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.
Now, let's get to the stacks.
Baltimore Orioles
There's not greater indication that this is a bit of an odd slate for hitting than when the Baltimore Orioles check in as the most obvious stack. But the Orioles play in hitter-friendly Camden Yards, and they are in a great spot against left-hander Eric Skoglund. We have a rather small sample size to go off of, but the young left-hander hasn't done much over 44 1/3 career innings, posting a 4.88 SIERA, 18.6% strikeout rate, and 10.0% walk rate. Even more enticing is the .392 wOBA and 43.1% hard-hit rate he's allowed.
In short, it's easy to see why Baltimore is looking at a 5.01 implied team total.
Naturally, your Baltimore stacks must begin with Manny Machado ($4,500), but after that you can go any number of directions. Likely due to their collective woes as an offense, everyone else on the Orioles is priced below $3,000, making it extremely easy to roster any three you choose with Machado.
Trey Mancini ($2,900) and Adam Jones ($2,800) are obvious choices as the one- and- two hitters, although Jones has shown reverse-splits in his career with weaker numbers against lefties. Jonathan Schoop ($2,700) is another ideal option, occupying the often hard-to-fill second base slot. Schoop is off to a slow start, but since the start of last season, he's produced a .390 wOBA off a 39.5% hard-hit rate and 39.5% fly-ball rate against lefties. You could certainly go with a conventional one-through-four stack with this group, but it might be wise to go contrarian in other spots as ownership will likely be high.
If you want to dip lower in the order, Danny Valencia ($2,300) is dirt cheap and a notable lefty-masher. He owns a career .371 wOBA and .182 isolated power (ISO) against southpaws. Mark Trumbo ($2,800) is coming off a down year, but he's shown a promising 40.9% hard-hit rate through 29 plate appearances, and owns a career 112 wRC+ versus lefties.
Lastly, and best reserve to tournaments, Chris Davis ($2,500) has been pretty dreadful this year, but he hit a dinger last night, and we can't completely write off a guy with a career .241 ISO. The lefty-lefty matchup should steer ownership away, and he'll have his chances against a weak Kansas City bullpen should the Orioles chase Skoglund out of the game early.