3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 8/3/20
In the world of daily baseball, stacks are often the backbone of the most successful -- and profitable -- lineups. Correlation is the key.
When an offense hangs runs in bunches, it means hitters are scoring runs and teammates hitting behind them are driving them in. By rostering stacks, you’re maximizing the fantasy scoring by essentially double-dipping on a run-scoring event.
This is your daily home for the top stacks on the daily fantasy baseball slate. Whether you’re looking to identify the projected highest-scoring stacks or contrarian stacks that can help you separate from the pack in GPPs when they explode, they’ll be thrown under the spotlight here.
Gamers who are numberFire premium members can throw these highlighted stacks into an optimized lineup using our DFS Sharpstack tool. The tool allows you to select the team and number of players from that team you’d like to include in your lineup. If you’re looking to identify other potentially high-scoring stacks beyond those featured in this space, check out our hitting heat map, a tool that provides valuable info such as implied total, park factor, and stats to identify the quality of the opposing pitcher.
Without further ado, let’s dive into today’s main slate’s featured stacks.
Colorado Rockies
It's no secret Coors Field is a hitting paradise, and that's reflected in the bumped up salaries of hitters playing there. Tonight's a fantastic night to pony up for the host Colorado Rockies, though. After playing a weekend series at home, they should be fully settled in to take advantage of their home confines and punish Johnny Cueto.
In two starts this year, Cueto's failed to give the San Francisco Giants even five innings in either turn. And since returning from Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2019 season, he's made six starts spanning just 23 and 2/3 innings. In those six starts, he's registered a 5.32 ERA, 5.31 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA), and coaxed a swing-strike percentage of only 7.0 percent, according to FanGraphs. He's ill-equipped to tame the Rockies bats at Coors Field tonight.
Starting at the top of the order, David Dahl ($3,900) has recorded a .377 OBP, .263 isolated power (ISO), and 125 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) in 367 plate appearances at home against right-handed pitching in his young career. Behind him in the two-hole is stud shortstop Trevor Story ($4,300). Story's the owner of a .283 ISO, .354 OBP, and 111 wRC+ in 700 plate appearances against righties at Coors Field since 2017.
Charlie Blackmon ($4,300) calls the third spot in the order home, and he's the top option from this stack. In 651 plate appearances against right-handed pitching at Coors Field since 2017, he's erupted for a .435 OBP, .341 ISO, and 165 wRC+. Rounding out the top four hitters and my preferred full stack from the Rockies is Nolan Arenado ($4,000). Like the trio of his teammates already highlighted, Arenado's touched up righties at home since 2017 with a .387 OBP, .268 ISO, and 122 wRC+ to his credit. While these four comprise my favorite stack, my current favorite lineup drops Dahl and is only a three-man stack mashed together with a different three-man stack from a forthcoming squad. Also, the entirety of the Rockies lineup is worth a look for stacking combinations for gamers multi entering GPPs or simply looking to go against the grain with what will presumably be the chalk stack of the night.
Minnesota Twins
I'm not leaving you hanging for long, the other stack I'm blending in on my favorite roster along with a Story/Blackmon/Arenado stack is that of the Minnesota Twins. I was burned earlier this year suggesting a stack against Derek Holland, but one decent start for the Pittsburgh Pirates isn't enough to buck me off of stacking against him.
Last year, Holland was tattooed by right-handed batters. The 262 righties he faced slugged .612 with a .406 weighted on-base average (wOBA). Even is his respectable first start, he wasn't exactly nails against righties, yielding 2 hits (one a homer), 3 walks and 1 hit batsman to 18 right-handed batters faced. The Twins lineup has a few right-handed batters who I'm especially interested in stacking against Holland.
It starts at the top of the order with Mitch Garver ($2,500). He's gotten off to a slow start, but he ripped a homer yesterday and is comically underpriced. In fact, I view him as offering the most bang for your buck of any hitter on today's slate. He smashes lefties and has drool-inducing batted-ball data. Among qualified hitters in 2019, he ranked 10th in barrels per plate appearance percentage and tied for seventh with elite mashers Matt Olson and Jorge Soler in fly-ball and line-drive exit velocity at 97.2 miles per hour, according to Baseball Savant.
While Garver's Statcast data is drool-inducing, the numbers for Nelson Cruz ($4,200) and Miguel Sano ($3,100) are downright silly. The former ranked first in barrels per plate appearance percentage while the latter ranked fourth, and Sano ranked tied for first in fly-ball and line-drive exit velocity at 99.6 miles per hour with Cruz nipping at his heels in third at 99.2 miles per hour.
The other potential key piece of a Twins stack is a question mark. Josh Donaldson ($2,900) wasn't in the lineup yesterday while tending to a calf injury, but he'd make for a great pivot from Arenado at a steep $1,100 discount if he returns to the lineup tonight.
Oakland Athletics
If you're looking for a high-end swerve off of the Rockies and/or Twins, or if you're looking for another high-upside option to stack along with one of them, give the Oakland Athletics a look tonight. Justus Sheffield was the prize piece the New York Yankees dealt the Seattle Mariners as part of a package for James Paxton before the 2019 season. He was a high-ranking prospect, and he's had varying degrees of success in the minors, but he's had no answer for hitters in the Majors yet.
In 12 appearances (eight starts) totaling 41.2 innings, Sheffield's responsible for a ghastly 6.26 ERA, 12.6 percent walk rate, 1.82 WHIP, and 5.19 SIERA. Yikes. He struggled in same-handed matchups with left-handed batters last year, ceding a .359 wOBA to them. Although, his struggles with lefties paled in comparison to his abject failure against right-handed hitters who teed off on him for a .380 wOBA.
The matchup with Sheffield tonight is what dreams are made of for an A's lineup that's stackable from one through nine. Seriously, as you can see on this table showing the stats of the nine A's starters when they faced lefty Yusei Kikuchi on Saturday, all but Sean Murphy ($2,200) have a wRC+ above 100 against lefties since 2017. And, to Murphy's credit, even he brings something to the table with a .333 OBP in his 24 plate appearances against lefties in his career.
There simply aren't easy outs in the A's lineup for southpaws, and it would be unfair to call it death by a million paper cuts because five of the nine players have an ISO of .200 or greater headlined by Mark Canha's ($3,000) .249 ISO. Three more hitters own an ISO above .180 starting with Chad Pinder's ($2,500) .183 ISO, followed by Marcus Semien's ($3,300) .190 ISO, and rounded out by Matt Olson's ($3,400) .194 ISO. And I haven't even gotten to Stephen Piscotty's ($2,600) team-leading 127 wRC+.
Khris Davis ($2,500) is in a funk to open the year following a down 2019, but he's a defensible play in a stack. Finally, I love the duo of Matt Chapman ($3,700) and Ramon Laureano ($3,400) as well. Whether stacking the A's alongside another chalkier stack or using them alone as a potentially lower-owned stack, they have a massive ceiling in an extremely favorable matchup tonight.
Joshua Shepardson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Joshua Shepardson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username bchad50. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
