4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/25/15
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. As a note, these stacks do not include the game at Coors between the Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers. You already know to have ownership at Coors -- I don't need to tell you that. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Detroit Tigers
The over/under on this game is nine with it basically at a pick 'em between the Tigers and Minnesota Twins. I'm going with the Tigers because Comerica is built to accommodate fly-ball pitchers, leaving Mike Pelfrey more vulnerable than Matt Boyd. If Miguel Cabrera is out of the lineup again, I'll probably roll with the Twins, but for right now, I think the Tigers are the better play.
Mike Pelfrey lost his spot in the rotation earlier in September, but a couple of injuries have squeezed him back in. His SIERA sits at 4.65 as dudes are blasting line drives off of him 22.5 percent of the time. His 4.44 strikeouts per nine innings is the second lowest total in the league, allowing a plethora of base runners that can turn into stacking glory.
With Pelfrey's ground-ball rate in mind, I'll want to target batters who smack the ball around with a high hard-hit rate. J.D. Martinez is at 41.5 percent while Miggy Pop is at 39.4, so they're obviously great choices. But the under-the-radar guy I don't mind is Alex Avila. Avila hardly ever plays anymore, but he has a 32.6 hard-hit rate and 10.5 soft-hit rate against righties. His main issue is that he strikes out a ton, but that's less of a problem against Pelfrey. He probably won't play, but if he does, you could do a lot worse.
Boston Red Sox
I'd probably rather stack against Rich Hill than Wei-Yin Chen in this one, but I'm scurred, y'all. Hill has made two starts, and he has absolutely disemboweled the Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays with 10 strikeouts in both. Those two teams rank first and sixth in the league respectively against left-handed pitching. The Baltimore Orioles rank 25th with a 23.2 strikeout rate. Nope. No. Not a chance. Vamanos, Red Sox.
Chen really isn't a bad pitcher with his xFIP sitting at 4.01. But he carries a 40.4 ground-ball rate into Fenway Park against a team that crushes left-handed pitching. The Red Sox have worked their way up to fourth in wOBA against lefties, and they rank third in wOBA at home. Things just don't align for Chen to have a great night, and Vegas agrees in setting the over/under at nine.
One person whose profile seems to match up perfectly with Chen's is Dustin Pedroia. Pedroia has a 46.5 fly-ball rate against lefties with a 36.1 hard-hit rate. That fly-ball rate should lead to high odds for at least an extra-base hit. Pedroia has been in and out of the lineup recently, but if he's in there tonight, brudduh could get ign'ant.
St. Louis Cardinals
As I expressed earlier this week, the Cardinals are mind-bogglingly frustrating. But, in a matchup against Ariel Pena, it's time to suck it up and accept that this should probably happen. I'm already preemptively sad.
Pena loves bad pitches; that's his pitching problem. In 18 innings in the big leagues, he has walked 11 batters. He also walked 32 batters in 82 2/3 innings in the minors this year, equating to 3.48 per nine innings. The Cardinals walk at roughly an average rate, but there still should be plenty of base runners for them to knock in.
The positive here is that Randal Grichuk is back. Praise be on high. Grichuk just demolishes right-handed pitching at a 42.4 hard-hit rate and 13.6 soft-hit rate. Bruh. I generally don't like rostering guys who hit below fifth -- especially in cash -- but I'm not opposed for a second to picking up Grichuk if he's in the six hole.
Houston Astros
As I've mentioned a bunch of times on here, I love targeting the Astros against low-strikeout, ground-ball pitchers. They mash against both categories of hurlers, so it should be no shock that Yovani Gallardo is on my radar. Leggo.
Gallardo may actually be the prototype for this type of thinking. He's averaging 5.78 strikeouts per nine innings while sporting a 49.7 ground-ball rate. The strikeouts have kept his SIERA chilling at 4.64, which is such a wonderful number for our purposes. He has his games where he simply does not allow runs, but each of those is highly dependent on BABIP working in his favor. That's a dangerous game to play.
A matchup with Gallardo allows us to look at guys who might not normally be in play because they strike out too much. If you're looking for high-upside guys in a tourney, I'd turn to Luis Valbuena and Colby Rasmus. If you want someone closer to the top of the order, George Springer provides even more potential than normal with his 27.5 strikeout rate cut down. His hard-hit rate is lower than that of Valbuena and Rasmus, but he makes up for that in volume by hitting at the top of the order and his ability to swipe a bag.
