4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 8/12/15
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. Here are the teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Texas Rangers
Technically, the Twins are the favorites in this one. Considering Nick Martinez's struggles this year, that shouldn't be a shocker. However, their offense is just brutal right now, so I'd prefer to roll out the Rangers against Mike Pelfrey.
How Pelfrey is still in the rotation while Trevor May sits in the bullpen I can assure you I have no idea. But, while Pelfrey's still there, we may as well use it to our DFS advantage. He has a 4.59 SIERA, and that's only held down by his high ground-ball rate. His 11.1 strikeout percentage should tell you all you need to know when it comes to stacking in cash games.
The Rangers give us plenty of high-upside options from which to choose for tonight. Mitch Moreland, Shin-Soo Choo, and Rougned Odor all have isolated slugging marks of .196 or higher against righties. Delino DeShields Jr. brings the fire on the basepaths. And none of those guys are Prince Fielder, who is the only player more expensive than $4,400 on DraftKings for the late slate. Gimme dat all day, every day.
Kansas City Royals
I'm starting to come around to the idea of stacking the Royals. They don't get enough extra-base hits to provide the upside you want in tourneys, but their low strikeout totals almost make them ideal for cash games. As they face Daniel Norris's low ground-ball rate, they may be able to add in that upside tonight.
Over his 34.0 Major League innings this year (five starts in April and two since coming to Detroit at the deadline), Norris has a 4.90 xFIP. The positive is that he has cut his walks significantly, issuing only one free pass in his two starts with Detroit. That comes, however, after a pair of four-walk performances in his final four starts in the minors. It's that 35.2 percent ground-ball rate, though, that makes this a play with increased upside.
As always with the Royals against a lefty, if you're going to stack them, you have to be willing to pay up for Lorenzo Cain. Thankfully, you'll get some relief here tonight with Cain's salary down to $4,800 on DraftKings for the late slate. Once you add in Ben Zobrist, Kendrys Morales and another bat, you've at least got a good cash game stack with the possibility of some high outputs.
San Francisco Giants
Like with the Royals, the Giants generally are a solid cash-game stack, even when they're at home. They may not have park factor in their favor, but they still rank fourth in the league in wOBA against righties and have just a 17.7 strikeout percentage. When you add in Scott Feldman's low strikeout totals, it's all Gucci today.
If we look at Feldman's last six Major League starts (two of which came before a trip to the disabled list), his maximum number of strikeouts is three. He has recorded two on four of those six occasions. Basically, finna be a whole lotta balls in play in this one.
If you're playing the early slate, you should probably have ownership in the Phillies-Diamondbacks game again. There will be runs there, but Aaron Nola is a considerable amount better than David Buchanan. I'm not going to totally avoid Diamondbacks, but Nola is good enough to curtail thoughts of a stack. That's why I'm building around the Giants and going from there.
Toronto Blue Jays
I generally include a disclaimer at the top of the article when there's a game at Coors, saying that it will not be on the list. I do this because all of you are smart cookies, and you know you should stack Coors. I should almost start doing that with the Blue Jays. They're just that good.
I should mention that this is more of a Vegas stack than anything. The over/under is set at 8.5 with the Blue Jays -205. I, personally, have more reservations about targeting Aaron Brooks, but I've seen this year that Vegas is smarter than me, so let's roll with it.
I make a general rule about not disregarding a stack based solely on price. But the Jays are trying really hard to change that. Josh Donaldson is more expensive on DraftKings than 30 percent of the starting late-slate pitchers. Thankfully, he and Jose Bautista are the only batters above $5,000. You may not be able to get both of them, but you can squeeze in at least one of them with several other bats. It's not ideal, but it's still doable if you are willing to sacrifice a bit.
