Collette Calls: 2020 NL West Bold Predictions

Greetings from an Amtrak Viewliner Roomette as I head back to Charlotte from Tuscaloosa. I came down here so I could say I've been on the campuses of both recognized 2017 national champion college football teams as well as to see one of my best friends get married to someone he very much deserves. I decided to wrap up my vacation from work by taking the train for the trip rather than driving the eight hours each way, which ended up being a wise decision given the terrible weather in the Southeast the last few days.

It is a beautiful day as I ride home on the rails. I used the time down to get caught up on my real job riding coach, but decided to upgrade my ride home for a great price for a private room that also includes two meals in the dining car, free coffee and water and one alcoholic beverage at each meal. It also gives me enough space to spread out and work on this piece, which I need because there is much pressure on me to deliver in this particular installment of this column. I hit on seven of my 10 NL West Bold Predictions last year, which was my best performance in any division last season. 

Before you dive into the 10 predictions below, please read the premise of this entire annual series from the most recent installment.

Arizona

Kevin Cron will be the more productive of the Cron brothers. He is 43rd overall at first base with an ADP of 447, with a range from 325 to 580. Cron has a few things working against him. Primarily, the fact the NL does not incorporate the DH, so the club really only has room for him or Christian Walker. Cron has minor league options whereas Walker is out of them, which is how Walker ended up in Arizona after the Orioles waived him (smooth move)! Walker went from nothing to something last year, which could be possible with Cron if opportunity arises whether by Walker having a sophomore slump or another Jake Lamb injury opening time at third base. If this situation sounds familiar, it should be when you read Walker's player outlook from 2019 that I authored:

Walker is 28 years old and has managed 99 plate appearances at the big-league level over the past four seasons, owning a .163/.226/.388 line for his efforts. Meanwhile, he has amassed 2,282 plate appearances in Triple-A and has a .279/.344/.494 line there. This is the tale of a Quad-A player in that he has been able to hang around on the 40-man roster for this long, but has not yet had any opportunity to stick in the majors. Now that Paul Goldschmidt is no longer in Arizona, perhaps Walker will get a chance to show he can hit big-league pitching, though the Diamondbacks are expected to slot Jake Lamb in as the starter at first base to begin the season. Walker is out of options, so he has to make the 25-man roster or be exposed to waivers and take his Triple-A mashing to another organization.

Lamb was hurt early and it created the opportunity for Walker, which he made the most of. Cron has options, but an opportunity could arise for him as he plays both corner positions but has done more at first base. Cron has a history of mashing in the minor leagues but has really flourished in the PCL at Reno with a .319/.405/.651 line over 815 plate appearances. Last season at the major league level, his average exit velocity on flyballs and line drives (min. 20 batted ball events) was the 10th highest in the league. 

The older Cron likely has a starting position at first base in Detroit this year, so he has the early leg up on this, but the kid brother could be the one to get at the end of the day. C.J. has an ADP of 280 and has been productive the last two seasons with his opportunities in Tampa Bay and Minnesota. Kevin just needs the same kind of chance, so hopefully he doesn't get stuck in the same role that his older brother did the first few years of his career in Anaheim.

Luke Weaver finishes the season as a top-50 pitcher. He is 70th off the board with an ADP of 183 and a range from 152 to 230. Weaver, like Tyler Glasnow, missed a large chunk of time with forearm tightness in the middle of the season. Unlike Glasnow, Weaver only came back and pitched in one game before shutting it down at the end of the season. 

Weaver found new success in Arizona with career lows in opponents' batting average, WHIP and ERA. The knock on Weaver was that he's a two-pitch starter (fastball, changeup) with a below-average third pitch and was left in games too long and exposed to the times-through-the-order penalty. Last season, he made improvements with his third pitch, reshaping his curveball while also taking steps forward with a cutter to give him a more well-rounded repertoire. Those changes helped him change his fortunes when he got deeper into lineups, taking his opponent's batting line from .333/.405/.593 in 2018 to .250/.304/.423 last season.

That kind of process improvement is how a player breaks out, and if not for the injury last year, Weaver was on track for a big year. The health concern is suppressing his ADP, and early drafters can take advantage of it. At least those willing to stomach the risk of that forearm tightness being a thing of the past and just his body getting used to him throwing pitches differently. Two seasons ago, my bold prediction was Weaver would not be a top-50 pitcher (and I was right). I'm changing course in 2020 because he has changed, and I'm now on board with the dreamWeaver. 

