4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 4/8/15
Remember Opening Day, when the world was filthy with aces? Yeah, that day has come and gone. Welcome to pitching purgatory, where mediocrity abounds and greatness is frowned upon.
This portion of the opening week allows us to have plenty of tasty stack plays of teams facing blurgh-ish pitchers. That is certainly the case for the teams below, who have plus-match-ups against pitchers that could make a grown man weep.
After checking these out, make sure you peruse our daily projections, as well. They can help you find those lower-priced duders that can compliment your higher-priced stacks well. Now let's get to it!
Boston Red Sox
There are certain things that simply should not go together. Josh Beckett and that bucket of chicken you bought your kids for dinner. Randall Simon and adults dressed as sausages. Aaron Harang and Citizens Bank Park.
First, Harang's outlook for 2015 is no bueno. numberFire projects his ERA to leap to 4.41 this year from 3.57 last year. Second, he is a well-known sympathizer of the fly ball.
Since 2005, Harang has never finished the season with a ground-ball rate higher than 41 percent. He has been lucky enough to reside in pitcher-friendly parks for a majority of the last four seasons, but that ends this year in Philly.
Citizens Bank ranked sixth last year in ESPN's home run park factor, meaning it breeds the bombs. With Harang on the bump, pretty much every Red Sox player in the order is in play. If they can hit four long balls off of Cole Hamels, then Harang could be in for a boatload of sadness today.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Chris Heston and I have pitched a combined 5.1 innings in the major leagues. That number would be higher, but one of us wasn't recalled from Triple-A until yesterday. Way to keep up your end of the bargain, Chris.
The Diamondbacks might not be the world's greatest offensive team in a vacuum. However, they play in a park that is a friend of the dong, and they are facing a guy who is getting ready to make his second career start. That works for me.
If David Peralta is hitting fourth again, with his $3,800 price on DraftKings, you almost need to play him. He hit .311/.351/.524 with a .380 wOBA at home last year, and he's surrounded by guys in Paul Goldschmidt and Mark Trumbo who have serious power potential tonight. Want.
Chicago White Sox
A team with Jose Abreu facing a left-handed pitcher in 80-degree temperatures? Did the room just get a little bit more toasty for y'all, too? My computer screen is getting all steamy.
In 148 plate appearances against lefties last year, Abreu murdered dreams at a slash of .353/.437/.662 with a .462 wOBA. If you still have full control of your bladder after reading that, you are a stronger person than me.
As for the rest of the team, Adam LaRoche is fairly brutal against left-handers, and I would fade hard. Adam Eaton had a higher on-base percentage against south paws last year, although his wOBA was 14 points lower. I wouldn't change his value much based on the handedness of the pitcher, especially with the added value of Abreu two spots behind him. Melky Cabrera improves ever-so-slightly against lefties, as do Avisail Garcia and Alexei Ramirez.
Danny Duffy really isn't a terrible pitcher. However, he does allow a good number of fly balls with a ground-ball percentage of just 35.8 last year. Batters had a .239 BABIP against, which is unsustainably low, so his 2.53 ERA is misleading. numberFire projects him at 4.00 for this year. When tossed into these specific circumstances, I'll most definitely buy stock in an offense facing him.
Detroit Tigers
If you can't display your ERA using the fingers on one hand, something is probably amiss. Unless he's sporting a six-fingered glove (not totally out of the question), something was amiss with Ricky Nolasco last year.
Nolasco's first season in Minnesota ended with a 5.38 ERA and a 4.30 FIP. He did lower those numbers to 4.39 and 3.80 respectively after returning from an injury, but those are still, obviously, sub-optimal.
Nolasco gets to open his 2015 bounce-back campaign against the Motor City Kitties. Hooray!
There is plenty of value at the top of the Detroit batting order that should benefit from the big boppers a bit lower. Rajai Davis, who hit leadoff on Monday, is only $4,100 on DraftKings, for those of you playing the early slate. If Anthony Gose pops into the lineup, he's only $3,600. Both of those are more than reasonable.
Even guys like Ian Kinsler, J.D. Martinez, and Victor Martinez aren't going to break the bank for you. This is a friendly stack, though it will probably be a common one in early-slate matches. You may have to go contrarian, and guys like Nick Castellanos and Jose Iglesias aren't bad options if you do.
