Here's where you can find some recommendations for tournament pitchers target for FanDuel and DraftKings. Find our main set of cash game picks here.
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Opponent - LAA (Nolasco) Park - @LAA
FD - 29.5 DK - 19.58
If, prior to the 2017 season, you had no knowledge of Major League Baseball and no way to access historical data, you'd already know pretty much everything you need to know about Francisco Liriano, just from his three starts this year. When he's good, he's nasty. When he's bad, he gives up five runs in 1/3 of an inning. Trying to pinpoint which version we'll get in any given start is often a fool's errand, and yet here I am. Read into that what you will. Outside of Mike Trout, there's not much to fear from the Angels lineup and the ball park suppresses offense, but Liriano's upside (9.5 K/9 since beginning of 2016) is muted a bit by the fact that they don't strikeout all that much. On the other hand, they're also not walking much in the early stages of 2017, and that's a key factor if you're playing Liriano and absorbing the risk that comes with his career 3.91 BB/9 rate.
Opponent - SF (Cain) Park - @SF
FD - 27.91 DK - 18.33
I mean, I guess. This pitching slate is pretty brutal. Amir Garrett will undoubtedly be a more popular option, especially on DraftKings where here's super cheap and Ryu's price is tough to stomach. But since we wrote Garrett up with the cash game picks, we're going with Ryu and calling it a contrarian play. The park is obviously a primary motivator here, because no venue is more forgiving to pitchers struggling to keep fly balls in the yard. And homers have clearly been Ryu's undoing through three starts in 2017. A couple of notes about that: 1) two of his first three starts have come in Coors Field and against the Cubs, so home runs are gonna happen. But, 2) a 54.5% HR/FB ratio is just ludicrous. Those are home run derby numbers, and Ryu's career rate is less than 10%. So, regression is coming, and otherwise, Ryu hasn't been that bad, with 15 Ks in 15.1 IP. To be clear, we don't expect that kind of K rate to continue either, but if he can just pitch to his career norms (3.28 xFIP), he should be able to get the job done against a Giants offense that was below average last season and is struggling badly right now (less than 2 runs per game in their last seven, despite coming off a three-game set at Coors).
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