Collette Calls: 2020 AL East Bold Predictions

To review the premise of this 2020 series, please review the opening of the first installment of this year's series. To review the 2019 AL East Bold Predictions, click here. 

Baltimore

Chance Sisco is a top-20 catcher. He is the 30th catcher off the board with an ADP of 486 and a range from 249 to 509 in NFBC drafts since Jan. 1. The 20th catcher off the board is Roberto Perez, going 203 picks earlier than Sisco with a range of 200 to 346. Perez was last year's surprise; Sisco will fill that role in 2020.

Sisco has been on the Norfolk-to-Baltimore shuttle the last three seasons, having yet to eclipse 200 plate appearances in a major league season while amassing more than 750 plate appearances in Triple-A in that time. Last year, he joined the fun in Triple-A with the new baseball and hit .292/.388/.530 in 196 plate appearances, but with the same baseball in Baltimore he saw that line fall to .210/.333/.395 in 198 plate appearances. He has 404 plate appearances at the big-league level and has a 33 percent strikeout rate, below average defensive numbers and no ability to hit lefties, making him a perfect platoon partner for Pedro Severino.

Baltimore is going nowhere this season, but it at least seems like it has a purpose now with better leadership in the front office. That group needs to see what it has on the field as it tries to build around future backstop Adley Rutschman, who is just begging to have a AdleyRutschmanfacts.com domain set up for him with amazing feats of strength that Matt Wieters never accomplished. There was a 61-point gap between Sisco's actual slugging percentage and his expected one based on contact, and he still plays in a great park for offense and in a division that favors lefty power hitters. Scouts have graded his offensive abilities as average to above average, so the potential is there. Sisco has not been afforded consistent playing time, but has the potential to take on the strong side of the platoon in Balitmore as long as the offensive upside can help hide the defensive limitations. 

Brandon Bailey finishes in the top 3 of Baltimore pitchers in roto value in 2020. Bailey is the pitcher Houston acquired when it decided it did not have enough room to keep Ramon Laureano around in the organization. The Astros also then lost Bailey this winter in the Rule 5 draft to Baltimore, where the front office has a few members who were in Houston when the Astros acquired Bailey. Oops.

Bailey has to remain in Baltimore all year, and the big unknown with him is how he will pitch with the new bouncy funball as he has never pitched above Double-A. Bailey has a wide arsenal of pitches and has spent time working with Driveline baseball on his pitch design and making the most of his stuff. In fact, he has worked on re-shaping his slider and cutter this winter with the Driveline folks. In fact, compare the videos in the two tweets below; the first is 13 months ago while the last is just last month. Take note of the stuff, but also note the velocity readings on his fastball and what changed over the last year as Bailey works with the pitching experts at Driveline. Whereas he was touching 93 in January 2019, he is now consistently hitting 93 with his fastball this winter:

At 5-foot-10, he is short for a pitcher but has consistently struck out more than a batter per inning in his collegiate and minor league career. Baltimore will mostly use him in the bullpen in low leverage to get him started, but he has the potential to amass a strong strikeout total out of the pen. The fact that he has to stay in the majors all year and behind a suspect rotation affords him the opportunity to get quite a bit of work in 2020. He is not draftable in mixed leagues, but AL-only owners should be willing to take a flyer in the reserves to see how this intriguing profile plays out. 

Boston

J.D. Martinez is a top-10 player. Honestly, there isn't much room for a bold prediction for a guy whose ADP is 24 with a range of 10 to 42, but with the news that Mookie Betts is mostly likely no longer on this roster, this feels more like a bold prediction than it would have been a month ago. 

Martinez dealt with back issues throughout 2019, and a quick google search will show multiple times where he was scratched from the lineup with back tightness, a sore back or back spasms. Yet, he still had more than 650 plate appearances for a second consecutive season and still managed to finished in the top 15th percentile in exit velocity, hard hit balls and expected offensive production. It was considered a disappointment because it was a step back from his amazing 2018 season, but a bad core will do that to a guy. He still had an expected batting average of .309 last season with a xSLG of .579. 

