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.
Los Angeles Dodgers
This one may seem strange, as the Los Angeles Dodgers are facing Madison Bumgarner. However, Bumgarner hasn't been the same since he returned from the disabled list. So far this year, Bumgarner has allowed a 38.1% hard-hit rate and managed a 9.5% swinging-strike rate, good for a 4.54 SIERA. Fangraphs has noted that Bumgarner's fastball has generated significantly fewer whiffs since he returned from his dirt bike accident that injured his shoulder in 2017. The metrics bear that out, as Bumgarner's -7.9 wFB value in 2018 would be the lowest of his career.
Based on the above, the Dodgers are an intriguing contrarian stack if Bumgarner's fastball concerns are legitimate. It doesn't hurt that the Dodgers rank third in walk rate (10.3%), sixth in hard-hit rate (37.6%), and fifth in fly-ball rate (38.8%) against southpaws this season.
Manny Machado ($4,100) has an ungodly 8.6% strikeout rate, 44.1% fly-ball rate, and 37.8% hard-hit rate against southpaws this year. Brian Dozier ($3,600) has hit the ball in the air 43.9% of the time and hard 35.7% of the time overall. Justin Turner ($3,400) is sitting on an 11.4% strikeout rate, 44.2% fly-ball rate, and 40.7% hard-hit rate. Even in a lefty-lefty matchup, Max Muncy ($3,400) has monstrous power upside with his 49.1% hard-hit rate and 43.4% fly-ball rate.
Cody Bellinger ($3,400) is somehow the fifth-most expensive hitter on his own team. He has a 43.1% fly-ball rate and 37.7% hard-hit rate overall in 2018. Yasmani Grandal ($3,200) gives you a 41.5% fly-ball rate and 41.1% hard-hit rate out of the premium position of catcher. Matt Kemp ($3,200) has been a beast against left-handed pitching this season, posting a 135 wRC+, 51.6% fly-ball rate, and 48.4% hard-hit rate. Chris Taylor ($2,700) is sitting on a 19.5% strikeout rate, 43.6% fly-ball rate, and 39.2% hard-hit rate against left-handed pitching in 2018.