MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/22/15

Each of the Mets' talented left-handed bats presents some saucy potential in tonight's game.

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, these stacks do not include the game at Coors between the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates. You already know to have ownership at Coors -- I don't need to tell you that. Here are the other teams you should be targeting in daily fantasy baseball today.

New York Mets

Last night, the Mets chose to go with a lefty-heavy lineup with Shelby Miller on the mound. I'm hoping they will do so again with Matt Wisler scheduled to pitch for the Atlanta Braves.

Wisler has had a tough go of it overall in his rookie season, but most of this is because of his immense struggles against left-handed hitters. Against righties, he strikes out 7.55 and walks 1.51 batters per nine innings. Against lefties, those numbers shift to 3.96 and 6.52 respectively. Yes, in that order. Whew. This has caused a discrepancy in his xFIP, where it sits at 6.69 against lefties and 4.08 against righties. And now you see why I'm hoping they load up on the lefties again.

Even if the Mets don't stock their lineup with lefties, you should. Wisler faced the Toronto Blue Jays his last time out, and the people who did the biggest damage were Dioner Navarro, Ryan Goins, and Cliff Pennington. Those may not be your normal Jays' mashers, but they do all bat from the left-hand side against Wisler. For this reason, I'm not going with a traditional stack, as I will instead squeeze in as many lefties from the Mets as I can first before then choosing selectively from the right-handed bats to fill in if need be.

Chicago Cubs

Speaking of loading up on left-handed batters, Tyler Cravy has experienced issues similar to those of Wisler in his rookie campaign, as well. He likely won't throw too many innings tonight as he is just now being moved from the bullpen back into the rotation, but the Cubs should be able to pounce early, anyway.

Through his first 33 2/3 big-league innings, Cravy has a 4.75 xFIP. He has walked 7.49 batters per nine innings while walking 4.28, but those numbers are deceptive when presented in that fashion. He actually has walked the same number of left-handed batters as he has struck out, while he holds a 20.3 strikeout percentage compared to a 5.1 walk percentage against righties. He's really not that bad against right-handed batters, but that's not a huge issue when it comes to the Cubs.

For yesterday's game, Joe Maddon dropped Chris Coghlan down to the nine spot in the batting order. It makes sense as Coghlan has had a tough past week. If he's there again, I would likely forego him as that's not an ideal points-scoring location. But that would potentially be a big boost for Miguel Montero. He hit sixth last night, but he could bump ahead of Starlin Castro with Cravy on the mound. Montero has been silently holding a 34.0 hard-hit rate and 13.4 soft-hit rate against righties this year, and when you add in Cravy's struggles with hitters of his handedness, then it's really a no-brainer if you're looking for tournament upside.

Seattle Mariners

Jeremy Guthrie will make his return to the rotation against one of the second half's hottest-hitting teams, which has been transplanted out of its black hole of a home ballpark. This one should be pretty self explanatory.

I'm not really sure where this offense was in the first half for the Mariners, but, oh baby, have they come on hard of late. They rank second in the league in wOBA since the All-Star break, trailing only the world-killing Jays. They also rank third in home runs, third in isolated slugging, and second in wRC+. They have turned into a truly quality offense that no longer hates getting on base. It's great.

Guthrie was originally moved to the bullpen after posting a 5.26 xFIP through his first 23 starts this year. However, Danny Duffy had taken over the lead role on the struggle bus, so the two have switched spots. Guthrie's platoon splits aren't as defined as Wisler or Cravy, but he does allow more upside to lefties because of their 44.0 fly-ball rate. Again, he may not last long tonight, but he may not need to for these sluggers to reach value.

St. Louis Cardinals

The Cardinals have been fairly frustrating this second half, as when they have appeared to have a good matchup, things have gone in the dumps. Now that they're starting to get bats back and healthy, things should be ticking up soon. Maybe?

Keyvius Sampson will toe the rubber for the Cincinnati Reds. He has the oh-so-potent combination of 4.81 walks per nine innings with a 40.6 ground-ball rate. That leads to multi-run innings aplenty and a 4.92 xFIP, both of which should make you stackers all giddy.

I don't know what Matt Carpenter consumed at the All-Star break, but I want some of it. He went from a guy with decent pop to having absolutely stupid pop. His 9 home runs before the break have turned into 15 since, and he holds a .263/.348/.543 slash. That .280 isolated slugging is over 100 points higher than his first-half total of .164. Additionally, he has cut his soft-hit rate to 8.5 from 13.5 while jacking his hard-hit rate up to 37.2 from 34.2. He's striking out more, but when he makes contact, ball go far. He brings stability and upside to this occasionally frustrating offense.