Collette Calls: NL 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 NL Central from 2018, read them here. I went 4 for 10 in my picks last year, doing very well with Christian Yelich, Jhoulys Chacin, Jose Martinez and Luke Weaver with swings-and-misses on Brandon Morrow, Scott Schebler, Luis Castillo, Colin Moran, Joe Musgrove and especially Javy Baez.

Chicago Cubs

Willson Contreras is not a top-10 catcher. He is currently fifth at the position by NFBC ADP, and I'm simply not buying it. He is in that cluster of catchers just before the cavernous dropoff at the position:

•Wilson Ramos – 134
•Willson Contreras – 138
•Yadier Molina – 142
•Buster Posey – 143
•Yasmani Grandal – 145
•Yan Gomes – 230

The appeal for Contreras is obvious as he is just one season removed from a strong two-year run at the plate. Even last year, as bad as it was, he was still league average relative to his position. My dislike of Contreras is transparent in the StatCast data:

The only apparent injury he had last year was a hamstring issue, but he still had the service time of an everyday catcher last year. He simply did not make good contact with the baseball last year, and it was quite noticeable in his expected weighted on base average on contact (xWOBACON). It just did not sizzle last year at .323. His numbers cratered in the second half until September pitching helped him with a late rebound:

I would rather have Gomes, or Danny Jansen (ADP 230) and Francisco Mejia (ADP 247) at their current prices rather than pay for Contreras at his current price because last year's numbers were a big step back from the level he had established in 2016 and 2017. If we expand the above graph to look over the three-year trend, it is alarming:

Jose Quintana rebounds to become a top 40 starting pitcher. Quintana's strikeout rate, walk rate and home-run rate dropped in 2018 from their 2017 levels, yet his ERA came in a few points better thanks to his ability to strand more runners. That could have been better had Joe Maddon exercised a quicker hook as Quintana struggled mightily after twice through the lineup. Quintana's ERA went from 2.97 to 3.59 to 7.15 with each trip through a lineup. It is clear from his skills line that hitters had a very good idea what was coming the third time they saw Quintana in the same game:

I truly believe the problem was that Quintana was so good the third time through in 2017, that Maddon just left him in hoping he would turn it around. The table below shows Quintana's stats the third time through the order over the past few seasons. 2018 is just as much an outlier as 2017 was:

His home/road splits are rather neutral, but there does appear to be some gains to be made if Maddon went to the bullpen a batter early rather than one too late in 2019. The Cubs did exercise their expensive contract option on Quintana to bring him back for 2019, so they too see something better. If Quintana can cut the walks down and get the homers back in line, he has room for profit. He has been a model of health and has not missed a start in seven seasons. He is not throwing 200 innings any longer, but even his 174 could be cut down to 160 with better utilization.

Cincinnati Reds

Yasiel Puig finishes as a top 20 outfielder. Current NFBC ADP has Puig as the 29th with an ADP of 106. Puig has been stuck in neutral the last two seasons with similar counting stats, but the playing time has only been consistently there for one of the last four seasons due to injury.

The trade to Cincinnati takes Puig from a park that was 26th in park factors for runs and 11th for home runs to one that was fourth in runs and the best home run park for hitters. Dodger Stadium was exactly league average for right-handed home run hitters last season, while Great American Ballpark was 25 percent better than the league average for righties. Puig can still hit the baseball hard. He was 33rd overall (min. 250 batted ball events) in Barrels/PA% last year, which was equal to Edwin Encarnacion and better than the likes of Jesus Aguilar, Xander Bogaerts, Rhys Hoskins and Francisco Lindor.

Puig is in the final year of team control before entering the free agent market, so he is motivated to stay healthy and put up big numbers. He has a nice ballpark to help him do that now, and the Reds will be motivated to play him as much as possible to push up his trade value over the summer.

Sonny Gray is a top-80 pitcher. Gray is currently 111th on the ADP list with an ADP of 283. I took him with the sixth pick of the 20th round in my NFBC league as my SP6. Gray is coming off a terribly disappointing finish to the 2018 season and was in desperate need of a change in scenery, and believe it or not, Cincy is a good place for him. Yes, I know it's a hitter-friendly park as I outlined above, but Gray will be reunited with his college pitching coach Derek Johnson. Johnson and Gray were together at Vanderbilt, when Johnson wrote this great book.

