There’s a full slate of baseball action Wednesday providing all sorts of fun options for stacking. Keep an eye on the weather in St. Louis, where there is a possibility of a rainout or delay later. I’d probably just avoid stacking either Brewers or Cardinals given the wealth of other options out there – let’s look at a couple of those more closely.
The Twins will face off against the Reds and Hunter Greene in Cincinnati, one of the best hitting environments in the majors. Quite a few Twins have been hot lately and I’ll be looking to stack Edouard Julien ($4100/3000) who’s had a .416 on base percentage with three home runs over the last two weeks while hitting leadoff along with at least one of Matt Wallner ($3700/2800) slashing .297/.395/.432 during that time period, Ryan Jeffers ($3600/2800) .280/.379/.440 (excellent offensive production at catcher), and/or Max Kepler ($4500/2900) .295/.367/.477.
Out west the Padres will look to put some runs on the board after a pretty anemic 2-run win against the Colorado Rockies last night resulted in a no-decision for Blake Snell despite his seven innings of no-hit work. Don’t let last night’s offensive doldrums fool you, quite a few Padres have been red hot lately including Luis Campusano ($3400/2900), who has been excellent at the plate slashing .302/.348/.465 with two home runs in the last two weeks – you could do a lot worse at catcher.
If you’ve built your stack correctly with some of those cost-effective Twins hitters, it gives you the opportunity to add Xander Bogaerts ($4700/3100) who has been excellent over the last two weeks slashing .370/.420/.717 with three home runs and a wRC+ of 208. Wildly, that isn’t even the best wRC+ during that time period on the Padres with his teammate Juan Soto ($5600/4000) slashing .364/.463/.705 with a wRC+ of 210 and four home runs during the same time period. It all makes Jurickson Profar’s ($3500/2800) .308/.400/.462 look positively pedestrian, but it definitely is not and you should see if you have room for Profar in your stack as well.
If you’re looking for another leadoff option that’s relatively cost-effective in your stacks, see if you have room for Steven Kwan ($/3100) who hit leadoff for the Guardians and is slashing .304/.419/.391 over the last two weeks. We all know Kwan is unlikely to hit a lot of home runs, he’s got four doubles and a triple during that stretch while scoring nine runs for the Guardians.
On the pitching side it’s hard to pass up George Kirby ($9700/10000) against the Oakland Athletics. Kirby has struggled in his last couple of starts but he’ll look to right the ship against an A’s lineup that is the only team in baseball to not put up at least 620 runs so far this season (at 547 runs this season with 12 games to go it’s unclear the As will clear 600 runs this season and they sport a league worst -326 run differential.
A bit of a contrarian pick from the optimizer, but I’m going to also build around Lucas Giolito ($7600/9600). Giolito’s struggles with multiple teams this year are well documented, but after a rough initial outing with the Guardians against the Minnesota Twins Giolito has quietly turned in exceptional back-to-back performances. On September 9 he threw seven innings with 2 earned runs and nine strikeouts against the Angels. His last time out on the 15th was even better with 7 innings of shutout baseball and 12 punchouts against the Rangers.
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