MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 7/9/15

Mike Pelfrey has a high ground-ball rate, but that may not stop the Tigers from posting a high run total tonight.

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. As a note, this does not include the game at Coors, but considering the low over/unders in the other games, you will need some exposure to that contest. Adjust your plans accordingly. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Severino Gonzalez is back, blessing the eyes and mouths of baseball fans everywhere with his 80-plus first name. He hasn't been as bad as his 8.28 ERA would indicate, but he has struggled enough peripherally to make us feel okay with a Dodgers stack.

Gonzalez has loaded up on strikeouts and limited his walks in the Majors, helping deflate his xFIP all the way to 3.76. The reason I don't mind targeting him with a stack is his 38.1 ground-ball percentage, which is well below average. Additionally, he has averaged only 4.73 strikeouts per nine innings in 51.1 Triple-A innings this year. That sample size is larger than we have at the big leagues, so I'm skeptical he can maintain his high strikeout rate despite a decent swinging-strike percentage.

As I present you this stat, please remember the note earlier that Severino's numbers are worse than his performance. However, this is absolutely ign'ant: left-handed batters are hitting .479/.537/.681 against Gonzalez this year. If we include his numbers at Triple-A, his slash is .356/.415/.500 in 76.1 total innings. With all of the stout lefty bats (and Justin Turner's reverse splits), you'll have as many options as you'd like tonight.

Detroit Tigers

Ideally, this would be more of a cash game stack with Mike Pelfrey's high ground-ball rate. But, alas, this is probably the non-Coors stack with the second highest run potential, so we can improvise a bit.

Part of the reason Pelfrey has found success this year is his limitation of hard contact. Left-handed batters have had more success in this arena, recording hard-hit balls 25.6 percent of the time. Prior to his mini-rejuvenation, lefties had generally found more success against him than righties. He also (somehow?) has worse strikeout and walk numbers against lefties, which furthers the cash game argument, as there should be plenty of balls in play. The discrepancy isn't large enough, however, to discount the right-handed bats, which is good news for the Tigers.

In a matchup like this, I just want dudes who are going to make solid contact. It seems as though J.D. Martinez would be a great option. He has -- by a fairly wide margin -- the highest hard-hit rate against right-handed pitchers on the team. Well, unless you count Miguel Cabrera, but sad face. My favorite play here, though, is Victor Martinez, who gets you that platoon advantage, and he has hit .342/.375/.513 since coming off of the disabled list.

Cleveland Indians

This game is similar to the Tigers in that there is the potential for a plethora of base runners. Brett Oberholtzer has walked 4.32 batters per nine innings while the Indians have the highest walk rate in the league against righties. Ducks will live on the pond.

The strange part for Oberholtzer is that this is a major deviation from his regular repertoire. He walked fewer than two batters per nine each of his first two years in the league, and he also had a much lower ground-ball rate. This is the result of batters swinging at fewer pitches outside of the zone and, simply, fewer strikes thrown by Oberholtzer. He has always had a high contact percentage against, combining to make Oberholtzer a decent stacking option.

Over his career -- including this season -- Oberholtzer has shown reverse splits. The Indians be salivating as they have plenty of left-handed bats. Among them is Brandon Moss, and he has been a baller against south paws the past two years. In 2014, he posted a .356 wOBA off of lefties, and that's right there again this year at .358. Don't sleep on him, or this lineup as a whole, simply because of Oberholtzer's handedness.

New York Yankees

This really isn't a great matchup. Jesse Chavez has been superb this year with his 3.58 ERA and low walk totals. Unfortunately, he has a below-average ground-ball rate, is facing a team that crushes right-handed pitching, and is throwing in a ballpark conducive to home runs. That's enough to outweigh my affinity for Chavez.

The difficult thing here is trying to decide which of the Bronx bats to select against Chavez. Over the past two years, right-handed batters actually have higher hard-hit and fly-ball rates than lefties. At the same time, he has also recorded significantly higher strikeout totals against righties. Whenever this is the case, I am inclined to go with whichever bats in the lineup are strongest, and that's largely the lefties for the Yankees.

An important aspect of this stack is the return of Jacoby Ellsbury. Outside of providing another quality bat from which to choose, those guys directly behind him in Brett Gardner and Alex Rodriguez get a sizable bump. Ellsbury scored 29 runs in 37 games prior to his injury, and who do you think will be driving him in most of the time? This helps me get over the concerns related to Chavez, though the risk is still very much present.