4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/29/15
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.
Toronto Blue Jays
I've been trying really hard not to tell you to stack the Blue Jays because you all know their offense is ign'ant, but there are some situations that are harder to ignore than others. Miguel Gonzalez is set to make his first appearances since August 30th tonight after dealing with shoulder tendinitis. He had been struggling even before that injury. This is one you kind of have to include.
Before being shoved to the shelf, Gonzalez had a 4.45 xFIP with 6.77 strikeouts and 3.06 walks per nine innings. It was that lethal combo of an elevated walk total with a 40.1 ground-ball rate that appeared to sink Gonzalez below previous seasons where he had out-performed his xFIP. The Blue Jays do still lead the league in wOBA against righties (by a decent margin), so they are more than capable of taking advantage.
Gonzalez doesn't have major platoon splits overall, but his batted-ball stats are much better against righties than lefties. His ground-ball rate plunges to 34.4 percent versus left-handed batters with a 26.9 line-drive rate and 38.7 fly-ball rate. That's delicious for stacking, and it's why I'll be targeting some of the bats in the fifth to seventh range of the lineup who swing from that side of the dish while also coming at a reduced cost.
New York Mets
My enthusiasm for this stack is much lower than it would have been two weeks ago as David Buchanan -- to his immense credit -- has really shown big improvement his past two starts. His ground-ball rate is way up, and he has cut down on his walks. Hopefully for his sake he can keep that up, but until the sample size increases, the Mets should still be on your radar.
Buchanan's xFIP for the season sits at 4.99 as he has 4.83 strikeouts and 3.69 walks per nine innings. His ground-ball rate is at 46.1 now, but it has been above 50 percent each of his past three starts. The one major upside for Buchanan is that he makes it quite clear which bats we should target.
On the season, Buchanan's xFIP against lefties sits at 6.24 as opposed to 3.93 against righties. It's tough to draw major conclusions from single-season platoon stats, but when the advanced metrics are this extreme, I think we're safe. This would lead me to stack as many lefty bats as I can while plugging in righties to fill the gaps. This way, we can still get the advantage of a stack in doubling up on RBI and runs scored.
Chicago Cubs
Josh Smith has been so many eons better his second time with the big squad than when he got the call in June. He has only walked three batters over his past two starts, the same total he reached in each of his first three starts. He'll get a solid test of his progression tonight against the Cubs.
The Cubs currently sit 13th in the league in wOBA against righties at .317. That's despite leading the league in strikeout rate, partially because they are also second in walk rate. They've got the assets to clock the ball around the yard, and that's now catapulting them toward being the best team in the league against righties despite a continued affinity of that third strike.
Entering last night, Jorge Soler has gone hitless in his past three games. Sad face. But what he has done since coming off of the disabled list has made Soler immensely intriguing in daily fantasy. His isolated slugging percentage was disappointing on the season through August, but then he came back and clubbed three home runs in his first nine plate appearances. He's probably not a guy who will suddenly provide you the floor you want in a cash game, but Soler's upside appears to be back now that he is healthy.
Arizona Diamondbacks
It has been far too long since I have been able to stack these delightful Diamondbacks. The team's offense has been sputtering, but as they return home for a matchup with the Colorado Rockies, life can return to normalcy.
Christian Bergman just got plopped into the rotation the last time through, where he got battered by the Pittsburgh Pirates for 7 runs on 10 hits over 3 2/3 innings. Even when he was in the bullpen, Bergman wasn't a high-strikeout pitcher, meaning we can expect those to decrease even more as he transitions. His 4.50 xFIP is simply a delight for our purposes considering the conditions in which he accumulated it.
The best part about the Diamondbacks is that they give you a plethora of options for stacking. There's the obvious in Paul Goldschmidt, A.J. Pollock, and David Peralta, but both Welington Castillo and Jake Lamb have hard-hit rates of 37.6 or higher against righties. Rostering a few of those guys can permit you to fit either Goldschmidt or Pollock into your lineup, and life doesn't get much more beautiful than that.
