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.
New York Yankees
The most obvious, and thereby likely the most popular, stack is the New York Yankees, who are sporting a 5.52 implied team total against Bartolo Colon that dwarfs every other implied total on the slate.
Colon may be immortal, but that doesn't mean he's infallible. The soon-to-be 45-year-old hurler has performed above expectations with a 2.82 ERA and 3.85 SIERA, but he's skating by on a fortuitous .204 BABIP. His 16.6% strikeout rate and 42.3% hard-hit rate allowed probably isn't what you want to be bringing to battle against the Bronx Bombers. Hot days in Texas tend to lead to dingers, too, so Colon will probably need more of that good luck on his side if wants to get through this one unscathed.
Of course, you know the drill with these Yankees -- Aaron Judge (5,000), Giancarlo Stanton ($5,100), and Gary Sanchez ($4,300) top the wish list, as always. The slumping Didi Gregorius ($4,000) is less obvious, however, particularly if he slots lower in the order. Still, Gregorius' season-long numbers remain solid, and it's not like he was a slouch against righties in 2017, posting a .354 wOBA and .228 isolated power (ISO). He's an intriguing choice when factoring in his likely lower ownership.
In order to fit in the top-tier guys, we'll also need some value, which we have plenty of tonight. Brett Gardner ($2,900) hasn't exactly been tearing it up, but he should occupy his usual leadoff spot, giving him plenty of opportunity to rack up fantasy points. Aaron Hicks ($3,000) could bat lower in the lineup against a righty but remains inexpensive and has produced a 121 wRC+ against righties since the start of 2017. Neil Walker ($2,200) is the ultimate salary-saver, and although he doesn't have a dinger yet, he owns an encouraging 40.0% hard-hit rate.
Tyler Austin ($3,300) is also compelling if he cracks the lineup as he's posting a tantalizing 42.1% hard-hit rate and .326 ISO this year.