4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 6/18/15
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. I should note that these do not include the Astros and Rockies at Coors. You all already know to stack hitters in that fly-ball haven, so no need to spend three paragraphs telling you to do so. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Baltimore Orioles
In case you hadn't picked up on this over the past two nights, Baltimore's offense is sick, and Philadelphia's pitching is sickly. Sean O'Sullivan is just the next poor soul on the docket.
Through nine starts, O'Sullivan has racked up an ERA, FIP and xFIP that are all greater than 5.00. The Orioles' one weakness against righties has been the strikeout (22.4 percent), but O'Sullivan only averages 3.51 per nine innings. That is not an ideal formula for success as a pitcher.
The recent success has catapulted the Orioles all the way up to fourth in the league in wOBA against righties. Not shockingly, this resurgence has coincided with the return of Matt Wieters. Through his first 23 plate appearances against righties, Wieters has a .400/.409/.950 slash. That's obviously in part because of a small sample size, but he is also just a really good hitter. This stack loses a chunk value if he sits today, but if they can go nutso without Adam Jones, I'll never say never.
Los Angeles Angels
I'm not going to recommend an Angels stack very often as they rank 21st in wOBA against righties. That said, the forecasted temperature today in Arizona is 115 degrees. The baseballs be ready to fly this afternoon.
This will be career start number 20 and appearance number 21 for Allen Webster. In his first 95 innings, he has a 6.06 ERA, a 5.02 FIP and a 5.06 xFIP. Control has been his biggest issue, averaging 4.64 walks per nine to just 5.78 strikeouts. The Angels haven't been the best at drawing walks, but they should still see a high number of base runners against Webster.
The unfortunate thing here is trying to decide which guys to stack. The Angels' two best hitters against righties also happen to be the most expensive in Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. Thankfully, the rest of the lineup is all way cheaper than they should be at a place like Chase Field, so even if you whiff, it's not going to provide a major blow to your score.
Miami Marlins
At what point does bad luck stop becoming bad luck? Each of the past three years, CC Sabathia has had an xFIP of 3.76 or lower. Yet, over those three years, he has never had an ERA lower than 4.78. His home run to fly-ball ratios those seasons have been 13.0 percent, 23.3 percent and 16.7 percent respectively. Normally, you'd expect this to regress, but it may just be that Yankee Stadium has destroyed Sabathia's effectiveness.
When you consider that Yankee Stadium ranked first in ESPN's home run factor last year, this all makes more sense. It also makes this match-up scrumptious. The Marlins rank second in the league in wOBA against lefties while hitting for a .275/.331/.455 slash. It doesn't look like CC's luck is going to reverse course tonight.
You all know that Giancarlo Stanton is the truth against lefties, but he's got a little buddy in the outfield that's pretty good himself. That would be Marcell Ozuna. Ozuna's lack of power this year has been frustrating for his season-long owners (not that I'm venting from experience, but yes I am), but he's almost a dream cash-game play against lefties. There, he's slashing .409/.471/.614 in 51 plate appearances. At $3,800 on DraftKings, he should be a part of any Marlins stack, whether cash or tourney, and he should be on your radar even if you stack elsewhere.
Los Angeles Dodgers
It's normally not good process to stack a game that has an over/under of 7. In this one, however, the Dodgers are at -208, so their projected Gucciness is much, much higher than that of the Rangers. I'm good with rolling this one out.
Anthony Ranaudo had some tough sledding his first time out this year. In 1.2 innings, the Angels scored six runs on 13 hits with two walks and two strikeouts. This gives him a 5.93 ERA, 6.79 FIP, and a 5.87 xFIP through his first 41 Major League innings, which is probably not ideal. Additionally, both righties and lefties are slugging over .500 against him, and he has a ground-ball rate of just 32.9 percent. Before even throwing a pitch, he's flirting with disaster against the Dodgers.
The cool/frustrating/confusing thing about the Dodgers is the plethora of lineup combinations they use. Through their 65 games prior to last night, they had used 53 different lineups (not counting the pitcher spot), and they hadn't used the same lineup more than five times. While this makes forming a stack in advance difficult, I personally love it. It creates pricing inefficiencies that you can exploit each and every night. A guy like Justin Turner could bat second for the price of a seven-hole hitter. If you roll with this stack, wait until the lineup is in, and then use these little discrepancies to your advantage.
