Collette Calls: AL Central 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 Central Bold Predictions, click here. 

Chicago

Yasmani Grandal leads all catchers in fantasy dollars earned in 2020. He is the third catcher off the board, going 95th overall with a range of 63 to 140 in ADP. Grandal could not have picked a better landing spot for the next phase of his career. He is slated to hit cleanup in a friendly park in between Jose Abreu and Edwin Encarnacion or even Eloy Jimenez in a talented Chicago lineup. 

We  all know how outstanding Grandal is as a receiver behind the plate, which means he will likely get the Salvador Perez-like schedule of catching six days a week and maximizing his playing time. This team employed James McCann and Yonder Alonso as its primary cleanup hitters last season, so Grandal's abilities are a significant upgrade. The team also had Leury Garcia leading off 134 times in 2019, and he is now projected to hit ninth in the lineup, if he can even keep his job and not lose it to Nick Madrigal. Grandal has never driven in or scored 80 runs in a season, but that should change in Chicago with the lineup he will have in front of him.

Grandal has the hard-contact ability and the surrounding cast to put up 30 homers, 100 RBIs and 90 runs season along with his outstanding defensive work. This will be his third organization in three seasons, and he showed last year in Milwaukee he did not need much time to acclimate to his new surroundings. He will also gets 36-38 games against the Kansas City and Detroit pitching staffs to help pad his stats. 

Michael Kopech is not a top 150-pitcher. Kopech is being taken as the 105th pitcher off the board with an ADP of 269 and a range of 185 to 353. Kopech's last major league pitch was thrown on Sept. 5, 2018. Prior to that injury, he had thrown little more than 140 innings of some impressive baseball with tons of strikeouts along with some walks mostly in Triple-A that season. 

I brought this up as a reason for fading Lance McCullers in my AL West predictions, but the track record for pitchers bouncing back to previous productive levels is not exactly great. Five pitchers managed to throw more than 125 innings of baseball their first full season back at the big league level after Tommy John surgery, and each saw his strikeout rate dip. Let's give Kopech 125 innings of work in 2020; they will need to be 125 outstanding innings to justify taking him nearly 60 picks ahead of Jeff Samardzija or 70 picks ahead of Chris Bassitt, who himself is a full 18 months ahead of the schedule Kopech is on in his recovery from the same surgery.

Read all the stories you want about Kopech entering the season without any restrictions on his workload, but do not believe it. He will be 24 and no sane organization is going to let this kid throw a huge workload in his first season back from the injury. His command is going to be slow to come back, so his workload could be limited by his inefficiency early on, but I firmly believe he is being overdrafted this winter.

Cleveland

Greg Allen steals 30 bases. Oscar Mercado has earned the everyday job in center field. The corner outfield spots are up for grabs, but Allen would appear to have the leg up on the majority of the playing time in right field. He has the best throwing arm of the rest of the group and can serve as the strong side of a platoon as he hits righties better than lefties. He has admittedly not done much in part-time duty the last two seasons, but did steal 21 bases in limited playing time in 2018 while falling well short of that number last season in similar playing time. 

We often see players have a type of breakout in their third season at the big league level, and Allen has the hit tool and the speed to have a breakout as a bottom of the order hitter who can run. Ideally, the club limits his appearances as a right-handed hitter to the most desperate of pinch-hitting situations, or eliminates it altogether given he was 43 for 212 (.202) against southpaws last year between Triple-A and the majors. It would make sense for him to have the strong side of a platoon and let Jordan Luplow or Delino DeShields Jr. take the at-bats against lefties.

Allen swiped 18 baes between Triple-A and the majors last season, and 33 the year before in the same conditions. Given how tough the stolen base market has become, 30 is the new 40 in steals and Allen has the skills to do it with enough playing time and pinch-running appearances later in games he does not start. His ADP is 701 with a range from 557 to 750 and has only been taken in 43 of 61 NFBC drafts. He is free help in the late rounds that will return positive value in deep mixed leagues or normal AL-only leagues.

Shane Bieber is not a top-20 pitcher. Bieber is the eighth pitcher off the board with an ADP of 27 and a range from 19 to 36. This prediction may feel a little like being the guy who did not vote for Derek Jeter so he could tell his friends he was the guy who kept him from going in unanimously, but hear me out. 

