Collette Calls: AL Central Bold Predictions

Charlie Tilson (ADP 452) steals 20 bases: Here is the thing with the White Sox; they will be a terrible team in 2018. The great thing about terrible teams for fantasy purposes is they will let unproven assets get a chance to prove themselves before moving onto the next guy. Enter Tilson. Tilson is never going to win even a Little League home run derby, but he is fast. Scouts give him a 70/80 grade on his speed, but only one season in the minors would hint at that speed. He swiped 46 bases in Double-A Springfield for the Cardinals in 2015 but otherwise has never stolen more than 15 in a season. He hurt his hamstring in 2016 and missed most of last year with stress reactions in his foot. The net man up would be Adam Engel, who is a right-handed version of Tilson, so there is not a burning prospect to take him down quickly (Eloy Jimenez is a corner OF). Tilson was an on-base machine in the minor leagues and has the speed to steal bases if Chicago lets him try to become their next Scott Podsednik.

Reynaldo Lopez (ADP 369) is the most valuable starting pitcher on the staff: Let's be real, this is not a very good staff. Most will be waiting for Michael Kopech's promotion to the major leagues while I enjoy watching him pitch for the Charlotte Knights as long as I possibly can. Meanwhile, we could all be overlooking the better option that is already on the team. Lopez came over in the Adam Eaton trade with some excitement, but that did not translate into results last season as he had an inconsistent time in the minor leagues as well as over the eight starts he made in Chicago at the end of the season. He has an above-average fastball and curveball, but the changeup and the command are not there. In 2017, the curveball had issues, and Jeff Zimmerman picked up on that late last year noting how Lopez's curveball went south shortly after his promotion to the big leagues. Lopez had a 25 percent strikeout rate in Triple-A, but that dropped ten percentage points at the big league level. That will happen to a pitcher when they are struggling to throw one of their two primary pitches with the same effectiveness.

We do not have publicly available minor league pitch f/x data, but we can look into the differences in Lopez's stuff from 2016 to 2017:

Good for him in recognizing that his second-best pitch was having trouble, and it helps explain why he had struggles last year missing bats at the major league level. It should not take long for us to see how the curveball is behaving for Lopez in 2018 since we will see the data early. I will note that Lopez does not care for pitching in cold weather, and I saw that first-hand last year in the Charlotte home opener when he struggled to command anything in a sub-40 degree opening night.

Cleveland Indians

Francisco Lindor (ADP 21) goes 30-30 this year: He's 23rd in our hitter rankings and the second-best shortstop. He had his third-year breakout as he quietly joined the launch angle party and started elevating the ball by nearly doubling his average launch angle:

Lindor's steals were down slightly, but that has to do more with the fact he just did not run much in the first half of the season as he went 4-for-5 in his stolen bases attempts in the first half of the season. That spiked up to 11-for-13 after the break, which still gives him a very high success rate and should continue to give Terry Francona the confidence to let Lindor steal bases when he is not slowly circling them. Lindor had a top 25 stolen base opportunity total last year, in a year in which his on-base percentage was somewhat suppressed by a low hit rate against the backdrop of his career. Some of that drop comes from him hitting more flyballs last year, but a 49 point drop in BABIP did hurt him. We have not had a 30-30 season at shortstop since Hanley Ramirez last did it in 2008. The dry spell has lasted long enough. If you listen to the chatter in the corners of the sport, you can begin to hear the M-V-P chant coming.

Mike Clevinger (ADP 215) will be a top 50 SP: Our rankings have Clevinger at SP 75, but the ADP market is valuing him a bit higher to this point. He had an interesting rookie season as he struggled with command around being very tough to hit. The list of pitchers who equaled or bested his strikeout rate of 27 percent while holding batters to a batting average below the .211 Clevinger did last year is small:

Clevinger had above-average whiff rates on his breaking balls (26 percent slider, 19 percent curve), average whiff rate (13 percent) on his changeup and below average (6 percent) on his fastball in that time. The next step for Clevinger is getting ahead in the count early so he can go to his more effective pitches and continue to give batters a hard time. As it were, his sophomore season was impressive but there is more growth to come in 2018, and he has the luxury of letting the bigger names in front of him do the heavy lifting.

Detroit Tigers

Mikie Mahtook (ADP 338) finishes as a top 75 outfielder: He is 102nd in our outfield rankings, but this prediction says he is worth a late-round flyer or a $1 pick in a 15-team mixed league format. Much like Tilson earlier, Mahtook is playing for a team trying to see what it has without any pretenses of being a contender. Detroit, unlike Chicago, does not have much in the minors ready to come up so Mahtook should get a very heavy portion of the playing time in left field this year. He did not get much playing time in Tampa Bay, and when he did play, it was against a lefty pitcher as the club rarely gave him time against a righty. Mahtook has had two seasons of decent, albeit limited, numbers around a horrendous 2016.

