Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 9/3/20

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.

Chicago White Sox

It's only a four-game main slate, and the Chicago White Sox are one of two high-powered stacks I'm focused on using. Danny Duffy is enjoying a solid if unspectacular season with a 4.11 ERA and 3.81 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) in seven starts spanning 35 innings, per FanGraphs. At first blush, he's not necessarily a pitcher to go out of the way to stack against.

On this short slate, though, his fly-ball tendencies coupled with the potency of the Pale Hose's offense gets them nod as one of the top-two stacks for tonight. Duffy's sporting a 44.6 percent fly-ball percentage this year, and allowing fly balls is a risky move against the sluggers in Chicago's lineup.

Leadoff hitter Tim Anderson ($3,700) starts things off with a .345 OBP, .205 isolated power (ISO) and 133 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) against lefties since 2017. While those numbers are quite good, they balloon to a .383 OBP, .258 ISO and 164 wRC+ since the beginning of last year.

Second-year slugger Eloy Jimenez ($3,800) has recently jumped to the second spot in the order against lefties, and his .227 ISO against southpaws since reaching the Majors last year should play well against Duffy's fly-ball profile.

Whichever catcher starts, either James McCann ($2,700) or more likely Yasmani Grandal ($2,900), has a case for inclusion in stacks. However, it's the trio of Jose Abreu ($3,800), Edwin Encarnacion ($2,900) and Luis Robert ($3,600) who join Anderson and Jimenez among my favorite stacking options from the White Sox.

Abreu's the most accomplished hitter against southpaws of the trio with a .392 OBP, .253 ISO and 161 wRC+ against them since 2017. Rookie Robert is having an electric first season, and that includes knocking lefties around for a .353 OBP, .258 ISO and 144 wRC+. Encarnacion's not having a banner first year donning a White Sox uniform, but he's smacked six homers with a .234 ISO. Further, he can still put a charge into the ball, ranking tied for 70th out of 256 qualified hitters in fly-ball and line-drive exit velocity at 94.7 miles per hour, according to Baseball Savant.

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers will almost certainly be the chalkiest of the stacks on tonight's slate, but they're the top stack and my favorite option.

Luke Weaver's been awful in seven starts spanning 27 and 1/3 innings. He's responsible for an eye-popping 8.23 ERA, 2.63 homers per nine innings and a 4.11 SIERA. But what about his SIERA being literally almost exactly half as high as his ERA? While that's true, his batted-ball data is bonkers.

He's a fly-ball pitcher with 47 percent of the balls put in play against him being hit in the air this year, but it's his 53.6 percent hard-hit percentage and 13.1 percent barrel percentage that are nuts. The results of his batted balls are a .419 weighted on-base average (wOBA) and .377 expected wOBA (xwOBA). To put those numbers in perspective, the league averages this year are a .316 wOBA and .335 xwOBA.

The likes of Mookie Betts ($4,500), Max Muncy ($3,600) and -- if he returns to the lineup tonight -- Cody Bellinger ($4,300) are great stack targets who are worth their sizable salary commitments. Corey Seager ($3,900) is another obvious candidate for inclusion in a Dodgers' stack, but I want to draw special attention to the fact he leads qualified hitters in barrels per plate appearance percentage by a wide margin.

Also, there's a potentially sneaky stacking option who's likely to be hiding near the bottom of the order and manning the hot corner again in the absence of injured Justin Turner, Edwin Rios ($2,200). The young thumper has top-shelf power. He's ripped seven homers in only 91 plate appearance between his 2019 debut and 2020 season. And, out of 532 hitters with at least one batted-ball event this year, Rios is tied for 29th in fly-ball and line-drive exit velocity at 98.4 miles per hour.

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.