Colorado

Sam Hilliard is a top-50 outfielder. Hilliard is the 81st outfielder off the board with an ADP of 303 and a range of 258 to 351. The easy comp for Hilliard would be to call him a better version of David Peralta given both began their baseball careers as pitchers and then transitioned to the field. We know he has the arm to play right field, but he also has surprising speed for a guy 6-foot-4, 240. Maybe it is only surprising to me because I have those same measurements, but would barely beat out Bartolo Colon in a 40-yard sprint. In all seriousness, it is rather amazing that a player his size has 93rd percentile sprint speed. 

Hilliard has used a power/speed combo throughout the minors, stealing more than 30 bases twice, and at least 20 in each of the last four seasons. He had a monster year between the PCL and Coors with 42 homers, 114 RBIs and 122 runs scored last season. He has had a below-average strikeout rate throughout his minor league career, but improved that in the majors last season. He had the same average exit velocity as Tommy Pham last year, but his size and skills remind me more of a different former Rays outfielder: Steven Souza Jr. In 2017, Souza hit 30 homers, stole 16 bases and hit .239 with a 29 percent strikeout rate as a full-time right fielder. We could give Hilliard a Coors Field bump on average and see him challenge that line with a .250 average if he were to get a full-time job and keep it.  Knowing the Rockies, they'll actually sign Souza to play right field and just block Hilliard for another year. 

The challenge in Colorado has always been what upper management will do to block younger players. Hillard has the best skills to play right field on the team, but if he has a poor spring in Arizona, he could open on the bench or back in the minors and take too long to get back into the fold to produce at the level needed to make this prediction come true. There is a lot of risk with Hilliard's profile, but he could bring quite the reward if the production matches the potential in Denver.

Jairo Diaz is a top-100 pitcher. Diaz is 144th on the overall pitcher list with an ADP of 377 and a range from 292 to 482. Last year, this bold prediction was used to declare a similar ranking for Scott Oberg because there were warning signs to fade Wade Davis. While Oberg didn't get many saves, his across-the-board production was strong with six wins, five saves and strong ratios. Oberg enters the season as the favorite to be the closer, especially after the new contract extension, which gave him a guaranteed $13M for the next three years with a club option. That said, statistically he was not that much better than Diaz last season:

In fact, the argument could be made that Diaz is the better solution given he is better against lefties while Oberg trends more as a specialist to get righties out in medium- and high-leverage situations. 

Both pitchers have injury histories; Oberg's repeat blood clot issue is more recent while Diaz has had TJ and forearm issues previously. Oberg had the closer role in August before the blood clot shut him down while Diaz went five for six in the saves department to end the season. There is a 90-pick difference in their ADPs, but the reality is they could easily flip spots if Bud Black were to give Diaz the nod tomorrow. 

Los Angeles

A.J. Pollock gets 550 plate appearances. This is bold in that Pollock has only once eclipsed 485 plate appearances in his career, and that was in the his magical 2015 season. Pollock has above-average offensive skills across the board, and his 2019 exit velocity was in the top 25th percentile. He can still move it as his sprint speed is in that same percentile. 

The last three seasons, he has been rather consistent:

The inconsistency has been games played, as back-to-back seasons of 460-plus plate appearances in 2017 and 2018 are bookended by seasons with fewer than 90 games. Keep in mind, all of this has come around him dealing with elbow, thumb and groin injuries the last few seasons. He posted $15 and $16 values in 2017 and 2018 in the limited playing time; 550 plate appearances would lead to him pushing $25 in those same standard mixed-league formats. 

His ADP is 233 with a range of 174 to 277. That ranks him 61st among outfielders, one spot behind his much younger teammate Alex Verdugo. Pollock was playing under the pressure of the first year on a big contract in a new place; look for a rebound in 2020.

Tony Gonsolin is a top-100 pitcher. He is 134th on the pitcher list with an ADP of 356 and a range from 289 to 436. He has a four-pitch repertoire, and three are graded as above-average pitches by the reports from FanGraphs, StatCast and Baseball America. Most prospects have two such pitches, and he has three, with an average slider and average command of the pitches. 

In his 40 innings as a major leaguer, he used that repertoire to generate a whiff rate eight percent above the league average. The deep repertoire helps keep hitters off balance and has helped him limit the hard contact that impacts so many other young pitchers who come up and rely heavily on fastballs. 

The depth chart in front of Gonsolin is the immovable objects of Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler, but nobody else projects for more than 150 innings. Even Kershaw is not immune to issues with injury, so there should be enough opportunities for Gonsolin to pitch even if he does not earn a spot in the rotation out of camp. Dustin May is getting all of the attention in drafts going 110 spots in front of Gonsolin (94th overall pitcher), but I'm betting on Tony G to be the better return on investment.

