4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/8/20

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.

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers are getting their second look at struggling Luke Weaver in the last week. When Weaver started against them on September 3, he was solid allowing only 2 earned runs on 4 hits, 0 walks, and 5 strikeouts. The effort reduced his ERA to 7.44. The righty's ERA should tell you a bit about why the Dodgers are my favorite stack tonight despite Weaver's solid showing the last time against them.

Weaver's coughed up a whopping 2.20 homers per nine innings, according to FanGraphs, and his batted-ball data should have Dodgers' hitters drooling. Weaver's ceded a .386 weighted on-base average (wOBA) that's been a tick unlucky, but his .357 expected wOBA (xwOBA) and .527 expected slugging, per Baseball Savant, are target-worthy numbers.

The lineup is stackable from top to bottom starting with Mookie Betts ($4,500) in the leadoff spot. Hitters near the top and heart the order have the highest upside and will likely -- justifiably -- be the highest-rostered choices. Betts falls into that group, and so does Cody Bellinger ($4,300). They're both great options and priced like it.

My favorite two options in the lineup, however, are Corey Seager ($3,900) and Max Muncy ($3,600). Seager continues to lead qualified hitters in barrels per plate appearance percentage, and Muncy's barreling balls up at a high rate, too, ranking tied for 58th out of 257 hitters in barrels per plate appearance percentage. Seager's parlayed his ability to square the ball up into 11 homers, a .303 isolate power (ISO), and 168 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) this year. Muncy lags behind Seager, but his 10 homers, .228 ISO, and 108 wRC+ are quite good in their own right, and his overall numbers are held down by an unsustainable .200 batting average on balls in play (BABIP).

San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres are taking aim at Chi Chi Gonzalez tonight. He's pitched just three games (one start) totaling nine innings, but he's been a below-average hurler throughout his career and was knocked around for a 5.29 ERA and 5.71 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) in 14 appearances (12 starts) totaling 63 innings last year.

He's a great matchup for the Friars, and they're a pricy pivot from my top stack, the aforementioned Dodgers. Any Padres' stack should include their National League MVP frontrunner Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,700). He's tied for second among qualified hitters with a 179 wRC+ in 2020 and tied atop the heap in homers with 15. He's also added seven stolen bases this year, to boot!

Manny Machado ($4,000) hasn't been a slouch and is another big-ticket option from the stack. He also has a track record of being a thorn in the side of righties with a .208 ISO and 110 wRC+ against them since 2017.

The deep lineup has stacking options from one through nine, and a few others in my crosshairs include recent trade acquisitions Austin Nola ($3,000) and Mitch Moreland ($2,900), along with rookie Jake Cronenworth ($3,100) as well as outfielder Trent Grisham ($3,200).

Cincinnati Reds

A stack of the Cincinnati Reds gets a lift if the wind is blowing out at Wrigley Field. Conversely, wind gusts in would make this a far less attractive stack. Regardless of the wind conditions, the pitching matchup with Alec Mills is favorable for Cincinnati's hitters.

Mills has labored through seven starts spanning 37 and 2/3 innings this year in which he's been knocked around for a 5.50 ERA and 4.89 SIERA. He's also responsible for a .340 xwOBA that's a few points higher than the MLB average of a .335 xwOBA. The Reds have been disappointing, but the top half of their order features stacking appeal.

My favorite stack is a three-man stack of number-two hitter Nick Castellanos ($3,400), Jesse Winker ($2,900), and Eugenio Suarez ($3,700). Castellanos has packed tons of punch this year with a dozen homers and a .319 ISO in 165 plate appearances. Speaking of power, Suarez ripped three homers in four plate appearances on September 5 in Pittsburgh one day after smacking a homer in one of his three plate appearances on September 4. After a slow start, he's been in a groove with 11 homers, a .387 ISO, .346 OBP, and 150 wRC+ in 107 plate appearances since August 7.

Winker is my favorite option of the trio and a great standalone play tacked onto any of the other stacks featured in this space. He's the cheapest option of the three, is raking this year with a .310 ISO, .410 OBP, and 165 wRC+, and is the only hitter of the three to have the platoon advantage against Mills. The righty hurler has coughed up a .506 slugging and .345 wOBA to left-handed batters this year. Others who warrant stacking consideration and also have the platoon advantage include Joey Votto ($2,800) and Mike Moustakas ($2,600).

Miami Marlins

Out of all four stacks touted in this piece, the Miami Marlins have the easiest pitching matchup against recalled Kyle Wright. The young righty has been beaten like a drum in the Majors with a 7.52 ERA and 6.34 SIERA in 40 and 2/3 innings. This year, he's been a walk machine issuing a free pass to 21.3 percent of the batters he's faced. When he's not walking hitters, he's surrendered a .387 wOBA to them that's actually below his .431 xwOBA.

Wright's ineptitude puts all of the Marlins on the stacking radar. And don't be dissuaded from using righties in a righty-righty matchup with Wright. The .335 wOBA he's allowed to righties in his young career is hardly a deterrent for using some of my favorite options from the Marlins against him including Starling Marte ($3,100), Jesus Aguilar ($2,900), and Brian Anderson ($2,700).

A sneaky option who could allow you to differentiate yourself from other gamers stacking the Marlins is rookie Jazz Chisholm ($2,000). The rookie shortstop has hit down the order and carries a minimum salary. He hasn't hit the ground running, but the sample is tiny, and he showed off a fantasy-friendly combo of power and speed in the minors last year with 21 homers, 16 stolen bases, a .220 ISO, and 121 wRC+ in 458 plate appearances at the Double-A level last year.

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.