MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/4/16

Jim Sannes  —  @JimSannes Apr 4th, 2016
The San Francisco Giants find themselves in a favorable park and matchup today, and they're primed for a big day at the dish.

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 guy on your roster. 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 of which you'll want a piece.

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. Here are the teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

San Francisco Giants

I don't really give a hoot whether or not this stack is chalky; the San Francisco Giants have everything we're looking for in an offense, and their matchup and park factor are basking in Gucciness.

The Giants had the second best wRC+ in the league last year against right-handed pitching despite being without Hunter Pence for a good chunk of it. They go from playing at AT&T Park -- the third worst three-year average park factor -- to playing in Miller Park, which is fourth best. Pair that with a matchup against Wily Peralta, and we should be licking our chops.

Many will discredit Peralta's struggles in 2015 because of an oblique injury. However, even before he hit the DL with that, his strikeout rate was only 15.2%, and his SIERA was 4.16. That's likely not enough to hold down the Giants' bats.

Everyone in the middle of the order from third through seventh can swing a big stick, but the one I'm most excited for is Brandon Belt. Belt had a 39.9% hard-hit rate last year against righties with a 38.5% fly-ball rate. If this dude didn't play in AT&T Park, we'd be gushing about him as a big-time power bat. His pricing is fair at $3,000 on FanDuel and $4,600 on DraftKings, so I'd plug him in and let those long balls fly.

Minnesota Twins

The Minnesota Twins struggled against right-handed pitching last year, ranking 28th in wRC+. But with a full year of Miguel Sano and the addition of Byung-Ho Park and his silly, silly pop, they may just have the fire power to reverse course in 2016.

Not even Goose Gossage can hate on that piece of art. 

They're in a good spot to start that quest on the right foot with Chris Tillman starting for the Baltimore Orioles. Tillman's 4.69 SIERA last year was the second highest of all of today's starters (behind only Peralta), as was his 16.2% strikeout rate. Putting that in one of baseball's best parks for offense sounds like a recipe for sweet, sweet music.

The perk of targeting Tillman is that he doesn't have drastic splits between right-handed and left-handed batters. His strikeout rate actually falls against righties, making Sano one of the most intriguing and highest-upside players on the slate. He had a 43.2% hard-hit rate last year and a 42.0% fly-ball rate. When he's facing a pitcher who can't get that third strike, getcha popcorn ready, y'all.

Baltimore Orioles

Did I mention that Camden Yards is dope for offense? It should be even more so when the starting pitchers are Tillman and Ervin Santana.

Santana struggled to start the year after an 80-game drug suspension in 2015, but he eventually caught stride toward the end of the season. In his final seven starts, he sported a 1.62 ERA. That's likely enough to take the Orioles out of consideration for stacking in cash games. It's his low 40.9% ground-ball rate and season-long 17.9% strikeout rate that make this a tremendous tourney option.

The Orioles certainly won't be cheap, but if you can fit guys like Chris Davis or Manny Machado into your order, it's in your best interest to do so. If not, then a stack involving Pedro Alvarez could get fun in a hurry. Santana's strikeout rate dipped all the way to 14.4% against left-handed batters, eliminating the major flaw in Alvarez's offensive game. Lowering the strikeout odds for a relatively cheap hitter with a 39.2% hard-hit rate against righties is just begging for a dinger in Alvarez's Baltimore debut.

Tampa Bay Rays

Without David Price, the fall-off in the Toronto Blue Jays' rotation is staggering. Marcus Stroman is the truf and a future ace, but R.A. Dickey's days as an ace -- and a decent starting pitcher -- are over.

Dickey only struck out 14.3% of the players he faced last year and saw his SIERA inflate all the way to 4.76, his highest since 2008. The Rays' offense wasn't great last year against right-handed pitchers, but a large part of that was due to strikeouts. They've made some solid additions to the lineup, and Dickey removes most of the strikeout concern.

As you saw yesterday, Corey Dickerson isn't just a product of Coors Field. The dude can launch mongo dongs no matter where he's playing.

In his career against righties, Dickerson has a 38.9% hard-hit rate and 37.4% fly-ball rate. He's going to hit fly balls against Dickey; the question is how far they will go. Logan Morrison also had a respectable hard-hit rate of 35.0% against righties last year, giving this offense more potency than it had without them and likely enough to knock Dickey around a bit.