4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 8/4/20
In the world of daily baseball, stacks are often the backbone of the most successful -- and profitable -- lineups. Correlation is the key.
When an offense hangs runs in bunches, it means hitters are scoring runs and teammates hitting behind them are driving them in. By rostering stacks, you’re maximizing the fantasy scoring by essentially double-dipping on a run-scoring event.
This is your daily home for the top stacks on the daily fantasy baseball slate. Whether you’re looking to identify the projected highest-scoring stacks or contrarian stacks that can help you separate from the pack in GPPs when they explode, they’ll be thrown under the spotlight here.
Gamers who are numberFire premium members can throw these highlighted stacks into an optimized lineup using our DFS Sharpstack tool. The tool allows you to select the team and number of players from that team you’d like to include in your lineup. If you’re looking to identify other potentially high-scoring stacks beyond those featured in this space, check out our hitting heat map, a tool that provides valuable info such as implied total, park factor, and stats to identify the quality of the opposing pitcher.
Without further ado, let’s dive into today’s main slate’s featured stacks.
Houston Astros
The Houston Astros lineup features a few lefty-mashing hitters, and they'll be taking cuts tonight against Madison Bumgarner and his significantly diminished velocity. Last year, Bumgarner's four-seam fastball averaged 91.72 miles per hour, and this year it's down to an alarming 88.2 mile per hour, according to Brooks Baseball. He's worked around the depressed velocity through two starts, but his 25.8 percent ground-ball percentage and 8.0 percent swinging-strike percentage are ominous marks that don't bode well for him continuing to tiptoe around his missing cheddar. I expect the other shoe to drop, and that makes the Astros stack my favorite -- even considering the game at Coors Field tonight.
George Springer ($3,500) is more than capable of getting Bumgarner's nightmare started tonight right out of the chute. Since 2017, he owns a .390 OBP, .225 isolated power (ISO), and 146 weighted runs created plus (wRC+). He's followed by Jose Altuve ($3,600), who's actually been more potent against lefties during that time frame with a .386 OBP, .218 ISO, and 149 wRC+.
The top lefty-masher on the squad is Alex Bregman ($3,900). Still using the same timeframe, he has a .418 OBP, .296 ISO, and 178 wRC+. Yulieski Gurriel ($2,800) should hit cleanup or fifth tonight, and, while he's not nearly in the same class of hitter as his previously mentioned teammates, he'll benefit from the ducks on the pond in front of him and the lineup correlation of hitting in such close proximity to those studs. Don't forget about Carlos Correa ($3,500) and his .422 OBP, .180 ISO, and 155 wRC+ against southpaws since 2017, either.
Colorado Rockies
The Colorado Rockies are my second-favorite stack of the night, but given my interest in the lower-salary starting pitchers taking the bump, as well as the positions the top options from the Rockies play, they can be stacked with the Astros. They hung seven runs on the visiting San Francisco Giants last night, and instead of regurgitating the same at home stats versus right-handed pitchers for studs David Dahl ($3,800), Trevor Story ($4,200), Charlie Blackmon ($4,200), and Nolan Arenado ($3,800), I'll simply direct you to yesterday's piece for a quick refresher.
While the official MLB website doesn't have a probable pitcher listed as of midnight while I write this, the expected starter is Kevin Gausman. Last year, he was knocked around for a 5.72 ERA and 4.10 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) in 102.1 innings split between starting (17 starts) and relieving (14 relief appearances), per FanGraphs. Through 8.1 innings and two appearances (one as a bulk reliever and the other a start), he's pulling the same trick of greatly underperforming his SIERA (2.81) with a 5.40 ERA. Dismissing his ugly ERA as merely bad luck last year and thus far this year would seem foolish when accounting for him getting squared up regularly. Since last year, hitters have ripped him for a 27.4 percent line-drive rate while smashing a hard-hit ball 40.8 percent of the time. Drop his proclivity for serving up hard contact in Coors Field, and you have massive run-scoring potential for the Rockies again tonight.
The quartet of studs pointed out above make up my favorite full four-man stack, but Daniel Murphy ($3,400) and Ryan McMahon ($3,500) are viable options to mix in, too.
Toronto Blue Jays
Max Fried enjoyed a breakout season in 2019 that was probably a bit better than his 4.02 ERA would suggest. He's gotten off to a fast start this year with a 2.31 ERA in two starts totaling 11.2 innings, and the general talent of Fried should help keep a Toronto Blue Jays stack fairly low owned. Low rostership coupled with upside is the type of volatile situation to embrace in GPPs.
The lefty Fried isn't totally bulletproof facing right-handed batters. Since last year, he's allowed a .320 weighted on-base average (wOBA) to 573 righties. To put that wOBA in perspective, the league average wOBA for hitters in 2019 was .320 and sits at .312 this year. With that in mind, he's merely a run of the mill matchup for right-handed hitters.
Following that logic, righties on the Blue Jays who are above-average hitters against southpaws make for enticing options tonight. Enter Bo Bichette ($2,800). He's recorded at least one hit in all four games he's played this year, including a pair of multi-hit efforts in his last two games. As far as matching up with lefties, he's been dynamite in an admittedly small sample of 70 plate appearances against them, racking up a .386 OBP, .266 ISO, and 159 wRC+.
In a slightly larger sample of 193 plate appearances against lefties since reaching the Majors in 2018, Lourdes Gurriel ($2,500) has raked with a .337 OBP, .283 ISO, and 142 wRC+. Those two are my favorite options on the Blue Jays, but Teoscar Hernandez ($2,800) makes for a nifty power-chasing option with a .242 ISO against lefties since 2017. Meanwhile, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($2,800) has struggled against lefties in his young big-league career, but passed the test against them with aplomb in the minors and has legit raw thump he put on display in last year's Home Run Derby. The light hasn't gone on for him yet at the game's highest level, but it's still probably a case of "when not if" his natural feel for hitting -- that earned rave reviews from the prospect evaluating community -- will start showing up with regularity in games. He's a stackable option.
Baltimore Orioles
I don't imagine I'll frequently tout the Baltimore Orioles in this space this year, but the angle for using the tonight is rather simple; Pablo Lopez has been terrible on the road in his career. In 70.0 innings pitched on the road in two years in the Majors combined, he's been knocked around for an eye-popping 6.56 ERA.
The long ball has been especially problematic for Lopez on the road, with him coughing up 1.93 homers per nine innings. His homer issues are unlikely to be quelled at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. According to the MLB park factors at FantasyPros, Oriole Park at Camden Yards has the third-highest park factor for homers at 1.209.
Chasing power is the way to go with this stack, and while the Orioles don't have a ton of it in their rebuilding lineup, they do have some. Four guys stand out as usable in a stack when looking over the numbers of the possible starters for tonight against right-handed pitchers last year. Renato Nunez ($2,700) leads the way out of the quartet with a .211 ISO against righties since 2019. Just behind him with a .209 ISO is Anthony Santander ($2,900).
Chance Sisco ($2,200) has a punt price and has seen time catching and as the designated hitter this year, and he's tallied a respectable .201 ISO against righties since last season. Dwight Smith Jr. ($2,400) lags behind the highlighted trio with just a .187 ISO, but he's the guy to use if you're looking to opt for a full four-man stack. On a night where there aren't a lot of high-priced aces to turn to, a low-cost stack like the Orioles should be extremely low owned. I wouldn't recommend using them if you're single entering GPPs or only popping in a handful of entries, but if you're jamming double-digit entries into GPPs, fire a few bullets on the O's.
Joshua Shepardson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Joshua Shepardson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username bchad50. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
