Stacking can be a controversial topic in many daily fantasy sports, but you can count baseball as a glaring exception. Here, it's universal.
Using multiple players on the same team on a given day presents you with the opportunity to double dip. If one of your players hits an RBI double, there's a good chance he drove in another one of your guys. When you get the points for both the run and the RBI, you'll be climbing the leaderboards fast.
Each day here on numberFire, we'll go through four offenses ripe for the stacking. They could have a great matchup, be in a great park, or just have a lot of quality sticks in the lineup, but these are the offenses primed for big days that you may want a piece of.
Premium members can use our new stacking feature to customize their stacks within their optimal lineups for the day, choosing the team you want to stack and how many players you want to include. You can also check out our hitting heat map, which provides an illustration of which offenses have the best combination of matchup and potency.
As always, the game in Coors Field will be ignored for stacking purposes. You don't need my expert advice to tell you that's a smart play.
Now, let's get to the stacks.
Pittsburgh Pirates
It seems like a long time ago that Jordan Zimmermann finished in the top-seven in Cy Young voting in back-to-back seasons. The Pittsburgh Pirates will look to add to that misery tonight with a date in PNC Park.
Zimmerman was brutal in 2017. Over 160 innings, the righty was blasted for a 5.22 SIERA, 39.5% hard-hit rate, 42.0% fly-ball rate while striking out only 14.5% of batters. He's been better this year so far (3.67 SIERA), but the batted-ball profile reveals a scary 41.2% hard-hit rate and 47.1% fly-ball rate.
Pittsburgh's 4.79 implied total is the third-best non-Coors mark on the main slate. Sean Rodriguez ($2,900) has manned the leadoff spot in the Pirates' last two contests, and if he does so again tonight, he'll be enticing. Against righties last year, Rodriguez posted a respectable 34.0% fly-ball rate, but he's upped that to a whopping 55.6% fly-ball rate in the split so far in 2018.
Gregory Polanco has been mashing early on this year. His 14.3% walk rate is on pace to shatter his old career high (9.6%), and his 54.7% fly-ball rate is way up from his previous career-best mark of 37.5%. Versus righties in 2018, he's got a 39.1% hard-hit rate and 54.3% fly-ball rate.
Starling Marte ($4,200) is far more expensive, but he's been mashing right-handed pitching in 2018. Over 77 plate appearances, Marte has bombed his way to a .191 ISO and 38.9% fly-ball rate.
As is usually the case when he's seeing a righty, Corey Dickerson ($3,600) is worth peeping. Dickerson killed with the platoon advantage in 2017, ripping his way to a .220 ISO, 34.9% hard-hit rate, and 39.5% fly-ball rate.