Johnson was the pitching coach the last few seasons in Milwaukee and oversaw the breakout of Jhoulys Chacin, a step forward for Jeremy Jeffress, squeezed juice out of the raisin that was Wade Miley, and helped Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson and Josh Hader take steps forward. It was just two seasons ago that Sonny Gray was a viable fantasy pitcher, and not that far back where he was a solid SP2 option for clubs. If everything goes well, he could be a SP3 this year back under the wings of the guy who made him what he was at Vanderbilt. Gray still has a strong groundball rate and the ability to miss bats. He has also never pitched in the National League outside of interleague matchups so he has some newness factor to him for NL Central batters. Gray's expected batting average in 2018 was 23 points better than his actual while his expected slugging percentage was 44 points better than his actual slugging percentage. Lastly, Gray was one of five pitchers (min 100 IP) with at least a 50 percent groundball rate, a strikeout rate greater than 20 percent, and a swinging strikeout rate of at least 10 percent:

Mauricio Dubon earns $10 in NL-Only leagues. All of the talk about Milwaukee infield prospects is rightly focused on Keston Hiura, but had Dubon not torn his ACL early into the 2018 season, he would be making more noise right about now. It has already been said that Dubon will begin the season back in Triple-A, but that would have likely been the case even if he were not recovering from a serious knee injury. Hiura split 2018 between two levels and turned many heads in the AFL, but Dubon should still get first crack at the big leagues if he is healthy in May and the trio of Cory Spangenberg, Hernan Perez and Orlando Arcia are not cutting it up the middle.

You have to mostly throw out last year's numbers because they happened in Colorado Springs, so that .574 slugging percentage and .343 batting average must be taken with a grain of salt. What you should note about Dubon was that he has stolen 30 bases in two of the last three seasons. We don't know what the knee will be like coming off surgery, but with his aggressive manager, he should still have chances to run. Dubon has hit for a strong average throughout his time in the full-season levels of the minors as well. He doesn't have much power, but is a high contact hitter who can accept walks and has some speed as well. Dubon's ADP is nearly non-existent as he is 726, so he is free help in any draft format.

Freddy Peralta leads the starting pitching staff in R$: There is something special going on with Peralta. His fastball sits 91 and tops out at 95 on a good day with a stiff wind blowing behind him, and yet he throws it nearly 80 percent of the time. Peralta has never had a strikeout rate below 20 percent at a full season level in the minors, and struck out 34 percent of the Triple-A batters he faced in 2018 while striking out 30 percent of the major league hitters he faced upon promotion.

Peralta is 5-foot-11 in cleats, but there's a secret behind why he gets such fantastic results from a fastball that is very pedestrian in terms of his velocity:

The high spin rate should not be a surprise given the life he has on the pitch. Nobody can survive on 80 percent fastballs without life on the pitch. The other piece here is the average starting distance. Peralta is short, but his delivery has serious extension, which puts the starting point of his fastball closer to the plate:

He jumps toward home plate a bit, which helps explain the higher walk rate because it is tough to have consistent command of your pitches with that type of delivery. Couple that with his release point and pitch tunneling, and you see why it is tough for hitters to pick him up. The embedded tweet below can be paused by right-clicking on the animation. I suggest doing that a few times to see how closely Peralta's main two pitches follow the same path to the plate as he faced Ronald Acuna Jr. Acuna took the breaking ball, but swung through the fastball:

Freddy Peralta, 91mph Fastball and 77mph Curveball, Overlay. pic.twitter.com/qWepvkRuYW

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 7, 2018

Peralta is outside the top 300 in ADP, so there is plenty of room for profit where he currently sits if his stuff continues. He has the best stuff in the starting rotation as it stands now.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Elias Diaz is a top-12 catcher. This is bold because Diaz is not even a starting catcher at the moment, and he is the 25th catcher off the board by ADP in early February. Diaz is coming off a season where he was effective at the plate in a part-time role, and his quality of contact last season trailed only J.T. Realmuto and his platoon partner, Francisco Cervelli at the catcher position. The StatCast data validates the season and does not point to luck as the reason he hit so well last year.

