Collette Calls: AL Central Bold Predictions

The premise for bold predictions remains the same: they need to be grounded in some form of reality. When I am looking at the numbers behind bold predictions, I am looking at something that is the 10 percent area of likely outcomes for that batter or pitcher. They've either had to do the performance before, or have the hidden metrics in their profile that point to something good or bad about to come. I'm not going out there predicting an MVP award for Russell Martin, but you're damn right I did a victory lap when Christian Yelich won the MVP last year because that was my prediction. In fact, I won a prediction contest against 120 other national baseball writers hosted by Mark Simon of ESPN on the strength of being the only person that had Yelich on his pre-season MVP ballot, and I picked him first. That choice pushed me over the top for the victory.

The ultimate goal of these predictions is to get you to re-think your own evaluation of these players. I'm looking for outcomes that are outside the mainstream predictions. It is why I did not put Nick Pivetta down as a sleeper for 2019, because he is wide awake on the market. It is why I went the other way with Nate Eovaldi because everyone else loves him this year after what he did in the postseason.

If you care to revisit my bold predictions for the AL Central from 2018, you can read them here. I did well with Reynaldo Lopez, Mike Clevinger, Mike Fiers and Lucas Duda, got close with Francisco Lindor, but did poorly with Charlie Tilson, Mikie Mahtook, Nate Karns, Jorge Polanco and Stephen Gonzalez.

Chicago White Sox

Jose Abreu is a top-60 player. At publication time, Abreu's ADP sits at 82. He is coming off his worst season at the big-league level as he missed about a month with a testicular torsion injury that limited him to 128 games. It was the first time he did not drive in 100 runs in his career, and the 22 homers represent the lowest homer output of his five-year big league career.

Abreu's numbers in 2018 started off well, but then a massive slump in the summer pulled them down.

Everything about Abreu's expected contact says, on the whole, he is the same guy he has always been.

I don't know about you, but that looks like the same guy we consistently drafted in the top 40 to 50 picks the last few years. Heck, this time last year, his ADP was 39th and now he is nearly 50 spots lower? Hello buying opportunity! There is nothing in the surface stats to make you run away, and the StatCast data tells us the concern is much ado about nothing. Abreu will be spending more time at DH this season with Yonder Alonso in the fold, which should allow him to stay healthy and resume his regular production.

Reynaldo Lopez finishes outside the top-125 pitchers. Last year, I strongly recommended Lopez by predicting he would be the most valuable pitcher on the staff. That prediction was based on the revitalization of his curveball after some finger struggles with the pitch in 2017. This year, I'm suggesting you keep Lopez at arm's length from your roster because I think he is in for a regression this year much like the one Jose Quintana went through in 2018. In 2017, Quintana was abnormally lucky with the times through the order penalty and had the 25th-best wOBA of 140 qualified starting pitchers the third time through the order. In 2018, Quintana went the other way and had the 11th-highest wOBA of 131 qualified pitchers. Conversely, Lopez had the 11th-lowest wOBA the third time through the order:

Look at the names around Lopez on that list and decide if he truly belongs there. The StatCast data gives you a nice backstop on which to base your decision:

Maybe Lopez just got hot in those games and really had everything working so well that hitters were truly befuddled with his stuff. More likely, is he had a lot of batted ball fortune go his way that time through the order as the quality of contact says Lopez's actual outcomes could have been much worse. People can crap on The Opener all they want, but Lopez needs a quicker hook or a later start in his appearances because there is no way he can keep up that kind of fortune deeper into games. His ERA by trip through the order last season? 4.02, 4.65 and 2.47. It doesn't take too long to figure out which is the outlier.

Cleveland

Jake Bauers finishes outside the top 350 by R$. His current ADP is 247 in drafts and is going as the 24th first baseman off the board ahead. What you should be asking yourself is why the most notoriously cheap team in the league who is constantly hoarding players under multiple years of player control traded away a guy after his first year in the big leagues, and threw in an extra $5M to the team they gave him to?

