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 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 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.
Atlanta Braves
Jon Lester managed to skate by in allowing just two runs over six innings in his 2019 debut against the Rangers, but a 5.11 SIERA and 13.0% strikeout rate in that start suggests he was lucky it wasn't a whole lot worse. He also showed lower velocity, and while it's only one start, the lackluster peripherals continue a concerning trend for the left-hander the past couple seasons.
Lester's 2018 campaign was well below the standards of his accomplished career, as he produced a mere 4.57 SIERA, 19.6% strikeout rate, and 8.5% swinging-strike rate. Even against lefty sticks, who he's dominated in the past, he allowed a rather mediocre 4.43 xFIP. In the end, he escaped with a 3.32 ERA, but he's unlikely to pull that trick for a second straight season.
All this puts the Atlanta Braves on the radar as a stack, and while their 4.49 implied total may seem pretty "meh," that's a top-three mark on tonight's five-game slate.
Ronald Acuna ($4,400), Josh Donaldson ($3,400), and Ozzie Albies ($3,700) can all attack Lester from the right side of the plate. While we obviously don't have huge sample sizes to work with for Acuna and Albies, the initial returns are quite promising versus left-handers. In 2018, Acuna posted a .415 wOBA and .293 ISO against them, while Albies provided a .384 wOBA and .213 ISO. Meanwhile, Donaldson has a lengthy track record of tormenting lefties with a career .408 wOBA in the platoon split.
There are plenty of cheap righty bats in the bottom of the order, too, with Johan Camargo ($2,000), Tyler Flowers ($2,300), and Dansby Swanson ($2,400) all in the lineup on Wednesday.
The decline in Lester's numbers versus same-side batters means we also shouldn't hesitate to roster the left-handed bet of Freddie Freeman ($4,200) or even Nick Markakis ($3,000). Over the last three seasons, Freeman has actually produced an impressive 139 wRC+ against southpaws. Markakis naturally has a far less notable track record but did put up a 40.5% hard-hit rate and 14.9% strikeout rate versus lefties last year.