He is still an elite hitter, especially against lefties, and while the loss of Betts has an impact on the lineup, Martinez still is well-insulated in the Boston lineup with the likes of Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts and others hitting around him. Martinez has the ability to opt out of his contract after this season, and may choose to do so if the Red Sox continue to shed talent and payroll for a long-term plan that he might not want to be part of. A motivated slugger with his talents is a scary thought for American League pitchers. 

Eduardo Rodriguez is not a top-75 pitcher. Rodriguez is the 51st pitcher off the board at an ADP of 136 with a range from 103 to 171. He is coming off easily hist best fantasy season, setting career highs in wins, innings, strikeouts and ERA. All that said, I have grave concerns for Rodriguez in 2020. We'll start with the workload. Rodriguez threw nearly 75 more innings in 2019 than he had the previous season, which raises concerns about him fading down the stretch this coming season. There is also the issue of just how difficult it is to post back-to-back 200-plus inning seasons in major league baseball.

In fact, only 21 pitchers the last five seasons even have as many as two 200-plus inning seasons under their belts, and no pitcher accomplished it each of the last five season. Twenty-six of the 50 pitchers were one-and-done on the 200 IP list. In 2018, 13 pitchers threw at least 200 innings, and their 2019 innings are shown below:

The list includes a forced retirement, two major injuries to Cleveland pitchers, a contract issue and the unavoidable meltdown by Freeland in Colorado. It would be too lazy to slap a Freeland label on Rodriguez, so I won't do it. An easier comp would be 2017 Gio Gonzalez to 2018 Gio Gonzalez. Forty percent of pitchers the last three seasons have posted consecutive 200-inning seasons. Nobody is safe from this issue; Kluber had done so in each of the previous four seasons before last season. Verlander has done it in each of the last four seasons, but missed a good early portion of the 2015 season.

Rodriguez has never been a model of health and missed significant time in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with knee issues on his plant leg. A healthy 2019 season should not permit us to overlook his track record. He did a great job in 2019 of suppressing hard contact and keeping batters and using his stuff to generate more groundballs than ever. I liked what I saw from Rodriguez last year, but when you have to eliminate 60 percent of 200 IP pitchers as repeaters the following season, he is such a logical candidate given the history with that right knee. Each of the last two years, the average loss of workload of the group of pitchers who worked 200 innings the following year has been 42 innings. One third of the pitchers who have worked 200 innings in recent seasons have missed at least 45 innings the next season. 

Much is being said about Chris Sale's health entering the season, while assuming Rodriguez has some kind of internal setting prohibiting him from being injured again. Set the over/under at 150 and count every inning above that as a bonus. The Boston rotation, with Sale, Eovaldi, Rodriguez and Gonzales, as another 200-inning guy unlikely to repeat, is really fraught with risk in 2020. 

New York

DJ LeMahieu does not drive in 70 runs. LeMahieu has an ADP of 66 with a range from 36 to 91 in drafts since Jan. 1. He made a fool of those who scoffed at the Yankees signing a guy with big home/road splits in Colorado by having a massive MVP-quality season for the Yankees last year, setting career highs homers, runs, RBIs and slugging percentage. We are taught that what goes up must come down, but we should also look into what caused things to go up as they did last year. 

When a player nearly doubles his career high in RBIs, the first thing we have to do is honor the memory of Allen Craig and look into the hitter's RISP splits. Craig is not dead, but any hitter who has two of the best seven batting averages in the last decade with runners in scoring position deserves to have something honored after him. Not to mention, Craig is the only player in recent history to improve his RISP "skill" one year over the next. LeMahieu wants to become the next Craig on the heels of a season in which he hit .389 with RISP and drove in 73 runners. 

This is also a good time to remind everyone that hitting with runners in scoring position is not a skill. It has incredibly terrible year-over-year correlation as a stat, and is often just used as an excuse when players or teams are struggling to score. Why would a player be selfish enough to bear down only when hitters are in scoring position and not want to provide the same effort just to get on base and set up the teammates behind him? 

