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.
Washington Nationals
Sandy Alcantara has spent most of this season in Triple-A, where he managed just a 18.2% strikeout rate. In just over 20 innings at the big league level, his strikeout rate is 17.7%. That, in conjunction with a 16.7% walk rate and 36.1% hard-hit rate, gives him an elevated 5.93 SIERA this year -- a mark with "stack" written all over it.
The Washington Nationals boast the second-highest walk rate in baseball against right-handed pitching, as they take the free pass at a 9.8% clip. They also have the sixth-lowest strikeout rate (20.1%) in that split. Thanks in large part to this superb plate discipline, Washington ranks sixth in wOBA against right-handed pitching (.324) this season.
Of course, part of the reason Washington ranks so highly is Bryce Harper ($4,500). Against right-handed pitching he's got a 19.1% walk rate, 39.8% fly-ball rate, and 42.1% hard-hit rate. Anthony Rendon ($4,200) has put up numbers this year, too. He's got just a 14.1% strikeout rate to go with his 42.7% fly-ball rate and 38.4% hard-hit rate. And, of course, the 19 year-old Juan Soto ($4,000) enters play with a 17.6% walk rate, 19.9% strikeout rate, 35.0% hard-hit rate, and 147 wRC+ against right-handed pitching.
Trea Turner ($3,800) has an 18.0% strikeout rate and 31.8% hard-hit rate this year. Oh, and he just set the Nationals' stolen base record. Ryan Zimmerman ($3,100) has got just a 16.3% strikeout rate to go with his 39.8% hard-hit rate. Finally, Matt Wieters ($2,200) is more than just your typical punt play at catcher. Yes, he is cheap, but he is fairly valuable, as he has a 10.1% walk rate, 17.4% strikeout rate, 45.4% fly-ball rate, and 34.2% hard-hit rate in 2018.