MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/3/15

The Royals' offense busted out 12 runs against the Tigers Wednesday night, and they could be primed for a repeat performance today.

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 always, these stacks do not include today's game at Coors between the San Francisco Giants and the Colorado Rockies. However, getting the Giants out of San Francisco with their 104 wRC+ against left-handed pitching should be a grand ol' time. I just don't need to tell you that. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

Washington Nationals

Finna get hot and heavy in the nation's capital with a projected temperature in the mid-90's. That, combined with Matt Wisler's recent struggles, makes the Nationals must-own bats on tonight's slate.

Wisler looks like a fine young pup who doesn't turn 23 until next week. His welcome to the big leagues has been unkind, though, as he has a 5.04 xFIP through his first 13 starts. His struggles were best fleshed out when the Chicago Cubs tattooed him for seven runs in 2 2/3 innings two starts ago, launching four runs. Now that the Nationals are back to full health (minus Denard Span), this appears to be a sweet matchup.

There is one minor issue with this stack. Wisler's main struggles are against left-handed batters, and that Nats don't have a lot of good, healthy lefties right now with Span and (potentially) Bryce Harper out after Harper left last night's game. If Harper can't go, then I might shy away from this one. Otherwise, if they can wiggle their way into the lineup, Clint Robinson and Danny Espinosa could be interesting tournament plays.

Kansas City Royals

Detroit Tigers' starter Matt Boyd is similar to Wisler in that he figures to have a solid career after having posted good numbers in the minors, but things have been tough during his maiden voyage. This means we must once again turn our attention on the Royals.

Boyd has so far made seven starts in his Major League career. He has allowed at least three runs in six of those. What was the one start in which he didn't? That, obviously, came against these same Royals back on August 5th, when they scored one run on seven hits over seven innings. They turned around and hit him up for three runs in his next start, so it's safe to assume he's not exclusively good against Kansas City. He has a 5.18 xFIP in 36 2/3 innings with a low ground-ball rate that is conducive to extra-base hits. I'm willing to look past one good outing.

As noted yesterday, the Royals haven't been world killers against left-handed pitching this year, ranking 19th in wOBA. One acquisition won't change that, but Jonny Gomes' presence does give them at least a slight bump. Gomes has had a hard-hit rate of 33.3 percent or higher eight of the last nine seasons. The lone exception in there was a mark of 29.6 percent last year, and he has elevated that back to 34.0 percent this year. He's probably not a good cash-game play, but I will have ownership in Gomes in tourneys if he's in the lineup.

Minnesota Twins

This game will only be available on all-day slates with a 1:10 pm Eastern time start. And, frankly, it's not an obvious stack that you absolutely must exploit, but I do believe that the Twins present some interesting upside on a short slate.

I don't know what the difference is between 2015 Jeff Samardzija and the one we saw in 2014. Last year's version averaged 8.28 strikeouts per nine innings and induced ground balls 50.2 percent of the time. This year, Samardzija has seen both of those totals tumble to 7.02 and 40.0 respectively. This has pushed his xFIP to 4.14, more than a full run higher than it was last year. That's not good news against a Twins team that is still playing competitive ball, especially at home.

In case you missed it, numberFire's John Stolnis wrote a killer piece about Miguel Sano this week, profiling how Sano compares to other historically-great young hitters. If you haven't read it yet, you should. Just to expand, since 2002 (as far back as Fangraphs has hard-hit data), Sano has the highest hard-hit rate of any rookie at 51.0. Only 14 others have topped 40.0 in that frame. Now, Sano gets to play in a ballpark today with humid air against a fly-ball pitcher with a shot to go yard for the fourth straight day. He's a'ight at this baseball thing, and he adds fantasy value to each bat in the order around him.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Can you tell it's a short slate? Normally, stacking at Petco Park is just a bad idea, fam. It might be best to still fade this game and load up on one of the other three teams, but the Dodgers can serve as a back-up plan with some decent bats tonight against the San Diego Padres.

Through his first four big-league starts, Colin Rea holds a nice-looking 3.68 xFIP. He was able to limit the dingers he allowed in the minors, but he has never been a high-strikeout pitcher. The Dodgers have been brutal of late, but they draw a good number of walks, and they still hold a .170 isolated slugging against right-handed pitchers. I'll give more weight to a team's season-long numbers than those over a short timeframe if there aren't major negative changes in personnel, so I'm not totally off of the Dodgers just yet.

This obviously has not been Chase Utley's year. There were legit questions (and they were fully warranted) about whether or not he should just retire at one point. But ever since he came off the disabled list with Philly on August 7th, dude has been raking. In 74 plate appearances, he has a .328/.378/.522 slash with an unreal 45.8 percent hard-hit rate. I don't want to overreact to a small sample size, but Utley -- at the very least -- has put himself back into a zone where he is usable in daily leagues, especially in a potential positive matchup.