Collette Calls: NL East Bold Predictions

Welcome to the first installment of my 2018 Bold Predictions. This is the fourth consecutive season I will stick my neck out to help you identify players to target and players to avoid in your upcoming drafts.

In 2015, I hit .333 with my AL predictions and did even better with my NL Predictions. 2016 was an ugly one for the NL Predictions, but my AL Predictions fared rather well. Last year, Elvis Andrus and James Paxton came through while being bearish on Tyler Naquin paid off in the AL Predictions. I did well in the NL Predictions with Taijuan Walker but then went 0-for-14 with a lot of weak contact throughout the rest of my predictions. That makes two of three seasons performing poorly in the National League while the exact opposite has occurred with the American League.

The premise of a bold prediction is that the prediction has to be grounded in some form of reality. You should not take me seriously if I state that Justin Nicolino is going to win the NL Cy Young without giving you any context of why that can happen. Even the best projection systems are approximately 70 percent accurate, and I base my bold predictions on the possibility having at least a one in three chance of happening.

This year, I am going to break up the format and do a division-by-division play by picking one hitter and one pitcher from each team. The format will allow me to provide enough material to get through February as well as allow me to go a little more in depth with each player so that you can see the reasoning behind the prediction and formulate your own opinion. Since I have been so terrible with the National League picks, it only makes sense that I start there.

First up – the National League East.

Atlanta Braves

Luiz Gohara leads Braves starters in R$ at year's end. The projected rotation for Atlanta is Julio Teheran, Mike Foltynewicz, Sean Newcomb, Brandon McCarthy and Scott Kazmir. Our projections have only Teheran throwing more than 160 innings but have Gohara making 17 starts. I believe he will make more than that, and he has arguably the best overall repertoire of the pitchers mentioned. He is young, and Atlanta might limit his innings, but his big body type may be able to take on a bit more work than the average 21-year-old. I like this prediction even more if Atlanta limits his workload by not allowing him to face the 19th batter each game. His current ADP is 286, which leaves a lot of room for profit with this prediction.

Ender Inciarte scores 110-plus runs in 2018. Our current projections have just seven players scoring that many runs in 2018: Charlie Blackmon, Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Bryce Harper, George Springer, Paul Goldschmidt and Aaron Judge. Inciarte was on base 35 percent of the time last year and scored 93 runs despite playing 158 games. Throughout the entire history of this wonderful game, there are 346 instances of a player reaching base that often in more than 710 or more plate appearances and 80 percent of them scored at least 100 runs while 58 percent scored at least 110 runs. Nothing in his skillset from last year screams fluke, and he has a better overall lineup hitting behind him in 2018. As long as he can stay healthy, which is no given, he is a top-90 player even though his ADP is 113.

Miami Marlins

Derek Dietrich leads the team in home runs. I am assuming the Marlins trade the 30-year-old Justin Bour, or the league simply does not pitch to Bour, and he sets a near record of .750 OBP. This is also bold because Dietrich has only had as many as 15 homers in a season once and that was in 2011 when he hit 22 for the Bowling Green Hot Rods in the Midwest League while a member of the Rays organization. Dietrich had an interesting second half last year as he opened his swing and started selling out for more power. In the first half, his strikeout rate was better than his career average of 22 percent, but had just four homers to show for it. His strikeout rate jumped to 25 percent in the second half as he started to both pull the ball a bit more and get some more loft under it and hit nine home runs after the break in the same amount of plate appearances he had in the first half.

I do not think he has mixed league viability, but NL-Only folks should look at him in the late rounds. He is eligible at first, second and third in a 10-game eligibility leagues, otherwise he is 3B only on draft day, though he is slated to play outfield this season, as well.

Drew Steckenrider leads the team in saves. Last year, I said this about Brad Ziegler, but the Marlins waited too long to trade AJ Ramos. This year, Ziegler could be dealt before this article is published, or at any time during the season as he is in the final year of the deal that he signed. Steckenrider is a 27-year-old kid who has worked his way up the system and has struck out 36 percent of batters faced the last two seasons at a variety of levels. That sounds a lot like Kyle Barraclough's resume heading into last year, but Barraclough lost all semblance of his command last year for long bouts and failed to capitalize on his 2016 success. Steckenrider is the next man up and could become the one they give the ball to in the ninth on their way to 52 wins in 2018.

New York Mets

Brandon Nimmo finishes as a top-80 outfielder: Our projections have him 122nd with the following stat line: .269 average, 8 HR, 40 RBI, 4 SB, 54 runs in 398 PA. I differ with the projections because I think he will play more than that and will score a lot more runs. He is projected to hit leadoff by RosterResource because the Mets want to take full advantage of his on-base abilities. He has had an issue with contact at the major league level, but he has had fewer than 300 big-league plate appearances and still has a .367 on base percentage, which is 20 points lower than his career mark in the minor leagues. Simply put, the kid knows how to get on base. It was not that long ago he was considered a top-50 prospect in baseball, so the talent has been there but the playing time is just now starting to come around. As long as his defense in center is good enough to hold off Juan Lagares, Nimmo has an opportunity to very much outperform his projections.

