4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 7/13/18

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 four 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 new 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. As usual, we will not include today's game at Coors Field in these recommendations. You already know that you want bats at Coors when you can afford them, and you don't need us to tell you. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

Kansas City Royals

We have another Coors Field slate, with the Colorado Rockies looking particularly enticing against Christian Bergman. That might be a tough matchup to fade, but luckily there are some cheap potential stacks available, should you wish to pair those Rockies with another team.

The Kansas City Royals are a scary team to rely on, but they must be considered when James Shields is the man on the mound. Shields has been annoyingly effective at squashing our stacks for much of the season, but the Houston Astros decimated him for eight runs and two homers in his last start. Obviously, the Royals are hardly on par with the Astros, but it's a reminder of why we continue to attack Shields. Shields is among the weakest arms on the board, holding just a 5.02 SIERA, 16.7% strikeout rate, 9.3% walk rate, and 36.9% ground-ball rate.

Just as importantly, the Royals are inexpensive, with Whit Merrifield ($3,200), Jorge Bonifacio ($2,400), Mike Moustakas ($3,300), Salvador Perez ($2,900), and Lucas Duda ($2,400) checking in as the likely first five batters. Moustakas is your best bet, producing a 47.6% hard-hit rate and .263 isolated power (ISO) against righties this season. Bonifacio hasn't hit a home run yet, but has a promising 37.9% hard-hit rate and 44.8% fly-ball rate through 44 plate appearances. Duda is your best value, carrying a career .361 wOBA and .234 ISO versus right-handers.

The bottom of the order is less exciting, but Hunter Dozier ($2,000) costs the minimum and brings a 44.9% hard-hit rate to the table. Alex Gordon ($2,500) lacks pop, but will enjoy the platoon advantage on the cheap.

Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox are another gross team to stack, but they too are affordable on the other side of the same matchup, getting a nice opportunity against Brad Keller. Keller inexplicably has a 2.82 ERA over seven starts, despite a poor 13.9% strikeout rate and 10.1% walk rate. He's helped himself with a 53.0% ground-ball rate, but this kind of production looks unlikely to last. Vegas appears to agree, giving the White Sox a 4.94 implied team total.

From the left side, the White Sox can roll out Yoan Moncada ($3,300), Yolmer Sanchez ($3,100), and Daniel Palka ($2,600), who can all provide a little pop. Against righties, Moncada is posting a 41.4% hard-hit rate and 44.1% fly-ball rate, while Palka has put up an enticing .234 ISO.

On the right side, Jose Abreu ($2,800) and Matt Davidson ($2,400) also provide upside at some appealing price points. Abreu has struggled of late, but owns a career 130 wRC+ against same-side hurlers. Davidson also continues to slump following a hot start to the year, but he's put up a 38.3% hard-hit rate and 42.9% fly-ball rate versus righties over his career.

Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers give us a third cheap stack option, facing a scuffling Alex Cobb. Cobb is getting lit up for a 6.67 ERA this year, and the peripherals show a pedestrian 4.58 SIERA and 15.2% strikeout rate. Cobb's 50.0% ground-ball rate hasn't prevented opponents from slugging 1.67 home runs per nine innings either.

Cobb isn't getting as many ground balls against lefty bats, so Shin-Soo Choo ($3,300), Nomar Mazara ($3,100), Rougned Odor ($3,000), and Joey Gallo ($2,800) stand to benefit the most. Odor is getting better results these days, posting a 40.4% hard-hit rate and 47.5% fly-ball rate with the platoon advantage. The all-or-nothing Gallo is showing his usual upside with a .244 ISO against righties.

We don't need to ignore the righty bats, though, with Elvis Andrus ($3,000) and Adrian Beltre ($2,700) providing some affordable choices in the top half of the order. Robinson Chirinos ($2,500) is always susceptible to a goose egg, but still brings some upside through a 49.5% hard-hit rate and .216 ISO versus right-handers.

Boston Red Sox

Lastly, we have a pricier stack if you want to pivot off those Coors bats. As they've been all week, the Boston Red Sox are once again in another great spot, this time against left-hander Ryan Borucki. Prior to his call-up, Borucki was only posting a 4.02 FIP and 18.4% strikeout rate over 13 Triple-A starts, so he appears unlikely to maintain the 2.25 ERA he's managed 3 three big league starts. Not surprisingly, Boston has a robust 5.46 implied team total.

Mookie Betts ($5,200) and J.D. Martinez ($5,100) remain expensive, but they're your top choices as usual. And in case you missed it, this is all Betts did last night.

Meanwhile, Xander Bogaerts ($4,000) has quietly put up a 42.0% hard-hit rate since the beginning of May. And with Steve Pearce out of the lineup after leaving last night's game, Sam Travis cracks the lineup as the DH. It's a small sample size (48 plate appearances), but Travis posted a .416 wOBA and 36.4% fly-ball rate against lefties in 2017.

Note that Andrew Benintendi will not play after being placed on the bereavement list, so we could potentially see Brock Holt ($2,900) move up the order as a cheap number-two batter in spite of the lefty-lefty matchup. Eduardo Nunez ($2,800) remains an affordable option in the bottom half of the order as well.

Kenyatta Storin is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Kenyatta Storin also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username yatters. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.