4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 6/26/15
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. Here are the teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.
Toronto Blue Jays
Hello, Blue Jays, my old friend. I've come to stack with you again.
Nick Martinez is a low-strikeout, high-walk pitcher who doesn't induce a ton of ground balls. Against a team as scary-good as the Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre, that's a rough combo. He has exceeded expectations this whole year, but the numbers are not optimistic this can continue.
Martinez, if you look at his opponent slash, looks like he has reverse splits. However, his xFIP is very similar against both righties (4.85) and lefties (4.99). He has also been much more of a fly-ball pitcher against lefties. For this reason, I'm thinking that jiving with switch-hitters Jose Reyes and Dioner Navarro could be solid in tourneys with the hopes that they go yard.
Washington Nationals
It's not often you'll see a legit stack in a game with an over/under of 6.5. It's also not often that one of the pitchers is coming off of two straight games in which he allowed one hit or fewer. This isn't a reflection of the Nationals' offense, but rather Max Scherzer's dankness.
Overall, Aaron Harang has been a solid contributor on a team starved for mere competency within the rotation. However, he's still a below-average strikeout, high fly-ball pitcher with an xFIP of 4.54. Those are more than acceptable numbers for stacking purposes.
Harang's issues with strikeouts have been particularly true with left-handed batters. He's averaging just 4.20 strikeouts per nine against them compared to 7.95 per nine against righties. He also has almost triple the walk rate, though that was not the case the past two years. If Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon sit again, then I'm off this stack; otherwise I say load up on the lefties and let the balls in play accumulate.
New York Yankees
With an over/under of nine, you really could bump with either team here. I'm foregoing the Astros because of Nathan Eovaldi's high ground-ball rate. That hasn't been a concern with Vincent Velasquez so far.
Through his first three starts, Velasquez has a 22.6 ground-ball rate. Now, that's an absurdly small sample size, but it's so extreme that it seems safe to say that he's no ground-ball extraordinaire. In his five Double-A starts, he had a 20:33 ground-ball to fly-ball ratio. When you toss in his high affinity to walks, he's a guy against whom you aren't afraid to stack.
With this fly-ball tendency in mind, there are plenty of solid options for New York. Mark Teixeira, Brain McCann, Stephen Drew and Carlos Beltran all hit fly balls more than 40 percent of the time against righties. Those are the guys I'm targeting in tourneys with hopes of liftoff in Houston.
Los Angeles Dodgers
My level of confidence in this stack isn't as high as the other three. Basically, I'm very much relying on peripheral stats to say whether or not the Dodgers' 24th-place ranking in wOBA against lefties is indicative of their true abilities. They seem to say this should come up.
On the season, the Dodgers rank 21st in BABIP against lefties. That is not necessarily indicative of bad luck as bad teams hit the ball weakly. However, they have the 12th-highest hard-hit rate against lefties and the lowest soft-hit rate. That should not be the case for a team ranking 21st in BABIP, which is why I'm okay with going counter to what wOBA would suggest.
Speaking of hard-hit balls, Alex Guerrero and Justin Turner dish 'em out like nobody's bidness. Guerrero hasn't had a recorded soft-hit ball against lefties the entire season, and Turner has done so only 3.5 percent of the time. This helps make up for the drop-off on guys like Joc Pederson and Adrian Gonzalez against the lefty. Let's roll with it and see what happens.
