MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 5/20/15

The Kansas City Royals have four batters with slugging percentages of .500 or higher off of right-handed pitching, and they get a righty today in Jason Marquis.

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. I'm not going to include either the Phillies or Rockies here at Coors as it's a big enough slate to find some value elsewhere. You should totally still try to slide some of their tastiness into your lineup, but you can save by basing your stacks around these cheaper options. Here are the teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

Kansas City Royals

A right-handed pitcher with a nearly devilish 6.63 ERA against the team that ranks third in wOBA off of right handers? Y'all be making my insides smile.

Over his past three starts, Jason Marquis has allowed six total home runs with 14 earned runs crossing home plate in 15 innings. I Cutler'd through the ratios section in fifth grade math, but I'll go ahead and assume that's not great.

The Royals give you plenty of great options when it comes to matchups with righties. They have four batters who have a slugging percentage of at least .500 off of right-handers over a minimum of 80 plate appearances. Of those four, only Eric Hosmer costs more than $4,500 on DraftKings. Alex Gordon is at $4,500 with Mike Moustakas and Kendrys Morales at $4,200 and $4,100 respectively. It's not the cheapest stack, but it's certainly possible if you really want to make it happen.

Boston Red Sox

Normally, a guy will post better numbers as a reliever than a starter as he can use more velocity in short spurts. Phil Klein is praying the opposite is true as he prepares for a spot start today against the Red Sox.

In 23.2 Major League innings, all of which have been in relief, Klein has a 4.91 FIP to go with his 3.80 ERA. A big reason his FIP is so high is that he has averaged 4.56 walks per nine innings. Today, he gets the team that entered play yesterday third in the league in walk percentage in the Boston Red Sox. They gonna make it rain base-runners.

Klein in his time in the majors has mostly been a righty specialist, and for good reason. The 40 left-handers he has faced have bamboozled him at a .333/.450/.818 slash with one home run for every 10 plate appearances. The Red Sox are a fairly right-handed-heavy lineup, but guys like David Ortiz could provide a nice little bump within this stack.

Pittsburgh Pirates

I have been telling y'all to stack against the Twins this whole year, and they've gone out and gotten themselves the fourth best record in the American League. Somehow, I am not yet on their payroll to provide the positive juju, but that shall come soon. Until then, keep stacking when Mike Pelfrey is on the bump.

The Regression (shockingly not the title of an M. Night Shyamalan film) is here. Pelfrey started the year with a 2.25 ERA through his first four starts, though his 4.48 FIP indicated that wasn't around to stay. Baseball hath no fury like a FIP scorned, as his past three starts have shown. In those 15 innings, Pelfrey has a 4.80 ERA and a 5.55 FIP, pitching more than five innings just once.

Before going 0-5 last night, Andrew McCutchen was starting to show signs that he was snapping out of his slump. He had a .351/.457/.622 slash with four doubles and two bombs in his previous 46 plate appearances along with his first two stolen bases of the year. He's slowly becoming the old Cutch again, and he may end up being worth the $5,200 he'll cost you on DraftKings in a matchup like this.

Minnesota Twins

This is a stack I'd be more likely to use in tourneys than 50-50's for tonight as the Twins are wonky as all get-up and could totally get shutout tonight. However, they do rank eighth in wOBA off of left-handers, and Jeff Locke is scuffling right now, so let's ride, homies.

Through his first seven starts, Locke has posted reverse splits against right-handers and left-handers, though that might be attributable to teams only keeping their top lefty bats in the lineup when Locke starts. His splits were skewed in favor of right-handers last year and reverse two years ago, so my takeaway would be that you can include big left-handed bats if you are so inclined against Locke. Joe Mauer has actually hit left-handers far better than righties at a .333/.385/.467 clip, so go for it.

Then you get to guys like Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe, who have been killing it against lefties. Both have on-base percentages greater than .360 and slugging percentages at .540 or better, and they had a dong apiece last night off of Francisco Liriano. Again, this is a bit of a riskier stack, but it might end up being worth it if they can duplicate the success they have had off of south-paws on the season.