4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 7/21/15
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. These do not include the game at Coors, but the over/under is 11 for a reason there. You best be getting ownership in that puppy. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Arizona Diamondbacks
In all honesty, Mat Latos isn't as bad as his 4.90 ERA. Normally, I'd prefer to stack against a pitcher with a SIERA higher than 3.83, but there are a number of factors that lead to this recommendation. The weather is hot, it's a great hitter's park, he's a fly-ball pitcher, and Latos hasn't pitched since July 5th because of a foot injury. It's enough to at least warrant a look.
One point of difficulty here is that Latos, when he's on, can get a decent number of strikeouts. This is less true against lefties than it is against righties, meaning David Peralta and Ender Inciarte both receive a bump here.
That said, don't exclude the right handers if you're in a tourney. Over the past two seasons, Latos has allowed an inflated fly-ball rate to right-handed batters, leading to an equally jacked-up slugging percentage. This should be music to the ears of those Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock enthusiasts among y'all. The stack doesn't come without some risks if Latos can be fresh from his lay-off, but it does present good upside.
Seattle Mariners
The Mariners' offense is bad. So very bad. But they're favored on the road in a game with an over/under of nine. That should tell you a thing or two about what Vegas thinks about Shane Greene. In this one instance, we can let our hair down a bit and roll with an offense normally undeserving of your stacking love.
I don't know if he's injured or what, but Greene has been a trainwreck the past two months. If we look at the first three starts prior to his demotion and his first start back, he has a 15.15 ERA, an 11.25 FIP and a 6.29 xFIP. And all four of the offenses he faced in that span currently rank 15th or worse in wOBA against right handers. The Mariners take that a step farther by ranking 25th, but Greene's struggling too much not to target.
In his career, Greene's strikeout and walk issues have been most exaggerated against lefties. At the same time, he has also allowed more fly balls, thus, more tourney stacking upside, to right handers. I'd go with a mix in this one. Nelson Cruz, Brad Miller, Seth Smith and Logan Morrison all have isolated slugging percentages of .190 or higher against righties and wouldn't make bad targets in this one.
Cleveland Indians
The Indians' offense has been scuffling as of late. They rank 17th in the league in wOBA over the past 14 days. However, as we saw last night with the Nationals handling Matt Harvey, it can be mighty, mighty dangerous to base decisions off of such a small sample size. So let's roll the tribe against Matt Garza.
Before hitting the disabled list, Garza had a 4.38 SIERA in 99 innings pitched. A big part of that blurghy total is the 6.07 strikeouts and 3.72 walks per nine he averaged to left-handed batters. Of what do the Indians have plenty? Lefty bats galore.
Brandon Moss has largely been a disappointment in his first season in Cleveland. One thing he can still do, though, is club out an extra-base hit against right-handed pitching. He possesses a 41.9 percent hard-hit rate against righties this year with a 50.7 percent fly-ball rate. Even with that crazy hard-hit rate, his wOBA against righties is almost 60 points lower than it is against lefties. Why? His BABIP is 126 points lower. I'd much rather have Moss against a righty, despite the story the single-season slash stats tell. Also, David Murphy is $2,600 on DraftKings. Check to make sure he's in the lineup with the Indians losing the designated hitter, but you know what to do with that one.
Houston Astros
This is only for all y'all crazy mamma jammas that enjoy living life on the edge. Brian Johnson is set to make his Major League debut, and most of you know how poorly it has gone to stack against those dudes this year. If you want to go safe, stack the Giants with all the balls they should put in play against Odrisamer Despaigne. But the upside in the Astros is pretty compelling.
Why do you need to a thrill-seeker to stack the Astros? Johnson isn't a bad strikeout pitcher. He averaged 8.51 per nine innings at Triple-A this year, and he had a swinging-strike percentage above 14.0. The Astros strike out 23.1 percent of the time against lefties. This thing has total shutdown potential, but the alternative is too tantalizing not to give it a try.
The Astros -- despite their crazy strikeout proneness -- still rank eighth in the league in wOBA against lefties at .318. That hops up to .328 at home with a .203 isolated slugging. Because of this, I'm going to roll out a lineup with an Astros stack and see what happens. It could totally flame, but if not, then you could find yourself with a big ol' smile across your face.