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.
Cleveland Indians
Carlos Rodon has managed just a 9.2% swinging-strike rate this season. He also has an elevated 10.6% walk rate to go with his 43.8% fly-ball rate allowed. All of these negative forces is why he has a high 4.99 SIERA, and why the Cleveland Indians are a great stacking target.
The Indians have the lowest strikeout rate in baseball against left-handed pitching, at 19.2%. Combined with the fifth-best fly-ball rate (38.4%), Cleveland ranks ninth in the MLB with a .320 wOBA in that split.
Cleveland's lineup starts with the best left half of the infield in baseball: Jose Ramirez ($4,800) and Francisco Lindor ($4,500). Ramirez has a 15.0% walk rate to go with an 11.2% strikeout rate; the best walk-to-strikeout ratio in baseball. Add in the 38 home runs and 32 steals, and you have a monster of a third baseman. Lindor isn't half bad himself with a 9.2% walk rate and 14.7% strikeout rate. He's got 35 home runs and 23 steals this year.
Michael Brantley ($4,100) has posted a 7.9% walk rate, 9.0% strikeout rate, and 37.8% hard-hit rate this year. Check to make sure Edwin Encarnacion ($3,900) is in the lineup, because he's worth paying up for if he is. He's been an absolute force against southpaws. Against them he's got a 16.4% walk rate, 18.7% strikeout rate, 51.2% fly-ball rate, and 45.4% hard-hit rate. Just unreal numbers.
Josh Donaldson ($3,300) is Cleveland's latest trade acquisition. He's dealt with injuries for most of the year, but through it all, he has still hit left-handed pitching well. He's got a 123 wRC+ against them thanks to a 43.3% hard-hit rate. Melky Cabrera ($3,200), like Donaldson, is another familiar name in a new place this year. He comes into play with a 158 wRC+ against southpaws thanks to a 42.9% hard-hit rate in that split.