Understanding which teams are hitting the ball hard, and whether they are producing or not, is a great way to determine which lineups may lend themselves to stacking.
Now, it should go without saying, but each individual matchup needs to be evaluated on a daily basis. So while the players highlighted in this article may be hitting the ball particularly well, the inclusion of any given player in your lineup will ultimately come down to his specific matchup with the starting pitcher on any given day. To ensure that you are using the best information possible, be sure to check out the free Lineups page and — for our subscribers — the Trends and Player Models tools.
Toronto Blue Jays
Raise your hand if a Blue Jays stack has cratered a lineup of yours recently. And, yeah, I’m reaching for the sky with you. Joey Bats and company have had a rough go of it for large stretches of this season, disappointing on a number of occasions. I’ve personally been burned a number of times, to the point that I struggled with the idea of writing them up in this column.
My hesitancy regarding this team personally is what ultimately lead me to push forward with the idea of including them. Knowing that I’ve been burned and want to shy away from them means that there are probably others who have a similar sense of hesitancy about this team.
They Have Potential
We’ve seen this lineup be potent, and we know that the potential exists for big things from them. This potential is what has led to high lineup percentages on a regular basis, but with the Jays’ continued underperformance — including last night, when they came up short as an extremely chalky stack — they should be in lower percentages of lineups over the coming days. And based on some of our advanced statistics, they could be an attractive stacking option.
Many of the batters on this team has been outperforming their usual standards, at least in terms of the average distance of their batted balls. Wi five members of this lineup in the 90th percentile in terms of Distance Differential, we can surmise that there may be a degree of bad luck affecting their production. And with Toronto at home through Sunday, we’ll have the added benefit of targeting this team in a location that features a Park Factor of 63 for both righties and lefties. Per our Trends tool, it’s obvious that there’s an opportunity to extract some value from this situation.
Looking solely at players who have a Distance Differential Score of at least 90 percent and a Park Factor of at least 60, we come up with an average Plus/Minus of +0.83.
Above, I had referenced five particular members of this lineup who have a Distance Differential in the 90th percentile. Here they are:
I know that it’s a bit disappointing to see that the majority of these players fall within the lower half of the lineup, but this could actually be useful if we’re looking to stack this team in a contrarian fashion.
Donaldson and Jose Bautista are always going to be high-rostered batters in decent spots, based on their name recognition alone. And, because of his Upside, fading Bautista in a full stack is a risky endeavor. But if we’re looking at a smaller stack then there are certainly ways to extract value from this lineup without rostering Bautista.
But what about having a contrarian stack with Bautista? In my opinion, it’s targeting Smoak in place of Edwin Encarnacion. Both are eligible at 1B, and so DFS players are forced to choose between the two. With Encarnacion generally batting out of the coveted cleanup spot, ownership will naturally flow his way far more often.
This offense is too talented to continue struggling over the long term, and as the numbers show it may be only a matter of time before a few deep outs start carrying over the fence or finding the gap for a number of these batters.
Tampa Bay Rays
The Rays aren’t a stack for the faint of heart, but if we look closely we’ll see that they have been hitting the ball very well lately. They have five batters sitting within the 89th or higher percentile in terms of Hard-Hit Differential Score and two of those players also place within the 90th percentile in terms of their Distance Differential Score. Quite simply, if you’re routinely hitting the ball farther and harder than usual, positive results are likely to follow:
With the top-three batters from this lineup all showing out well in terms of their recent advanced statistics, they make for fine targets as a contrarian stack.
Because this lineup isn’t necessarily one that we can reasonably project for huge run totals on a regular basis, the Rays may have more merit as a mini-stack that either rounds out a lineup or couples with another stack as a means of lineup differentiation. Given their lineup percentages, their potential payoff in tournaments based upon the way that they’ve been hitting the ball is solid.