Bauers got off to a hot start, and the then league figured out how to get him out and made him look terrible for most of the final stretch of the season.

Tampa Bay clearly got spooked and traded him, along with the cash, for Yandy Diaz with the hopes the elder Diaz can get more loft to match his impressive exit velocity and be more productive. Bauers has the benefit of being eligible at both first base and the outfield for 2019, but he was very much exposed last year. This could work out like Wil Myers, where the player takes off a bit with the new home, or Bauers could be relegated to the bench by midseason. Having watched enough of his at bats in 2018, I lean to the latter scenario.

Brad Hand is a top-20 overall pitcher. He is currently 31st off the board in NFBC drafts with an ADP of 89 and is the fifth closer off the board behind Edwin Diaz, Blake Treinen, Craig Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen. Hand is the perfect recipe of closer with a high strikeout rate, pitching behind a very solid rotation and a team offense that is not overall strong and thus will keep the teams in many close games. His opponents' exit velo, expected batting average, hard hit percentage and strikeout rates were each in the top tenth percentile for relievers in 2018.

Let's remember for one second that Hand was RELEASED by the Marlins after the 2015 season when he had a 6.5 K/9. Last season, Hand's final K/9 was more than double what it was in 2015 as he has increased that metric in each of the past four seasons. There has been one closer in each of the past three seasons who has both struck out at least 100 batters and saved 40 games: Kenley Jansen in both 2016 and 2017 and Edwin Diaz this past season. My bet is Hand is that guy in 2019.

Detroit Tigers

Daz Cameron finishes as a top-100 outfielder. He is currently ranked 145th on the outfield board at NFBC with an ADP of 672. To be fair, there is not much to be excited about with the Detroit lineup, which is why I am going with their prospect. Castellanos should be traded sooner rather than later, and neither Mikie Mahtook nor JaCoby Jones is good enough to block anyone. Simply put, there is room for rapid advancement.

Enter Cameron. He grades out as an everyday major leaguer by scouts and hit .285/.367/.470 in Double-A last year before a late season promotion to Triple-A that cooled off his numbers. All of that came in his age 21 season, where most of his age peers were stuck in A-ball somewhere. Cameron could return to Erie, or Toledo, but still only be one step away from the big league level. If he starts hot out of the gate in the minors, the club could decide to bring him up and put Mahtook or Jones on the bench where they belong and let Cameron develop at the major league level. He stole 32 bases in 2017 and 24 across three levels last year. The power really is not there right now, but he could steal 20-plus bases at the big league level in 2019 if he gets enough playing time. There is little on the 25-man roster that should prevent an aggressive promotion.

Matthew Boyd is a top 100 pitcher. He is currently 120th off the board for all pitchers in NFBC, behind the likes of Dellin Betances, Luke Weaver and Dereck Rodriguez, and just ahead of Adam Ottavino, Touki Toussaint and teammate Michael Fulmer. Boyd increased his strikeout rate by four percentage points last season, and, more important, jumped his K-BB% nearly six percentage points. Any time we see a pitcher increase their strikeouts while reducing their walks, we should take notice. Boyd finished the season with a 1.16 WHIP, but the 4.39 ERA was hurtful thanks to 27 home runs.

Boyd is a flyball pitcher, so the home runs can be a risk for him, but there were some oddities in his 2018 numbers. Boyd faced 155 lefties last year, held them to a .212 average, a .258 on-base percentage, a 23 percent K-BB% and a .280 weighted on base average, yet had an ERA of 5.95 against lefties because 56 percent of them came around to score? You have to figure that gets better just by simple regression while Boyd also continues to improve against righties, which he faces 80 percent of the time. He closed out 2018 in a rough patch allowing multiple home runs in five of his final eight outings, but there appears to be some room for profit at his current price.

