4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/15/15
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.
Houston Astros
Note: The Texas Rangers had previous listed Martin Perez as their starter for Tuesday. Now, Derek Holland will, indeed, make the start instead. The analysis below has been changed to reflect Holland as a starter.
Welp. I got all excited about this matchup when Martin Perez was listed as the starter for the Rangers. He's not, anymore, as Derek Holland will get the ball. This kills my vibe a bit, but I'm still interested in rolling out the Astros. Here's why.
In order for the Astros to have success, they need to be facing a pitcher who doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. Holland gets more than Perez, but he's still below average since coming off of the disabled list at 7.23 per nine innings. This includes one game in which he racked up 11 strikeouts in 9 innings. His 7.8 swinging strike rate and 83.1 contact rate indicate that his strikeouts will eventually normalize below their current mark. I think that this knowledge keeps the Astros in play, even if the matchup isn't quite as good.
With Holland on the mound, I'm going to target hitters who make solid contact against lefties even more so than usual. The Astros have plenty of bats from which to choose. The top two choices for me would be George Springer and Jed Lowrie, both of whom have hard-hit rates above 40.0 percent against lefties. Carlos Correa obviously hits lefties well, too, but Colby Rasmus might be a decent tourney option. He has a 36.7 percent hard-hit rate against lefties, but he also strikes out like crazy. His floor (if he's even in the lineup given the platoon) is non-existent, but he's still a sneaky candidate for a solid point total.
Washington Nationals
The Nationals don't have a whole lot to play for over the rest of the season with their playoff odds now at 0.0 percent, according to numberFire's algorithms, but that doesn't have to stop them from piling on the runs. That's what they could do in a matchup like the one they have tonight.
On the season, David Buchanan has now thrown 52 1/3 innings at the Major League level. That has been coupled with 53 earned runs for an ERA of 9.11. I'm going to guess that's not what they're going for. His xFIP is at 5.38, so it's not as if all of this is bad luck. Things have just been rough for ole boy.
A look at his slash line won't tell you so, but Anthony Rendon has been hitting the ball well since coming back from his most recent injury. He entered last night with a .272/.354/.385 line since he returned on July 25th, which certainly isn't bad, but it's not what we grew used to with him last season. Over that same timeframe, though, he has a 36.5 percent hard-hit rate and 11.0 percent soft-hit rate. Those are numbers you can live with, especially when you toss in his below-average strikeout percentage as well.
Minnesota Twins
If you don't factor team dancing skills into your stacking decisions, you're truly missing the point. I do, and an Instagram post last night from Torii Hunter convinced me that the Twins were the right choice today. Ain't nobody hit the Quan like Brian Dozier.
Oh, and the Twins might be facing Alfredo Simon tonight. That's honestly secondary, but I should probably mention it. Simon has a 4.77 xFIP, and that leaps to 5.32 over his past 15 starts. The Twins have struggled against righties overall, but they rank eighth in isolated slugging percentage at home. Against Simon, that's good enough for me.
For some reason, Eduardo Escobar has just been stroking in the second half of the season. He entered last night's game with a .283/.340/.510 slash and 6 home runs since the All-Star break. Then lil homie went deep again in going 2-for-4. That's not all sustainable, but his hard-hit rate is up to 30.6 percent, and he's only striking out 15.7 percent of the time. I don't know if this means he's turned a corner, and he's a bit too expensive for my blood on FanDuel, but he does have "el poder de Dios." So why not.
New York Mets
I'm about to break one of the generic rules for statistical analysis in baseball, but it's only to illustrate a point. Mostly because these splits are mildly ridiculous and should probably be pointed out.
In general, you shouldn't use ERA to judge a pitcher. And you definitely shouldn't judge a pitcher based on his ERA within a split, where you are limiting the sample size. But Tom Koehler's home and away splits are too drastic not to at least mention.
At home, Koehler has a 2.97 ERA this season. Not bad! On the road, that goes up to 4.92, almost two full runs higher. Woof. His 4.54 SIERA states that both may be a bit too extreme, but it appears he's closer to how he has performed on the road than at home. Well, tonight, he hits the pavement to face the streaking Mets on the road. Good luck, bruh.
Koehler is a right-handed pitcher, but his strikeout rate is actually lower against righties than it is lefties. This has inflated his xFIP versus right-handed batters to 4.70 as opposed to 4.29 against left-handed batters. This doesn't mean you should exclude lefties, but it does mean you should give a considerable bump to the right-handed bats in the Mets' lineup. That would be especially true for any bats who have almost reverse splits themselves -- I'm looking at you, Mr. Yoenis Cespedes.
