Daily Fantasy MLB Hitter Stacks for FanDuel and DraftKings- 6/19/16

Welcome to our new daily article breaking down some of the other stacking targets on this slate. We covered our system's top value plays in our daily picks article, but this article will target some specific teams you can target if you're trying to win a big tournament.

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Team Stack Targets

Arizona Diamondbacks against Zach Eflin
If you're saying "who?", no one will blame you here. Zach Eflin is a 22 year old non-prospect whose main major league level skill is keeping the ball near the strike zone. Unfortunately he doesn't pair his control with any swing and miss stuff, as his 4.65 K/9 in AAA last year will attest. You know who also pairs great control with totally hittable stuff? Batting practice pitchers. He got absolutely swamped in his first major league start, allowing a staggering 9 runs and 3 homers in 2 and 2/3 innings against the Blue Jays. Now, the Diamondbacks are considerably weaker against right handed pitching, but for Mr. Eflin, I think we'll make an exception.

The key targets in this game are of course going to be Paul Goldschmidt and Jake Lamb, but you can also secure some sneaky upside by grabbing Jean Segura and Michael Bourn as well. Bourn will have a platoon advantage here, and Segura is (narrowly) a reverse platoon split guy for his career. You can also splash a little David Peralta if he returns from his back injury for the series finale.

The Chicago Cubs vs. Jameson Taillon
First things first - Taillon is NOT equivalent to the Zach Eflins and Eric Surkamps of the world. He's a legit prospect with a live arm who could give the Cubs a very bad day today. The problem for him? Well, those pesky Cubs. They're a killer offense with a lot of relatively affordable righty-crushing bats.

Rizzo is still too cheap for a guy with a 1k+ OPS against right handed pitching in the middle of a super-potent lineup. You'll have to monitor his back issue here, though, because he is the lynch-pin that holds this stack together. You've also got affordable options stacked tightly around him as well - Kris Bryant and Ben Zobrist are both significantly better against right handed pitching, and so is the left handed Jason Heyward. This one feels a lot riskier than the D-Backs stack against Eflin, but I'll be totally un-surprised if the Cubs just run Taillon off the field here.

Honorable Mention:

The New York Yankees vs. Ervin Santana
The Yankees haven't been a mind-bending offense this season, but we're looking for more off-beat stacks, right? Right. This one is pretty straightforward. The Yankees stack left-handers and switch hitters at the top of their order - Ellsbury, Gardner, Beltran, McCann, and Headley all qualify there. They've also got A-Rod, who's the type of boom or bust guy that you don't mind sticking your neck out for in a big tournament.

As for Santana, he's bad in all the right ways when it comes to stacking against him. He lacks elite strike-out stuff, tends to miss badly, and leaves balls up in the zone (as evidenced by his career 40% GB%). It's not a lock that the Yankees will torch him, but Vegas has this as a 9 total, which is competitive with the other biggest games on the slate today.

The Baltimore Orioles against Marcus Stroman
Stroman isn't a classic stack-against candidate simply because of his elite ability to keep the ball on the ground. Vegas has this as a high total game, and the Orioles certainly have a cadre of guys who can abuse mediocre right handed pitching (Davis, Jones, Machado, etc) as I am about the Yankees stack, even if the O's do have a stronger offense. It's interesting - Stroman is basically a carbon copy of this version of Ervin Santana, except their ground-balls and fly-balls are reversed. Stroman can still get chased early for sure, but I'd just as soon chase the long ball today.

A note on the Boston Red Sox vs. Taijuan Walker
As of this writing, Vegas has this game as both the highest total and the widest spread - meaning the powers that be believe the Red Sox should score the most total runs of any team going today. So, we want players from the team that's going to score the most runs, right?

Right. The only issue here is that the Red Sox are expensive, and Walker IS capable of a big game. In spite of Walker's occasional disastrous start this season, he also has a couple games where he's absolutely gone off. Now, I don't think that it's especially likely that he'll shut down the Red Sox here - I've been doing this long enough to bet too much against what Vegas thinks will happen here. But let me make a case against stacking the Sox for a moment.

1) When we're stacking, we're usually doing so for separation so we can win big tournaments. You aren't going to get that by taking the chalkiest of chalk stacks on a day where the Red Sox have the highest total and the best moneyline.

2) The Red Sox truly are expensive. Outside of Hanley Ramirez I'm not really seeing anything that looks like a tremendous deal here.

3) Going expensive on guys that many people will be on doesn't leave you much wiggle room elsewhere.

Now, stacking the Red Sox probably can't be wrong here, but I'm just guiding you through how a pro might look at deciding if the Red Sox were a team he were going to try and build around for tourney success today. Much better, I think, is to grab a couple of one-offs here and build around one of the other solid options.

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