His percentage of hard-hit baseballs last year exceeded that of Yasiel Puig, Paul DeJong, Nicholas Castellanos and A.J. Pollock. His Barrels/PA% was better than Chris Taylor, Corey Dickerson, Miguel Andujar and Anthony Rizzo. His average exit velocity jumped from 86 mph to 90 mph year over year while he took his average launch angle from 6 degrees to 10 degrees to get more loft.

In short, this guy is much better than your average backup catcher. Cervelli is the starter, and in the final year of his deal, but has not been very durable in his career. There is a potential for very nice profit with Diaz being drafted as a second catcher given the state of the position in the draft pool this year.

Trevor Williams finishes outside the top 125 for pitchers by R$. His current ADP is 261 and he is the 99th pitcher off the board. He was a surprise last year with 14 wins, a 3.11 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP. I had him for $1 and cut him before the draft, and regretted it all season long. That said, I would do it all over again this year if I still had him on my roster.

The expected stats from last year are not kind to him. StatCast said the quality of his contact should have resulted in his opponents' batting average being 19 points higher, and their slugging percentage 29 points higher. His actual weighted on base average was thus 21 points lower than what his expected one was. His xwOBA of .308 would put him in the same class as Marco Gonzales, Andrew Heaney, and Anthony DeSclafani.

The 10 percent K-BB% leaves little margin for error, which will make it difficult for him to repeat a 77 percent LOB%. There is also a disturbing velocity trend happening with his fastball, which is his primary pitch:

In short, there is too much risk here to think Williams takes another step forward and you should plan for him to backslide.

St. Louis Cardinals

Tyler O'Neill finishes as a top-60 outfielder. He is currently 86th by ADP rankings with an overall ADP of 353. There is a very decent chance O'Neill returns to Triple-A to begin the season with Ozuna, Bader and Fowler manning the outfield and Jose Martinez trying to find at bats (TRADE HIM TO TAMPA BAY ALREADY). That said, what if Ozuna's shoulder is not 100 percent healthy and starts barking? What if Fowler continues to struggle and the team has finally dealt Martinez to be a DH as he is destined to become?

O'Neill hits the ball hard. Minimum 75 batted ball events, only Luke Voit had a higher Barrels/PA% last year (12.4 to 12.0). O'Neill had the second best average distance to his batted balls behind teammate Matt Carpenter, and he had a top-30 average exit velocity. His big swing-and-attack mindset do leave him prone to contact issues, but he also hit 35 homers between Triple-A and the major last season in 125 games on the heels of hitting 31 homers in 130 contests in 2017.

The power is real, but the risks here are real too. There is no clear path to playing time, but there is no denying he has a big power skill and if some things happen in front of him, that big skill gets a chance to show off and earn some profit on your roster.

Michael Wacha finishes outside the top 150. He is currently the 107 pitcher off the board in NFBC drafts, with an overall ADP of 279, and I want nothing to do with him there.
FanGraphs' Paul Sporer and I will be in LABR this week and we'll physically be together in his apartment doing the draft, and if he suggests we pick up Wacha, it may become physical.

Wacha missed a good portion of 2018 after going down with an oblique injury in late June and it flaring up when he was working on returning in late August. There was a significant stretch of that time before the injury where he was on a roll allowing two or fewer earned runs in 10 consecutive starts from late April into early June.

Still, the StatCast data says Wacha's expected batting average was 57 points higher than his actual last season, which his opponents' slugging percentage should have been 98 points higher based on the contact he allowed. The .286 actual wOBA looks much better than the hideous .348 xwOBA last season.

The injury risk plus the regression risks are too great to be grabbing Wacha where he is currently going in drafts. Guys going later than Wacha in drafts that interest me more are Carlos Rodon, Michael Fulmer, the aforementioned Peralta and even Matt Harvey.