4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/29/15
Each day here on numberFire, we'll be providing you with four potential offenses to stack in your daily fantasy lineups. These are the offenses that provide huge run potential on that given day based on matchups and other factors.
After reading through these suggestions, make sure to check out our daily projections. These can either let you know which players to include in each stack, or which guy best complements said stack.
Another great tool is our custom optimal lineups, which are available for premium subscribers. Within the tool, we've added the option to stack teams -- you choose the team you want to stack, show how many players you want to use within the stack, and the tool will create a lineup based on this that you can then customize.
Now, let's get to the stacks. Because of the timing of the split-slate schedules on DraftKings, this won't include teams that are starting their games at 6:10 eastern. Here are the teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Cincinnati Reds
This stack is largely influenced by the lack of tasty options among the early-slate games, but it's still not a terrible play. The Reds' offense has awoken following a putrid start. After averaging 3.1 runs per game through their first 12 games, they have amped that average up to 5.5 over their past eight.
While Matt Garza isn't the greatest stacking option, he has had a rough start to the season. Over 22.2 innings, Garza has 15 strikeouts to 11 walks with a 5.16 ERA and a 5.07 FIP. Then, you pass it over to the Brewers' bullpen, which entered play last night with the sixth-worst FIP in the majors.
This presents us with a chance to drool over Joey Votto for a second. He has hit more home runs this year (7) in 91 plate appearances than he had all of last year (6) in 272 plate appearances. Swoon City. Oh, and he's still walking 16.5 percent of the time, so me thinks the walks weren't part of the problem. He's only going to cost you $4,700 on DraftKings for today. At that price and his crazy goodness, I'll take him in this matchup.
Los Angeles Dodgers
The late slate has much more delectableness in which to delve. The Dodgers had what you might classify as an "interesting" lineup last night, batting Enrique Hernandez second and Justin Turner third. Assuming Adrian Gonzalez is back in there, I could bump with them against Ryan Vogelsong.
This offense loses a bunch of its firepower with both Yasiel Puig and Carl Crawford on the shelf. At the same time, that creates value within the lineup when they have positive matchups like this one. For the late slate, Gonzalez and Howie Kendrick are the only Dodgers priced higher than $4,000 on DraftKings. That can help stomach an offense that may be down a bit from its regular self.
The other cool part of this is that their lower-priced guys have been balling out recently. Joc Pederson has a .556 slugging percentage through his first 73 plate appearances. Alex Guerrero has only four fewer home runs than the Minnesota Twins. Andre Ethier is slashing at .310/.412/.548. They're benefactors of a small sample size, but if any of them is hitting within the top five of the order, they're worth a roster spot.
Colorado Rockies
Because of the positive park factor in this game, you could really stack either side. I'm going to roll with the Rockies in this instance, though, because of Josh Collmenter's fly-ball tendencies relative to those of Jordan Lyles.
Collmenter's split statistics from last year are super interesting. You know, if you're a cool kid who digs things like batted ball stats and handedness differentials. But of course you are.
Against left-handers, Collmenter could almost be classified as a ground-ball pitcher. Only 31.3 percent of the balls hit against him by lefties were lofted in the air. When he faced righties, however, that number increased to 49.8 percent. Their overall slash wasn't great at .201/.255/.353, but that was partially due to a ridiculously low .224 BABIP against.
What does all of this mean? Even though they don't have the platoon splits, I'd still bump with guys like Troy Tulowtizki and Nolan Arenado as they could have higher dinger odds. Either way, this is a game in which you most definitely want ownership, whether it be in one team or both.
Seattle Mariners
Nelson Cruz's sick night last night helped make up for an otherwise disappointing effort from the Mariners' sticks. Can Wandy Rodriguez follow Ross Detwiler's example and put forth a respectable effort? We shall see.
Even though last night's game wouldn't show it, Austin Jackson is a far better play against lefties than righties. Last year, he slashed .299/.356/.379 off of southpaws as opposed to .239/.289/.333 against right-handers. His price is a bit steep at $4,600 on DraftKings, but he can justify that in a good matchup.
If the Mariners were to keep the same lineup as yesterday, then Justin Ruggiano is a sweet value. He slashed .305/.333/.512 last year against lefties in 90 plate appearances. That production priced at $3,800 in the two-hole of an offense with upside is very much something you should buy.