Joe Mauer hit .407 with runners in scoring position in his final season, so he is excluded from the table below that includes every instance of a batting average with runners in scoring position higher than what LeMahieu did in 2019:

There has been an overall 20 percent reduction from one season to the next when a player has a massive year at the plate in his RISP splits. Again, only Allen Craig improved one season to the next where every other hitter — some of the best hitters of their time — over the past decade declined year over year. LeMahieu has always had decent RISP numbers in his career, but 2019 sticks out like my scooter accident picture on a Tinder profile. 

LeMahieu has the OBP chops to continue to leadoff, so the runs scored is not the concern as much as the RBI production is likely to fall by at least 20 percent. Bank on the average and the runs, but the RBIs are going to fall. The homers are tough to predict given how much LeMahieu benefits from hitting at Yankee Stadium, where 27 percent of his flyballs were home runs last year compared to just 10 percent in stadiums that do not turn routine flyballs into home runs.

Masahiro Tanaka finishes outside the top-125 pitchers. He has an ADP of 230 in drafts since Jan. 1 with a range from 181 to 283. He is in the final year of his current deal, and it feels like he is quite a bit older than his 31 years. Tanaka's elbow has never given out despite partial UCL tear that came about in 2014. He has consistently won double-digit games in his career, enjoying the run support afforded to him by the powerful lineup, but has made 30 or more starts in just three of his six seasons in New York.

Tanaka's skills are showing some decline. His strikeout rate fell over five full percentage points last year, from a strong 25 percent in 2018 to 19.6 percent in 2019. His 14.4 percent K-BB% was the worst of his career, and his opponent batting average was the lowest of his career. Pitching in Yankee Stadium and the AL East has always left him a bit prone to the homers, but that issue has been mitigated by his stinginess with walks. Tanaka's success these days is him cranking up the use of his non-fastball pitches, and his slider continues to shine as his money pitch. However, his 2019 season was odd in that his overall numbers were very much helped by how he performed against one particular team. His StatCast profile should scare you:

Tanaka faced the Rays four times in 2019, and had a 1.59 ERA and 0.67 WHIP in those four games. He held them to a .158 average in those four outings and had a 28:3 strikeout to walk ratio. The trouble was his numbers against the rest of the league was much different:

He was a bad pitcher against the rest of the league, but his overall numbers were made more acceptable by his absolute dominance of the Tampa Bay lineup in the first three outings earlier in the season. The larger body of work against the rest of the league shows a pitcher that is barely rosterable in standard mixed league formats. He should chalk up another year of double-digit wins, but the ratios and declining strikeouts is the tax you will have to pay for him potentially enjoying 15 wins inflated by run support.

Tampa Bay

Jose Martinez hits 30 homers. Did you really think we were going to get through this series without me including Jose Martinez? If you've followed my work, you know I have wanted this guy in the American League in the worst way forever, and the fact he landed with my favorite team makes it all the better.

Ideally, the only glove Martinez puts on his left hand in 2020 is a batting glove, but if he does have to wear a different glove, the Rays will likely give him time at first base in a pinch. I would put his odds of wearing an outfielder's glove somewhere around 0.00000000001 percent. Martinez was miscast as a position player in St. Louis, and I have long held the suspicion that the issues in the field carried over to what he did at the plate. Tampa Bay can afford him all the at-bats at DH that he wants, and I believe allowing him to focus on hitting will help him in 2020. 

Many thought the Cardinals should have traded Martinez to the American League for a pitcher before the 2019 season began. Instead, they signed the slugger to a two-year deal and put him in the field until his defensive woes made it impossible to continue to do so. Martinez had his worst overall season at the plate, no doubt related to the mental struggles of being a DH on a National League roster. 

Martinez continues to crush lefties (.331/.405/.570 for his career), but his numbers against righties plummeted last year compared to what he did in 2017 and 2018 against righties. I made a 30-homer prediction for C.J. Cron in 2018 for Tampa Bay, which the big guy made come true on the penultimate day of the season for me. I'm giving Martinez the same prediction because I see parallels with the two situations. Martinez is coming off a down season that was impacted by a shoulder issue, but a healthy season that can hang out in the DH role could be a very productive one in the middle of the Tampa Bay lineup.

