4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/9/15
Yesterday brought some high run totals, especially in the later contests. Oakland put up 10 on the Rangers, Adrian Gonzalez lost his freaking mind hitting three homers against the Padres, and the White Sox and Royals combined for 12 runs.
As our own Jim Sannes put it yesterday in this very column, after getting to choose from a list of aces on opening day, we've gotten a lot of blah-ness since. Today, we get a little mix. Stephen Strasburg and Matt Harvey go at it in quite the pitcher's duel, while Astros' pitcher Asher Wojciechowski gets his first big league start against the Indians. We'll definitely have some offenses to target and some to fade.
After checking these out, make sure you peruse our daily projections as well. They can help you find those lower-priced dudes who can compliment your higher-priced stacks well. Now let's get to it!
Oakland Athletics
After putting up 10 runs on Ross Detwiler last night, the Athletics get Nick Martinez and his 32.9% ground ball rate today. If you aren't sure what's a good ground ball rate, it's not that -- the ball is going to fly all over the place tonight.
Martinez gave up 1.15 home runs per 9 innings last year, which would have ranked in the bottom 10 of the league if he had qualified for rate stats, per Baseball-Reference.com. Picking which players will beat up Martinez might be tough though, as the A's don't have as many big-name bats as other teams, but they can be a cheaper stack that can fit in Strasburg or Harvey if you want to pay up for pitching today.
New York Yankees
Last year, Yankee stadium was far and away the best home run park in the league, even above Coors Field. In GPPs, we're definitely looking for stacks that can get multiple home runs. Loading up the Yankees lineup today might just be the best odds at getting that.
Combine the park factor with New York's opposing pitcher, Daniel Norris, and you have a recipe for a lot of runs and extra-base hits. Norris only has six innings of major league experience and posted a 35% ground-ball rate in that time. It's a small sample size and he certainly performed better in the minors (he had a 15.09 K/9 rate in Triple-A ball last year), but he's definitely not a sure thing and the Yankees lineup could take advantage today. They don't have a high over/under today as well, so it could be a low-owned one as well.
Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates go against Anthony DeSclafani, who also doesn't have a ton of major-league experience. Last year in his majors debut, he pitched 33 innings and gave up 23 earned runs and four home runs.
This game is being played in Cincinnati, which rated as the fourth-best home run park in the league last year, so it's likely we'll see one leave the park. It could be Andrew McCutchen that does it, who is our highest projected batter on the day. He, along with Starling Marte, will be expensive today and you might have to find a value pitcher to go along with them, but they could definitely pay off with a bunch of fantasy points.
Just hope the game doesn't get rained out.
Houston Astros
I've been trying to hit on some non-obvious stacks -- obviously the Tigers with their bats are always in play, especially against a pitcher like Kyle Gibson. The Astros won't be a popular stack, but they could be an interesting one in GPPs.
Trevor Bauer has almost identical slugging percentage splits against both righties and lefties, so that doesn't necessarily scare me off Houston's right-handed bats. Houston rated in the top-10 in terms of home run parks, and the Astros had a home run rate of 2.7% last year, one of the better rates in the league, so they can definitely go long.
Bauer also has a very low ground-ball rate -- just 36.1% for his career -- so if you're looking for a low-owned stack for the day that could pay off in a big way, you might want to look towards Houston.
