Baseball Picks Daily Fantasy Expert Advice
Daily Fantasy MLB Pitchers for FanDuel and DraftKings - 8/14/17
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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Pitchers
Travis Wood FD 5900 DK 5300
Opponent - PHI (Eickhoff) Park - @SD
FD - 25.59 DK - 17.02
If you're playing multiple lineups on a two-pitcher site on Monday's 10-game main slate, you're going to end up in some dark and unsavory corners. There's just not much to be optimistic about at SP tonight -- especially beyond the guys we wrote up in the cash game picks -- so we can't find much of a reason to justify spending up for mediocrity when we can get it cheap. And make no mistake about it, mediocrity is what we're expecting from Travis Wood tonight. Honestly, mediocrity would be an improvement. He has just one decent start since moving into the rotation last month, and enters Wednesday night with a 6.71 ERA and a 5.35 xFIP, both of which are gross. There's really only about three things working in Wood's favor tonight. 1) He's cheap. Don't underestimate that, especially when Coors Field is on the slate. 2) Petco Park. Its reputation as an offense killer might be slightly overblown, but it's still a pretty great place to pitch. 3) The Phillies. They're actually kinda dangerous against lefties with a .173 team ISO, but Petco should help limit the long-ball worries and they still rank in the bottom third of the league in wRC+ and wOBA vs. LHP, so it's obviously not a lineup that worries us that much. Just to reiterate though: none of the preceding should be taken as a stirring endorsement for Wood. He's just a cheap arm with a decent chance to return value on a low price while letting us play expensive bats.
Zack Greinke FD 9500 DK 10800
Opponent - HOU (McHugh) Park - @ARI
FD - 34.48 DK - 22.81
If you can't bring yourself to play a bad pitcher against a bad offense, you could consider the other side of the same unappealing coin: a good pitcher against a great offense in a hitter's park (or, you could consider taking the night off, because there's not much in between on this slate). Listen, the Astros have been great this year, and playing a pitcher against them has been a losing proposition way more often than not. So Greinke is not safe and we wouldn't recommend anybody facing Houston for cash games. But Greinke is also (arguably) the most talented pitcher on the slate, and there's a decent chance you could get him at low ownership -- and that alone makes him an intriguing GPP option. He's striking out nearly 10 per 9 IP in 2017 and has a 3.14 ERA that's fully supported by the underlying stats (3.22 xFIP). Of course there's nothing about the Astros' league-best wRC+ vs. RHP that suggests he'll be able to improve on those numbers tonight, but a lockdown outing is always a possibility with a starter as strong as Greinke has been this year. Are the odds for a big night in his favor? No, not really. But there's enough of a chance to make him worth a couple of fliers in your tournament lineups when there's so little else to choose from.
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