GPP Tournament Picks: 5-6-15

The purpose of this column is to highlight some players with upside and well-suited for tournaments. While the majority of the hitter picks will likely have power upside, that's not necessarily the case for all the listed options. Other contextual factors such as batting order, ballpark, opposing pitcher, price, speed, etc also come into play, and you'll see these items sprinkled into the write-ups below. Along with that, we'll be gauging the ownership levels, giving you some plausible pivots from the popular choices in a given game slate.

TOP PITCHERS

Gerrit Cole, R, Pirates
FanDuel Salary	DraftKings Salary	Opponent	FIP	K%	GB%	Vegas Opp. Run Total & ML
$9,200	$9,500	Reds	2.14	28.9	63.2	3 and -157

Gerrit Cole is my favorite pitcher on the night in all game types. He'll be a popular pick tonight, but since it is a 12-game slate, his ownership is unlikely to be through the roof in GPPs. Cole is everything you look for in an ace, ranking third in FIP, fifth in strikeout rate, ninth in K-BB% (22.3%) and third in groundball rate (63.2%), according to FanGraphs. He's also been really hard to, well, hit hard. FanGraphs recently rolled out batted ball data on how hard the ball is hit, classifying it soft, medium or hard contact. Cole is tied for the 11th lowest hard contact rate ...

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