4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/10/15
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.
Chicago Cubs
It's the Cubs against a young, fly-ball pitcher who doesn't rack up a lot of strikeouts. We good? Cool.
Alec Asher has made a pair of starts since being called up to the big squad. In those starts, he has thrown a total of 9 1/3 innings and allowed 11 runs. He now turns his attention to a team that is fifth in the league in wOBA since the All-Star break with the second most home runs over that time. Godspeed, friend.
I could sit here and preach to y'all about how disgusting Dexter Fowler has been this season. But numberFire's R.J. Walsh did just that yesterday, showing that Fowler has been one of the league's best hitters in the second half. Obviously you'll want to snag your other big bats in the lineup when you can, but Fowler brings crazy value both in the real sense and the fantasy sense.
Cleveland Indians
Before recommending a specific stack, one of the last things I check is a pitcher's game log to see how he has fared in his most recent outings. I did that with Alfredo Simon last night. I do not recommend that you follow suit as his 5.32 xFIP over his past 14 starts is NSFW.
This nastiness includes his most recent outing, in which he shut down these same Indians. Simon allowed no runs on two hits over seven innings. Red flag, right? Wrong. He walked four while striking out five and still had a 5.45 SIERA in that game thanks to his 52.9 fly-ball percentage. That outing doesn't scare me one bit heading into tonight's rematch.
The Indians' offense has been fairly lackluster this season, ranking 18th in wOBA against right-handed pitchers. They have had some guys who have found success recently, though, including Abraham Almonte. Since departing from the black hole known as Petco Park, Almonte has posted a .268/.327/.515 slash with 13 extra-base hits and 3 steals in 107 plate appearances. His hard-hit rate is barely above average at 29.5 percent, so the sustainability of this hot streak is very much justifiably in question. For tonight, though, in this matchup, I'm willing to take that risk and hope this puppy is for real.
Pittsburgh Pirates
I mentioned the Pirates here yesterday, too, and for the first few hours, I felt really dumb about doing so. The Pirates had only one run through the first five innings against Keyvius Sampson. Then, the majestic beauty that is Jung Ho Kang bailed my stupid self out by jacking a grand slam. I could kiss him right on the lips. Let's tempt fate again tonight.
Wily Peralta gets plenty of ground balls, but his 5.17 strikeouts and 2.68 walks per nine leave him open to a high volume of base runners. When a team can cluster those base runners together, he gets in serious trouble, as evidenced by the four starts this year in which he has allowed at least five earned runs. He also has his outings where teams don't have the same luck, leading to the five starts he has had in which he has allowed either zero or one earned runs. The Pirates have guys who can draw walks at the top of the order in Gregory Polanco and Andrew McCutchen, so that could lead to similar situations as last night.
This is not a stack with which I'd feel safe enough to roll out in a cash game, even though I have no problem with that in general. The reason being that the Pirates post their worst numbers against ground-ball pitchers with a .260/.334/.373 slash on the year. That worries me with Peralta's 53.2 ground-ball percentage. I think it has a good enough ceiling to stack in tourneys, but the floor is too low for my blood in cash.
St. Louis Cardinals
John Lamb has looked really solid in his first five starts in the Majors, even if his 6.11 ERA says otherwise. He has a sweet 26.8 strikeout percentage after sitting at 25.8 percent in the minors. If this were a full slate of games, there's no way I'd recommend this stack. But, there are still ways I could see this one going south for the talented, young lefty.
It seems by looking at his game log that when Lamb has struggled the most, it has been because of walks. In 17 starts at Triple-A, Lamb walked at least three batters seven times. Tonight, he's facing a Cardinals offense that holds an above-average 9.0 walk rate against lefties. If he puts some guys on base, the Cardinals once again have batters who can capitalize.
With Randal Grichuk back from the disabled list, things just got a whole lot more fun again in St. Louis. Grichuk strikes out a lot, but he has a .260 isolated slugging percentage against lefties. He is one of three Cardinals batters (along with Jhonny Peralta and Mark Reynolds) who have isolated slugging marks of .230 or higher against lefties, meaning they do have some pop. Lamb's 32.5 ground-ball percentage leaves him open to extra-base hits, and these are the guys who could produce those.