Mahtook was given 253 plate appearances against righties last year and hit .283/.340/.443 while maintaining his ability to hit lefties above the league average. He has earned the right to play every day, and our projections for him to hit 14 home runs, steal 8 bases, and hit .271 in 402 at-bats personally feels like we are underselling him. He is currently projected to hit down in the lineup, but everything looks fluid in Detroit this year. A hot start could move him up and give him more opportunities to prove whether 2017 was real or just a temporary spike.

Mike Fiers (ADP 525) finishes as a top-100 SP: We have him ranked as SP 126, and he will spend the season toiling for what is arguably the worst team, on paper, in the major leagues. The wins are going to be tough to come by, so he is going to have to make this happen on strikeouts and ratios.

Fiers had a tale of three seasons last year within 2017, the likes of which has rarely been seen:

Lucas Duda (ADP 445) sets recent career lows in multiple categories: This one sounds a bit vague, but hear me out. The table below shows Duda's numbers in a few categories over this most recent full seasons:

There is also the factor of the lineup in front of him. Duda is projected to hit third so that he will have Whit Merrifield and Jorge Bonifacio. We project both batters to have a .321 on-base percentage, not to mention the debacle of Alcides Escobar in the nine-hole of the lineup. Duda should take a seat against left-handed pitching, so the reduced plate appearances, as well as the on-base struggles of the hitters in front of him, are going to limit his RBI opportunities in 2018. Cheap power is readily available these days, even more so for 20 homer bats at first base.

Nate Karns (ADP 471) achieves a 3.50 ERA, 10-plus wins and 150-plus strikeouts in 2018: Yes, this is a pick-up from last year's AL Bold predictions but last year is incomplete because Karns made eight starts before going down on the season with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and a forearm problem. The frustrating part for owners was that Karns was pitching great baseball before he went on the disabled list after a horrendous start to the season. He allowed 16 earned runs over his first five outings last season and then just five runs over his final four outings on the season.

Karns does not have a good fastball regarding movement, but he needs it to keep people off his fantastic curve and evolving changeup. His knuckle-curve is a terrific pitch, and one he should be throwing more than he does. The good news is, he began to recognize that last season himself and ended the season throwing more curves than fastballs:

Karns's curve had a swinging strike rate of 26 percent last season; only Corey Kluber, Aroldys Vizcaino, and David Robertson finished higher (min 250 curveballs). He may have his issues third time through the order, but given his health issues, there is no reason to try to make him become an innings eater. Let him five and dive with his curveball and hand it over to the pen for the final 12 outs on most nights.

Minnesota Twins

Jorge Polanco (ADP 207) goes 20-20 this season: This would come on the heels of a 13-13 season last year in 544 plate appearances, and we have him projected for a 12-14 season and ranked at SS16. I am more optimistic about him in 2018 for a few reasons. Primarily, we saw growth within the season as his offensive production took off like a rocket in the second half of the season:

That chart could easily be more about what was going on off the field than on it. On June 6, Polanco was hitting .251/.299/.358 on the season with 20 runs scored and two steals in 198 plate appearances when he learned his grandfather had passed away in the Dominican Republic. His grandfather raised him for almost his entire life, so his loss was more like losing his father. He flew from Seattle to Santo Domingo and spent a week away from baseball.

He came back to play and hit .146/.205/.214 until he lost his starting job near the end of July, and that point is easy to spot on the above graph. August came, and he began to hit as he started a ten-game hitting streak and finished the season on a .316/.377/.553 tear with ten home runs, seven steals in ten attempts in 234 plate appearances. That puts him on a 30 homer/20 steal pace over the course of a full season, so he owns a 20-20 skillset, but there is inherent risk in pro-rating numbers from a slice of the season over a full season. After all, Polanco had the largest split between his xwOBA and actual wOBA from Aug. 1 on last season, along with a few of his teammates too. I like him this season, but that is why 20-20 is a bold prediction rather than a highly probable one.

Stephen Gonsalves (ADP 586) earns at least $5 in AL-Only leagues: This is bold because he is projected to begin the year back in Triple-A and the Twins still might sign a free agent starter to add to their rotation. Gonsalves is an intriguing lefty that is working on his breaking ball to give him a bigger repertoire against major league hitters. He has demonstrated the ability to miss bats at all levels of the minor leagues and, once he is promoted, will get a softer landing spot since he will be able to pitch against three rebuilding teams within the division multiple times due to the unbalanced schedule. This prediction also shows how little faith I have in Kyle Gibson building off last season's late success.