Stack Your Stack ⚾ June 20

>>>LAREJO123

Happy Sunday OWS and happy Father’s Day to all the great dads out there! I’m lucky enough to have this be my second Father’s Day and I’m looking forward to spending time with family, watching some baseball and the U.S. Open, and enjoying some DFS! I wish all the dads out there an equally great day. Thanks for spending some time with us this morning!

I thought about diving into hot streaks for hitters and pitchers this week, but I will save that for next week as I’m sure a shorter preamble will only help us get right to lineup building on a holiday (teaser for next Sunday…I read The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball and there’s a great chapter on streaks which I’ll pull from). 

Onto Sunday’s slate, let’s find some partners for our stacks.

Probably Starting Pitchers performance data (over the past two weeks):

• SIERA: Matt Harvey 5.72 // Lance McCullers Jr. 5.34 // Hyun-Jin Ryu 5.29
• SIERA-ERA: Sean Manaea 4.27 // McCullers Jr. 3.26 // Dallas Keuchel 2.28
• Hard-hit %: Ryu 52.6 // Zach Thompson 48 // Patrick Corbin 46.3
• Barrel %: Mike Minor 12.7 // Thompson 12 // Nate Eovaldi 7.5
• Fly Ball %: Minor 52.7 // Taijuan Walker 46.7 // Manaea 46.2
• Walk %: Kenta Maeda 16.7 // Alec Mills 16 // McCullers Jr. 14.3

The Blue Jays vs. Harvey will be a popular stack and rightfully so. He has the highest SIERA on the slate, and although his ERA is over 17 in his past two starts. If you’re looking elsewhere, we have the Red Sox vs. Minor and his high barrels and fly balls. And McCullers has only one start of 4 innings over this time span, but the underlying numbers weren’t great. With Minor peppering all over, and Eovaldi ranking third in barrel rate, a BOS/KC game stack very much in play.

Team Batting Leaders (over the past seven days): 

• Hard-hit %: Padres 51.4 // Cubs 47.6 // A’s 44.3 // Rangers 42.9 // Astros 41.6 // Red Sox 41.5
• Barrel %: Blue Jays 8.5 // A’s 7.6 // Twins 6.9 // Mariners 5.9 // Nationals 4.9
• ISO: Astros .291 // Padres .268 // Blue Jays .259 // Giants .230 // A’s .220
• Fly Ball Rate: A’s 47.5 // Red Sox 43.8 // Astros 41.3 // Giants 39.6 // Orioles 39.4
• BABIP (bottom five): Cubs .145 // Cardinals .206 // Mets .215 // Yankees .226 // Brewers .243
• HR/FB (bottom five): Cardinals 5.2 // White Sox 5.4 // D-Backs 6.2 // Brewers 6.4 // Reds 7.3

Including the last two metrics just to see if we had any outliers for some regression candidates. Pulling these numbers for the past few weeks, I’ve noticed the Cubs consistently ranking high in hard-hit rates, while also high in ISO and very low on BABIP. I’m not a big believer in BABIP but facing Zach Thompson and the Marlins bullpen Sunday could be a tremendous get-right matchup. As mentioned earlier, the Blue Jays are the clear top stack of the day, but then I’d rank the Cubs, Red Sox, and Astros, with the A’s and Yankees close behind. 

As this is now the 11^th installment of Stack Your Stack, and I always want to add different wrinkles in here each week, I thought I’d profile more offenses than usual (see bottom) and let you all identify how we should be building these stacks. My favorite leverage stack will be the Cubs, so let’s start there.

Sunday, June 20^th 

Chicago Cubs vs. Miami Marlins (Thompson)

The Cubs have been outscored at home this weekend by the Marlins 21-3. They have not scored more than 3 runs since June 12^th (last 7 games). They are in a horrific offensive slump. And yet, their hard-hit rate ranks second in MLB in the same span. I love this so much. We have an offense due to break out, against a weak pitching staff with a starting pitcher giving up the second most barrels on the slate. All I can hope for is the wind will also be blowing out. How do the bats stack up?

The HR/FB numbers are surprisingly high (lots of Solo HR), but please look at the Hard-hit rates. Rizzo, Wisdom, Heyward, and Baez over 60%. Joc Pederson has been clicking lately too. The low barrel rates are concerning (as is Contreras -21 weighted runs created), but no matter how this is sliced, the runs are coming. Maybe it won’t be Sunday, but the runs are coming.

Boston Red Sox vs. Kansas City Royals (Mike Minor)

As seen above, hard-hit fly balls have been giving Minor trouble lately. We know historically how good J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts have been against LHP, and their offense has been clicking lately. Here’s how their guys look over the past 7 days, minimum 10 at-bats…

Devers has been a man on a mission with an 86% HH-rate, even though his BABIP is unsustainable. Dalbec’s Barrel % jumps off the page as well. Not quite as good a profile as Cubs but their matchup is right there, and they are hitting many more fly balls (second in MLB over past week). I love Martinez, Devers, Bogaerts, Dalbec, and Kike/Renfroe.

I’m now going to save the color and give you some pure data on 3 more offenses (sorted by Hard-hit rates, same time frames): Astros (offense has been mashing, ground ball matchup), Blue Jays (because they are the clear #1 offense on this slate) and the Athletics (rank 2^nd in HH% and Barrels).  

Astros vs. Chicago White Sox (Keuchel)

Blue Jays vs. Baltimore Orioles (Harvey)

Athletics vs. New York Yankees (Jordan Montgomery)

Let me know what you all see!  Good luck on Sunday and I hope I’ll see you all at the top of the leaderboards!