MLB GPP Tournament Picks: 4-25-17

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 GPP Pitcher

Vegas is against me here and I don't care. Estrada, a typical fly ball pitcher, has posted his best ground ball rate this year that he's ever seen. Sure, it's a small sample size, but he's looked good, even going back to the post season. He's coming off back-to-back starts where he hasn't allowed a run; both games being at the SkyDome. With this game in St. Louis, it should benefit Estrada. St. Louis currently ranks 20th in batting average against righties on the year, so I'm not 100% sure why they are projected for 4.5 runs tonight. I will confess that the Cards have been much better over the past week, but over half of those games were in a good hitters park in Milwaukee. The fact that Busch Stadium is so massive, Estrada should get some additional benefits pitching here.

Top GPP Hitter

Play him on FanDuel. Do it! But seriously, Dozier is vastly underpriced on FanDuel, and I still like him on DraftKings, even at that price tag. On FanDuel, I feel like he might be highly owned due to the matchup and price tag. However, on DraftKings, he's priced right around Daniel Murphy, which means he should have low ownership tonight. People, for whatever reason always gravitate towards Coors guys. I'm not saying that theory is wrong in DFS, but it definitely makes players salaried close to Coors guys come in at a lower than expected ownership rate. Even if you get off the low ownership idea with Dozier, Cashner really isn't as good as he's shown, and pitching in Arlington isn't going to help him here.

I love Pollock a lot. Richard has pitched better than expected, but he's still given up 18 hits over his past two starts. Yes, the start last time was against these Diamondbacks, but the game was in San Diego. Now that it's at Chase Field, I expect a ton of scoring...and so does Vegas. Pollock is leading off here, which obviously benefits him even more. After what the Diamondbacks did yesterday, they clearly are hitting the ball well right now. Arizona is the best offense at home, leading in almost all offensive categories. Oddly enough, the Diamondbacks do not lead in home runs at home. That title is currently held by the Athletics, who have hit 19 home runs at home.

Gonzalez quickly has become a shell of themselves. I bet if Theo Epstein could do it all over, he probably wouldn't have traded away Anthony Rizzo from Boston for Gonzalez. Actually, since he won a World Series after trading to get Rizzo back with the Cubs, he probably would keep everything the same. Anyways, Gonzalez still has some value, but against lefties he stinks. He might not even find his way into the lineup tonight against Blach, but if he does, he's a great pivot play. Why? Well, Blach isn't a starting pitcher. In fact, he hasn't pitched longer than one inning this year and has only pitched two innings once in his short career. My theory is this, Blach will probably be done after a max three or four innings which gives Gonzalez (if he is in) two to three at-bats potentially against righties. Obviously he still is a viable option against righties, but this is definitely a risk. I apologize in advance if it doesn't work out.

I'm a little more inclined to play Margot on FanDuel since you get a pretty good discount. He's not the greatest hitter ever, but batting first in a good ballpark definitely makes him worth his FanDuel price. Corbin isn't terrible, but he also isn't the best. Corbin has allowed a .357 wOBA and two homers to righties on the year. He's also only struck out 12.7% of right handers this year. Over Corbin's past two starts, he's allowed 14 total hits. There's definitely potential here for him to have a bad outing. His numbers against lefties are a little skewed because he's only had 22 at-bats this year, but overall he's been good on the season. He's on a mini-four game hit streak, currently hitting .412 on this streak. Hitting lead-off gives him ample opportunities to rack up DFS points.