San Diego

Trent Grisham is a top-50 outfielder. His ADP is 285 as the 75th outfielder off the board with a range from 226 to 333. Roster Resource projects him to hit fifth in the lineup, but I think he is much more suited for the second spot in the lineup. San Diego had a lot of offensive talent last year but struggled to get on base and finished 26th overall in on-base percentage. It should not be lost on fantasy owners that the Padres acquired both Tommy Pham and Grisham in deals this winter, two players with track records (albeit from different tracks) of getting on base. Pham has done his at the major league level, while Grisham has a .370 career OBP in the minors littered with double-digit walk rates at every phase of his career. 

The projected lineup for the Padres has Fernando Tatis Jr., Pham and Manny Machado at the top three spots, which would leave the lineup susceptible to an opener to begin the game. That trio of righties could be broken up by inserting Grisham in the two spot and sliding everyone else down a spot in the lineup. Tatis had a .379 OBP last season fueled not by a strong walk rate, but a very high hit rate, which speaks to the 56-point difference between his actual .317 batting average and his .259 expected batting average. Should Tatis struggle, Grisham could move down the lineup, which would allow Grisham to move up and hit in front of Pham and Machado, putting him in position to blow away his projection of 63 runs. 

Garrett Richards finishes outside the top-150 pitchers. Richards had Tommy John surgery in July 2018 and came back last season to throw three innings in the final month of the season. He has thrown roughly 140 innings the last four seasons after the career season he had in 2015 and is now about where Yu Darvish was this time last year. Darvish was much better than Richards when both were healthy, and we saw how badly Darvish struggled the first few months before finally finding his stuff in the summer. 

Richards has a current ADP of 292 as the 113th pitcher off the board with a range from 247 to 339. He is being drafted in front of the likes of Reynaldo Lopez, Jeff Samardzija and even Chris Bassitt,  who is a full year ahead of the same timeline Richards is on. Peak Richards was fun to own, and his historical groundball rates and low home run rates are certainly attractive in this day and age. That said, we really have not seen him pitch enough in the fun-ball era to declare he has some magical power to keep the pall in the yard with the newer baseballs in play. The only season he had a high home run rate was ironically the one season of the last five in which power went down year over year (2018). 

There are established pitchers who are being faded for a guy that has thrown 85 innings the last two seasons. It was one thing when he had a very good defensive infield behind him in Anaheim with his high groundball rate, but the San Diego infield is not that infield, and Richards is going to struggle with his command early on. It is not impossible to see him with an ERA near 5.00 and a WHIP higher than 1.40 by Memorial Day. In fact, I almost expect that to be the case. 

San Francisco

Mauricio Dubon will get that $10 value in NL-only leagues in 2020. I made this same prediction for him last year when he was with Milwaukee, but the playing time and production did not materialize as Milwaukee was a competitive team. Enter San Francisco, which is in full rebuild mode. Dubon may have to hit down in the lineup, but there is no real threat to his playing time at second base unless Zack Cozart strikes the fountain of youth. Dubon's ADP is 319 with a range from 227 to 395 as the 31st second baseman off the board.

Dubon has a career batting line of .300/.348/.426 in more than 600 minor league games; getting on base and hitting for average is what he does. A major knee injury in 2018 cut into his speed as his string of 30-plus steal seasons from 2015-2017 came to a halt, but he did steal 13 bases between Triple-A and the majors last season. In 2017, Joe Panik hit 10 homers, scored 60 runs, drove in 53, swiped four bases and hit .288 and earned $11 in NL-only standard leagues. Dubon is capable of meeting all of that production, if not exceeding it in steals. He is the type of player a rebuilding team should be playing as much as possible to see if he is a key part of the future or just another spare part of it. 

Logan Webb is a top-175 pitcher. He has an ADP of 537 as the 220th pitcher off the board and a range from 439 to 633. Webb's careeer has been all over the place, from Tommy John surgery in 2016, to impressive relief work, then working as a promising starter and then a PED suspension early last year. Around all of that, he has a good fastball, an excellent slider and a good changeup with the type of inconsistent command one would expect from someone with a major injury and suspension in the last four years that lost significant game reps.

He had eight starts in the majors last year with an above-average strikeout rate, but command issues around those strikeouts which led to some predictable pitching and the ratio damage that comes along with that. The two-seamer movement and the better than average changeup puts him ahead of some younger pitchers, but none of it will matter if the command doesn't become more consistent. The repetition has been tough to come by around the rollercoaster of his health, availability and roles in the organization, but the pieces are there for him to become a good pitcher in the back half of a major league rotation. I believe he can be a top-200 pitcher this year, but a move from 220 to 200 for a pitcher isn't bold enough, hence the bump to the next level.