Yes, Bieber had the fifth-best K-BB% of all qualified starters last year at 26 percent trailing only the first- and second-place finishers for the Cy Young in each league. His swinging strike rate, 14 percent, was also in the top 10 overall in that same group. However, Bieber's Z-Contact% — his contact rate on pitches thrown in the strike zone, is very close to the middle of the pack at 27th out of 62 qualified pitchers. His 85.8 percent Z-Contact% in 2019 puts him in line with Kyle Hendricks, Merrill Kelly, Patrick Corbin and Jeff Samardzija. 

The R2 on the correlation between Z-Contact% and SwSTR% is .72, so it is strong. My friend Alex Fast put the tweet below together after hearing me discuss my favorite pitching metrics on the Sleeper and The Bust podcast:

The highlighted dot on the plot below; that's where Bieber falls:

He is a few clicks above the line, meaning his SwSTR% is very much dependent on him staying ahead in the count as batters hit him much better when he has to come in the zone. When Bieber was ahead in the count in 2019, he had an 18 percent SwSTR% and an 84 percent Z-Contact%. In all other counts, his Z-Contact% held steady, but his SwSTR% dropped to 13 percent. When he was up in the count, he held batters to a .176 average with a 1.99 ERA and 0.62 WHIP. When he was even or down in the count, batters hit .303 against him, and he had a 5.31 ERA and 1.73 WHIP in those situations. As long as Bieber can execute his pitches with excellent command, his chances of being a top-10 pitcher are good. If it falters, his super powers lose their luster quite a bit. We cannot forget to factor in a better lineup in the division on the south side of Chicago and an even more robust lineup in Minnesota as well. Bieber will have only so many matchups against Kansas City and Detroit. 

I'm also concerned with the fact Bieber has thrown 408 innings the last two season of professional baseball at his age 24 and 25 seasons. It feels a bit like Carlos Martinez, who threw a similar number innings at the same ages, and has had issues since. Simply put, this has been a lot of words to say I'm zigging while the crowd is clearly zagging toward Bieber Fever. 

Detroit

JaCoby Jones finishes the season as a top-80 outfielder. His ADP of 516 has him as the 121st outfielder off the board with a range from 348 to 671. JaCoby Jones's average exit velocity in 2019 tied with the likes of J.D. Martinez, Juan Soto and Bryce Harper. His expected stats say he left a bit on the table, but that sometimes happen with Detroit statistics due to the configuration of Comerica Park and its deeper power alleys. That said, Jones makes hard contact and Detroit will continue to allow him to play as their depth chart doesn't present many better options.

2020 will be his third full season in the big leagues, and he showed some improvement last year in his plate discipline. A full-time job could produce a 20-20 season, and he may even lead off and could stand to see playing time that blows past his projections this year. It bears repeating — there is little to challenge him on the depth chart. I made a similar prediction using Daz Cameron last year that never materialized, but Jones has a starting job and little competition to take the job away from him.

Matthew Boyd is a top-40 pitcher.  Last year, I predicted Boyd would be a top-100 pitcher, and that paid off. I'm going even further this year. This prediction is based on the fact I fully expect the Tigers to trade Boyd to a contender with a deep farm system this season. Boyd is a free agent after the 2021 season, and this is the perfect time to maximize his trade value — between now and the July trade deadline. The Tigers do not need to wait until the deadline to move him and should not hesitate to make a move once someone has met their asking price. He has little chance of making all this comes true if he stays in Detroit all season as they are destined to lose 100-plus games, meaning Boyd would have to pull a 1972 Steve Carlton like-season out of the air. 

There are three metrics I like to look at when evaluating pitchers:

• Z-Contact% - can the pitcher limit contact on what he throws in the strikezone?
• SwSTR% - can the pitcher miss bats?
• K-BB% - the combination is better than either stat in isolation

For all pitchers who qualified for the ERA title last year (>= 162 IP), Boyd had the 13th-lowest Z-Contact%, the eighth-best SwSTR% as well as the eighth best K-BB% in that group. Yet, he finished the year with a 4.56 ERA and allowed 39 home runs. Boyd is a flyball pitcher, but the 18 percent HR/FB was a career-high and just another example of the bouncy ball from 2019. 

The expected stats say he pitched better than his final outcomes, and some of his hidden indicators were already pretty darn good. StatCast says his closest match based on velocity and movement of pitchers is Patrick Corbin. Boyd is the 62nd pitcher off the board with an ADP of 167; Corbin is the 13th pitcher off the board with an ADP of 48. If we put Boyd on a contender, he easily jumps up the chart here and has the stuff to make even more noise than he did in 2019.