Andrew Kittredge is a top-250 pitcher whose saves+wins total will be at least 10. The recent trade of Emilio Pagan pushes everyone up a notch in what is an incredibly deep bullpen, on paper. Pagan's departure has everyone speculating who will be the new closer, with Nick Anderson deservedly getting a lot of attention. This is also a good time to remind readers that 19 pitchers have recorded a save for Tampa Bay the last three seasons, and 10 pitchers did so last season. Pagan did not even make the Opening Day roster last season and ended up with the job after Jose Alvarado got all out of whack early on. 

Kittredge finished 2018 in bad shape with a 7.75 ERA and a .331 opponent batting average in 38.1 innings. He spent the winter working with the folks at Driveline and then more work in Durham in 2019, and came back to the big leagues a different guy. He threw harder, and was no longer in-game batting practice for the opposition. 

Kittredge lowered his opponent batting average by 71 points, improved his strikeout rate by 11 full percentage points and tripled his K-BB% from an awful 7.2 percent to a solid 21.9 percent. The Rays used him both as an opener and a leverage reliever throughout the season once he came up to stay. For the year, his StatCast sliders finished strong, with nearly everything in the top 25th percentile:

The rebuilt reliever saw much better results with his new process as well:

He did not even throw a two-seamer in 2018, but added it last season and used it often. His fastball found new life both in movement and hittability, which also helped his slider play up further.

Kittredge is the 360th pitcher off the boards in drafts, if he even goes in drafts. His ADP is 746, and he's gone anywhere from 519 to 746. In AL-only formats, he is a very late dart throw that could turn out well for you, much like Pagan did last season. 

Toronto

Derek Fisher is a top-100 outfielder. He is  147th off the board in all draft formats with an ADP of 675 and a range from 357 to 693. All the attention in Toronto is deservedly on the Bloodline Boys, but do not overlook Fisher hanging out in right field. Fisher came over in the Aaron Sanchez deal trade, but did little other than strike out a ton in the 40 games Toronto gave him to close out the season.

Fisher has 419 major league plate appearances and a .191/.279/.369 triple-slash to show for it. Fisher has also managed to hit .289/.379/.520 in more than 1,000 Triple-A plate appearances and showed better contact at that level in 2019 than he did at the major league level. He has mostly been a player whose outcomes have not matched the skills he brings to the field. Scouting grades show a 60 raw power and a 70 speed  grade on the 20-80 scale, but a below-average hit tool and just average in-game power. 

Fisher is out of minor league options, as is Anthony Alford, so this job is for one of them. Fisher is the lefty and would seemingly have the leg up on the righty Alford. There is only room for one on the roster, but the one who wins the spot should have the opportunity to hit low in the lineup and then allow the Bloodline Boys to drive them in. 

Ken Giles saves 40 games and strikes out 100. He is the 10th closer off the board with an ADP of 133, and a range from 106 to 207 in 2020 drafts. Giles getting out of Houston has been the best thing for him, and he arguably looks better than ever to those who even watch him pitched last year in Toronto. 

His 32 percent K-BB% was elite production, and his 40 percent strikeout rate was a career high for someone who already had three seasons of more than 30 percent strikeout rates under his belt. The difference for Giles from the tumultuous 2018 to the success he rediscovered in 2019 was his fastball coming back. That pitch was beaten like a trash can in Houston in 2018 as the league hit .331 off his fastball, but last season, it hit just .259. He had better command of the pitch, which then let him get ahead and just obliterate batters with the slider as the league hit .124 off his slider last season, a pitch he throws roughly half the time. It would not surprise me if he throws even more sliders this year; it is such a good pitch, he can throw it anytime he wants to in the count. 

Toronto is unlikely to win 90 games, but it's not impossible for Giles to do what Kirby Yates did just last season. In each of the last four seasons, one closer pulls off the 40/100 feat. Giles has the stuff to be that guy in 2020.