MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/15/15

Whether you're playing the early or the late slate today, there are tasty match-ups to exploit in both slots.

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.

Miami Marlins

So. We meet again, Marlins stack. As a heads up, Giancarlo Stanton is 0-12 with five strikeouts in games I have rostered him heavily this year. You have been warned.

Their pitching opponent, Eric Stults, managed to post a 4.30 ERA last year while calling Petco his home park. That's fairly impressive, just not in the Gucci way. numberFire projects his ERA to plop in at 4.41 this year with a 1.32 WHIP.

Don't let the fact that he's left-handed scare you out of guys like Dee Gordon and Christian Yelich (if he comes back after missing yesterday's game). Stults did fare better against lefties last year than he did righties, but even then, he wasn't good. He finished the season with a 4.22 FIP against left-handers, which is well above the league average of 3.74. It's a full-on giddy-up deployment for the Marlins' offense today.

Cleveland Indians

With both Yan Gomes and Michael Brantley out of the lineup, the Indians are close to "fade 'til you die" status. But plans change when John Danks comes around.

With this stack, I wouldn't want to go all-out. I would more prefer to stick to a three- or four-player stack here to exploit what will be cheap pricing on a team facing a really bad pitcher. The Indians aren't great offensively, and even less so against left-handers, but Danks had a 4.74 ERA last year and was projected by numberFire at 4.62 for this year. Something's gotta give.

The positive here is that not all of the Indians are putrid against south paws. Carlos Santana touched them up at a .271/.395/.469 clip last year. Jerry Sands has a career .536 slugging percentage off of lefties. Even Brandon Moss had a .366 on-base percentage off of left-handers last year. You'll have to be selective to avoid the guys that can't hit lefties to save their lives (waddup, Michael Bourn), but this is a stack that could provide both value and flexibility.

Toronto Blue Jays

Time for another exciting edition of "Fun with Early-Season Rate Stats!" Today's contestant is Tampa Bay Rays probably starter, Erasmo Ramirez. Our fun stat of the day: if you were born in 1984 or later, your age is lower than Ramirez's ERA. He's just trying to make you feel younger.

In 208.2 career innings, Ramirez's ERA is at 4.87 with 7.20 strikeouts and 3.23 walks per nine. Those are the stats that will go up against an offense that has (relative to expectations) struggled this year, but still includes some of the biggest boppers in the biz.

Unfortunately, once again, the prices for the Jays today have been jacked up on DraftKings. Jose Bautista will cost you your first-born, and both Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Reyes are at least $5,000. If you can find a way to get two of them in your lineup, great. If not, then there are still some cheaper options around them that should benefit from a soft match-up in today's game.

Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates were held scoreless while recording only three hits in last night's ballgame. Today, I am telling you to put your hard-earned money on the line that they will score lots of runs. Seems about right.

Despite what last night would suggest, the Pirates still have a dope offense. It's one of the few where each guy batting from first to sixth has a chance to hit a bomb on a given day. That's a legit possibility for all of them when facing Alfredo Simon.

numberFire's projections have Simon slotted for a 4.64 ERA this year. He may not let up a high number of fly balls, but his low strikeout and high walk totals help make up for that. This may be the stack that I am least confident in, but it also carries a high degree of upside because of the offense it involves. If it doesn't work out, I've heard that the people at the Pedro Alvarez Truthers Anonymous meetings are kind. So I've been told.