Kansas City

Nicky Lopez is a top-30 second baseman. Lopez is 2B-49 with an ADP of 540 and a range from 399 to 636. Lopez is projected to hit ninth in the Kansas City lineup, making him a second leadoff hitter for the talent at the top of the lineup. Lopez had a career on-base percentage of .379 in his three seasons at the high-profile program of Creighton. Lopez played four seasons of minor league baseball and had a .378 OBP in nearly 1,600 plate appearances. His major league OBP in his rookie season was roughly 100 points lower than those levels. Stuff happens.

Lopez lacks power, but he can make a lot of contact, has the speed to leg out hits on bad contact and stole anywhere from 15 to 24 bases in previous seasons before 2019. Lopez's defensive chops should keep him in the lineup allowing him to do his thing toward the bottom of the lineup and then running in front of Whit Merrifield and Adalberto Mondesi at the plate. Average and steals is the potential, because the RBIs could be comically low given who is projected to hit in front of him, and every homer above one should be considered gravy. 

Richard Lovelady finishes the season with at least 10 saves. There is no way the Royals should have Ian Kennedy on this roster after the trade deadline. Kennedy is in the final year of his deal, and the Royals would be idiots to keep him and give him a qualifying offer. The 30 saves and surprising year Kennedy had in relief was fun, but the show should be moving onto another stop sometime this summer. Enter Lovelady.

Lovelady throws in the mid 90s with some funk, a slider and a changeup and has shown the ability to get both righties and lefties out. Here he is getting Alex Bregman to swing at a pitch where Bregman clearly missed the signal from the dugout. The struggles in his rookie year were not terribly surprising, but the expected stats for him are interesting given there is a 98-point gap between his horrendous .393 wOBA and his .295 xwOBA. The league hit .345 against him, but his expected batting average was .249? That .412 BABIP is the stuff nightmares are made of, as is his 61 percent LOB%. 

You'll notice I don't list his ADP here, and that is not an oversight. He does not have one as he has yet to be drafted in any NFBC league this year. Scott Barlow is the name people are grabbing, but Lovelady has some intriguing expected stats, which makes throwing a late reserve pick on him in a deep AL league or a final five pick in a draft champion format intriguing.

Minnesota

Josh Donaldson is a top-5 MVP candidate for the American League. Take everything I said about Grandal going to Chicago and take it up a notch with Donaldson. The Bringer of Purple Rain should be in a for a huge year hitting cleanup in a deadly lineup if everyone is healthy as he will either hit third or fourth for a Minnesota lineup that will score runs in bunches.

Donaldson has just once driven in more than 100 runs in a season, but that could be eclipsed before Labor Day if he remains healthy this season and the team performs as projected. Quite honestly, anything less than 30 homers and 200 runs plus RBIs would be a disappointing return for Donaldson. He makes some of the hardest contact in baseball and moves to a division whose pitching should be a step back from the overall quality he saw in the NL East. 

Donaldson's ADP, influenced by his unemployment most of winter, is 107 with a range from 64 to 152. He is the 15th third baseman off the board, which speaks to how deep the position is this year, and just how much of a bargain he is. He will be a top-10 third baseman in drafts by March, if not sooner. 

Lewis Thorpe finishes the season as one of the four most valuable Minnesota starters.

Jose Berrios and Jake Odorizzi are the only two Minnesota starters going in the top-300 picks. Michael Pineda, who begins the season finishing out his 2019 suspension, is next followed by Rich Hill 100 picks later. That is how suspect the Minnesota starting rotation is. There are options, and let's not even pretend Hill and Homer Bailey are going to make it through the season injury free. Even with Bailey, his K-BB% makes him a challenging play given the rest of his skills are at best league-average.

Thorpe is the 13th Minnesota pitcher going in drafts with an ADP of 716, going as early as 381 when his mother took him in a draft, or as late as 747 when he has managed to go in a draft. He was the 17th-ranked prospect in the system heading into 2019 and has moved into the top 10 of the system heading into 2020. The lefty possesses a low-90s fastball, two breaking balls and a changeup giving him a three-pitch approach against lefties and all four pitches against righties. 

There should be opportunities for Thorpe to make and stick in this rotation, which should provide him with plenty of run support for him to inflate his fantasy value with wins. He struck out 150 batters in 124 innings last season, but was too hittable as a rookie with 38 base hits in 27.2 innings of work around his 31 strikeouts of big league batters. He has struck out more than a batter per inning at Double-A, Triple-A and the majors despite not having the big fastball. He lost a lot of development time earlier in his career due to injuries, but he is succeeding in phases of the game while honing his craft. I believe he will take a step forward in 2020, and it will cost you nothing to see if I am right.