MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/7/15

The Rays are never a bad option when they're facing a lefty, and today is no exception to that rule.

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.

Tampa Bay Rays

Prepare yourself, ladies and gents: the stacks are a bit weird today. There weren't a lot of matchups in which a team that is dominant against a certain handedness was facing a bad pitcher of that handedness. So we've got some funky ones, but I wouldn't count the Rays in that grouping. They're legit.

These Rays are going up against lefty Randy Wolf today, and the Rays are always a stack candidate against a southpaw. They rank fifth in the league in wOBA against lefties and fourth in isolated slugging. Wolf got roughed up his last time out by the Kansas City Royals, pushing his SIERA up to 4.37 through three starts. You might expect that to go up for a 39-year-old hurler who has made seven starts since 2012, so this looks like a positive matchup for Tampa Bay.

The only bad news about this stack is that pricing finally caught on to the Rays. You used to be able to snag Logan Forsythe for crazy cheap prices, but he's now up to $3,500 on FanDuel and $4,400 on DraftKings. I'd still say he's a bit underpriced for this matchup and with his Gucci numbers with his teammates costing even less. It's not an obstacle to the stack, but it does take away a smidgen of the advantage you would have had otherwise.

Miami Marlins

Remember how I said things were going to get a little weird? Here you go. This game has two teams who rank in the bottom four of the league in wOBA against the handedness of their opposing starter (Milwaukee Brewers 27th against lefties; Marlins 30th against righties). However, the over/under is still 8.5. What does that tell you about the quality of pitchers in this one? Anyway, let's embrace the DGAF and stack the worst team in the league against righties.

Brewers' starter Zach Davies made 23 starts in the minors this year before coming up to make his big-league debut last week. In those 23 starts, he had a respectable 3.37 FIP, but it was paired with a below-average strikeout rate (18.7 percent) and slightly above-average walk rate (8.2 percent). We saw those same struggles come out in his debut as he walked three and struck out three over 4 1/3 innings. The Marlins are in no way a safe stack, but his lack of strikeouts puts them further in that direction.

The Marlins' absolutely disgusting wOBA against righties is heavily influenced by the fact that they have given a lot of plate appearances to a lot of really bad players this year. Encouraging for a stack, right? Anyway, that's starting to reverse course as guys have come back from injury and trips to the minors while others have showed signs of a breakout. Specifically, Derek Dietrich and Justin Bour have given a boost in recent weeks with their isolated slugging percentages of .272 and .221 respectively against righties this year. Part of that's small sample size, but they both also possess hard-hit rates above 35.0 against righties. They help to make this a stack that at least intrigues me -- even if there's about a 40 percent chance they get no-hit and I cry myself to sleep tonight.

Houston Astros

Last week, the Astros were facing Mike Pelfrey, a low-strikeout, ground-ball pitcher who held an all right ERA entering the contest. They peppered Pelfrey for seven runs on eight hits in four innings, as they have done all year to pitchers with that profile. Today, they get a similar pitcher in Felix Doubront. It's not a lock of a stack, but it is one that I believe is far more intriguing than the over/under of 7.5 would suggest.

Doubront's 4.05 SIERA through 47 1/3 innings is his best mark since 2012, following marks of 4.19 and 4.84 the past two seasons. He's in his prime at 27 years old, so it's possible this is natural improvement. However, his xFIP is also up to 4.95 over his past four starts, so it's possible that the league is just now readjusting to him, which could lead to further inflated numbers down the stretch. This start could go a long way toward determining which option is more true.

My bigger concern from this stack -- bigger than Doubront -- is the park factor. O.co Coliseum ranks 22nd in park factor this season and is 26th in home run park factor, which is the main reason we'd target the Astros to begin with. That fear isn't reduced any by the fact that the Astros have averaged fewer than four runs per game in their seven contests in Oakland this year. It's probably a bit riskier than I'd like to go with, but I do see the upside of rolling out Astros bats as being significant, even if the floor is frightening.

New York Yankees

This stack isn't because Wei-Yin Chen is a bad pitcher. Absolutely not. It's because a pitcher who doesn't have impressive strikeout numbers and allows a lot of fly balls isn't exactly suited to pitch at Yankee Stadium, which is the situation we have today.

Chen actually holds the highest strikeout mark of his career in 2015 at 7.23 per nine innings. That is, though, still below average for a starting pitcher, and his 40.7 ground-ball percentage is below league average as well. His walk rate is very good, which is why he's very much a viable Major League starter, but those strikeout and walk numbers are dangerous at a park like this.

The Yankees rank third in wOBA against lefties this year, but the stack's quality takes a decent hit with Mark Teixeira on the disabled list. Carlos Beltran has helped minimize the damage of losing Teixeira's bat by filling in admirably. He holds a 31.3 percent hard-hit rate against lefties this year (very much in line with his numbers over the past two seasons), but his 10.8 percent soft-hit rate is even better. I'm not saying I'd take him over Chris Young, Alex Rodriguez, or Brian McCann -- all else equal -- but he is still very much worth a look in this one.