Kansas City Royals

Adalberto Mondesi is not a top-100 player. This one may come back to bite me hard as the Javier Baez prediction did last year, but I wrote an entire piece in January stating my concerns about Mondesi for 2019. I still believe everything I said in that piece and have been drafting accordingly as Mondesi has made his way on exactly zero of my real or mock drafts to date. We're simply asking him to be the second coming of a young Alfonso Soriano when he could end up being another young Tim Anderson. Simply put, I'm allowing others to take this risk on and aiming for more proven track records and safer foundational skills.

Josh Staumont leads the team in saves. This bullpen looks awful on paper, and Brad Boxberger nor Wily Peralta are good permanent solutions to this problem. The club is rebuilding, and neither guy is someone to move forward with, so they should consider giving kids a chance. Enter Staumont.

Scouts have graded his both his fastball and curveball 60s on the 20/80 scale and give his changeup a 50 grade. The problem below-average command of those offerings. That alone should keep him in the pen as they work on his good stuff to get the most out of it. Staumont has faced nearly 700 batters in Triple-A the last two seasons and has struck out 29 percent of them, but has also walked 17 percent of the others. He worked 74.1 relief innings in the PCL last season and allowed just four homers, which is nearly award-worth in an of itself. This is truly a dart throw because I do not really like anyone in Kansas City this year because the team is going to be bad and thus limit the value of its pitchers. That said, in a deep AL-Only league with a sizable bench roster, Staumont will be someone I consider grabbing with my last pick. He has the stuff, and if they can do something to make his command better, he could take a rapid step forward in the bullpen.

Minnesota Twins

Jorge Polanco is a top-175 player. His current ADP is 212 and he is the 22nd shortstop off the board. He has gone as high as 131 in drafts and as low as 321. The obvious excitement around him is he is hitting leadoff for a rather potent top half of the Minnesota lineup and folks are hoping that 2017 was real and not all about the PEDs. The expected stats tell us that what he did in 2018 after the long layoff from suspension was real as there is nary a difference between his actual and expected outcomes. His expected stats were roughly 10 percent better than the league average.

The area that can hold this back is if Polanco continues his struggles from the right side of the plate. He is a switch hitter, but has been decidedly terrible from the right side with a .280 wOBA and a 70 wRC+ (100 is league average) the last two seasons. Meanwhile, he has a .338 wOBA and a 110 wRC+ from the left side of the plate. There is much volatility at the shortstop position after you get past the top six to eight players. You do not have to reach to get Polanco, but the closer you get to pick 200, you should consider rostering him. He should get all of the leadoff assignments against righty pitchers this season, of which there are many in the American League Central.

Jake Odorizzi is a top-100 overall pitcher. He is currently 142nd by ADP with an ADP of .384, going as high as 278 (not me) and a low of 486. The problem with Odorizzi is simple: he has a very good high-spin rate fastball and a very good splangeup. The problem is nothing else he throws is even average. At one point, he had a decent curveball, but he does not throw it as much as he once did. Odorizzi piles up pitch counts due to foul balls off that fastball and changeup, and it is nothing for him to be in excess of 80 pitches sometime into the fourth inning. Somehow, Paul Molitor struggled with this last year and continually left Odorizzi into games a third time through the order. The table below shows the damage of doing that:

Had Odorizzi not been allowed to face a single batter a third time in a start last year, he would have pitched 136 innings with a 3.04 ERA, a 1.18 WHIP, held batters to a .217 batting average, eight home runs and a 15 percent K-BB%. That's a solid pitcher! Instead, he was left out there to throw an additional 28.1 innings and got blasted in them. Sure, the Twins would have lost 26 strikeouts by pulling him early, but opponents hit .331/.434/.725 against him the third time through. A team's worst reliever could do better than that. New skipper Rocco Baldelli has had first hand experience watching how to fix this the past few seasons in Tampa Bay, so it would be shocking to see him continue the same mistakes of his predecessor. Then again, Kevin Cash was just as guilty in 2017 as he allowed Odorizzi to face 120 batters a third time in a game, but that 2017 bullpen was really bad. The Minnesota pen is in a better place and Odorizzi, managed more carefully, presents a profit where he is being taken.