Daily Fantasy Baseball Advice - Teams to Stack 4/18/14
It’s Friday in the baseball world! Yesterday the Texas and Seattle stacks treated us well. I hope the pitchers you all complemented them with came through, as that should have been a recipe for success. Today I am absolutely going back to the well for Texas, as you will see explained in further detail now. Good luck, and don’t forget to search for freerolls today!
An intro to my article: Like I do with basketball, I am going to build on our already great writers’ work and present a different spin in order to give our readers as much knowledge as possible. With baseball, I have found reasonable success in the art of stacking, which involves heavily loading up on hitters from one team. I believe this helps a great deal in baseball as hitters can actually benefit a lot from one another. There are so many players in the player pool that it can be difficult to weed out the values, so I focus my efforts on teams rather than players. There are two things I target when searching for teams to stack each night:
1) Opposing pitcher – If the pitcher is weak, it makes sense to target a group of hitters they’re facing.
2) Splits – I believe splits (lefty/righty, home/away) are the most important stat when it comes to picking daily players. In this article you will see me picking a lot of specific-handed groups of players due to either their success, the pitchers’ failure, or both.
Texas Rangers hitters in general
I will be having a piece of Texas’ lineup in almost every entry today. Felipe Paulino is simply not a good pitcher (career .374 wOBA to LHB, .334 wOBA to RHB). Compound the fact that he is pitching in Texas which is a hitters paradise, and I can see the Rangers putting up 10 runs tonight. Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo both have over a .400 career wOBA against RHP, and Alex Rios, Mitch Moreland, Leonys Martin, and Kevin Kouzmanoff are fine additions to the team as well (with some of them providing salary relief as well). I should remind you that most sites have Kouzmanoff at the minimum, and he has been consistently batting fifth.
Colorado Rockies hitters in general
If you FORCED me to pick one stack tonight it would be Texas, but consider the Rockies “1A” tonight. They are back in their home park and face Jonathan Pettibone, who is almost as equally horrid to Paulino (career .362 wOBA to LHB, .326 wOBA to RHB). Carlos Gonzalez (.395 wOBA against RHP) is my top overall play tonight, and I will be paying for the big Rockies RHB as well (Tulowitzki and Cuddyer) who both hit same-handed pitching well. Charlie Blackmon and Justin Morneau also make fine left-handed additions to your stack, although they are mildly more expensive than I would have thought.
Los Angeles Dodgers right-handers
Wade Miley has had relative success in his young career so far, but has struggled against RHB, giving up a .323 wOBA and a 24.6% LD rate. This sets up VERY well for Hanley Ramirez (make sure he’s playing), Yasiel Puig (make sure he’s playing), and Matt Kemp (make sure he’s playing). I’d even consider Adrian Gonzalez, as even though Miley is tough on lefties, Gonzalez is strong against them (.career .342 wOBA) and should be in the middle of plenty of run scoring opportunities.
New York Yankees right-handers
Erik Bedard has very neutral splits in his career, but the Yankees RHB are really locked in right now. They got to David Price yesterday and I see no reason not to ride the hot streak. Alfonso Soriano and Derek Jeter both have ridiculous splits against lefties, and the red-hot Carlos Beltran has been hitting lefties better so far this year as well. It would also be ludicrous to ignore Yangervis Solarte, who is making a name for himself and should be low-priced.
VALUE STACK – Philadephia Phillies left-handers
Chase Utley is not priced as a value right now, but the rest of the lefties are. Today they face Tyler Chatwood who keeps the ball on the ground very well but has given up a .364 wOBA to lefties in his career. Like I said, Utley is a premier play and Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins should be in there as well. Cody Asche is a great source of salary relief with his .164 ISO vs RHP in his young career, and Ben Revere should have base-stealing and run-scoring opportunities. Oh yeah, and they’re playing in Colorado today.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Advice – Teams to Stack 4/18/14 was originally published on Fantasy Team Advice