Steven Matz finishes the season as a top-75 SP: Our projections rank him 94th coming off a disappointing 2017 season, a season which should be framed under proper context. He began the season coming off elbow surgery to remove bone spurs and ended the season with elbow surgery for a compressed nerve in his elbow. That helps explain the drop in strikeouts, velocity and command that led to his disastrous final line over 13 starts. We are one season removed from him being the 47th pitcher off the board with an ADP of 186 in NFBC drafts. If the elbow is back in a good place, the command and results should follow. I waffled between picking Matz and Wheeler here, and one of these guys will hit, so I'm going with the one that has not missed most of the last three years with arm trouble for the guy who is trying to avoid a similar grim future.

Philadelphia Phillies

Carlos Santana hits a team-leading 40 homers: Santana had a comfortable home in Progressive Field as its park factors for homers was roughly 10 percent above average for lefties but was one of the toughest parks for homers for righties. He now moves to a park that is one of the best for either handedness as only lefties in Yankee Stadium enjoyed a higher HR Park Factor than either handed hitters in Philadelphia last year. Santana has had a stable groundball/flyball ratio over the past few seasons, but is a strong pull hitter. He has just once exceeded 28 homers in a season, but he did not need too much HR/FB fortune back in 2016 when he hit 34 home runs. A little more loft in his swing in the friendlier home park, and 40 is in the spectrum of possibility, albeit at the fringes of that spectrum. Amazingly, he is dirt cheap in drafts as his 122 ADP from 2017, and I grabbed him in 185 in my recent NFBC draft.

Aaron Nola finishes in the top 5 for NL Cy Young: I wrote about Nola last August and talked about him being this year's version of James Paxton who is full of draft helium; I am not swaying from that prediction now. In hindsight, it was my first 2018 bold prediction and the one I feel strongest about of the players discussed in this article. He has an ADP of 68 and he went one pick in front of me in my NFBC Draft Champions League last month (damn you, Doug Dennis). He is 21st on the ADP for starters, but our predictions have him 14th. My bold prediction around Paxton last year pegged him for the Cy Young, but that is insane for Nola given he pitches in the same league as Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Had Doug not taken him at 55, I would have absolutely doubled up on starting pitchers there and changed my strategy after that pick.

Washington Nationals

Adam Eaton scores 110-plus runs and steals 25-plus bases. Believe it or not, he has yet to do either in his major league career. That should be surprising given that his on-base percentage the last three seasons has been either .361 or .362 as he has hit high in the lineup for most of that. Now, he comes to a loaded Nationals lineup and will be playing for a skipper who has a lead foot and loves to run. I think Eaton flourishes under Dusty Baker and still hits these totals even if he and the demi-god Trea Turner flop spots in the lineup. It is yet another reason to love Bryce Harper hitting behind those two. If that prediction looks familiar, it is indeed a complete copy-and-paste from last year because Eaton's knee injury lunging at first base in a late April game ended what had been a terrific start of the season. If we do lazy math and multiple those April totals by six, we get nearly 150 runs and 18 steals. All of the conditions that led me to make the bold prediction remain in 2018 and the addition of Davey Martinez at skipper could even accentuate the running game.

Gio Gonzalez's ERA gets back over 4.25: The last few seasons, he has been in the mid-3.00s with recent bookends of a 4.57 on the high end in 2016 and 2.96 on the low end last season. There are some red flags to contribute to the production of his ERA jumping by more than a full run in 2018:

• His career LOB% is 74 percent and he was at a career-high 82 percent last season.
• His 2017 BABIP was 40 points below his career average.
• His annual average fastball velocity since 2012: 94.2, 93.7, 93.1, 92.9, 92.1 and 90.5 mph.
• His monthly average fastball velocity in 2017: 91.2, 90.7, 91.0, 90.3, 89.6, 90.0 and 89.8 mph.
• His annual whiff rate on his fastball since 2012: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 and 8 percent.

The citizens of Pompeii were scientifically ignorant in 79 AD because they did not realize that the major earthquake of 63 AD and the small tremors leading up to that fateful day in AD 79 were warnings signs of a pending eruption. I may seem a bit hyperbolic here, but there are enough red flags listed above to keep me further away from Gonzalez than usual. I stayed away last year and missed out on a profitable year, but the worst mistake you can make is being a year late on a guy. Our projections have him as the 40th starting pitcher this year with a 3.57 ERA, but I am personally not as optimistic. It is not like the demise of Miami is going to help him any because he was already dominating his hometown team on a regular basis throughout his career and shut them down last year when they were arguably at their best.