Matthew Dewoskin and I are the hosts of the Field of Streams podcast here at RotoGraphs during the season, but we wanted to get in on the excitement that is Bold Predictions once again after we had a respectable showing in 2016. Like last year, we will each pick five.

Bonus prediction: the show will be back starting on Sunday, running twice a week with pitcher and hitter picks from each of us for every day of the season. Additionally, Matt will be getting a break from his White Sox and covering the Brewers at Reviewing The Brew.

1. Matt: Rougned Odor doesn’t crack 15 homers, makes Grey Albright cry at least twice

Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor came out of nowhere to slug 33 homers, drive in 88 runs, and make the Razztastic Grey Albright spend the offseason swooning. Odor also did this with a HR:FB ratio of 17.0%. His previous career high was 11.8%. Twelve of his home runs were rated as ‘Just Enough’ and four were considered “Lucky” by the ESPN home run tracker. Those “Just Enoughs” and “Luckys” will be called a different word in 2017. Caught. Odor is unlikely to repeat his career year and will make more than one fantasy expert shed a few tears when he has eight homers at the All-Star Break.

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Others have beat me to the punch on predicting great success for Daniel Norris and throwing cold water on Robbie Ray, but I’m guessing no one has yet to argue that Tom Koehler will outperform a pitcher who is being drafted among the top 60 starters. Here is my case for Koehler and nine other bold predictions with slightly lower degrees of difficulty.

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Tom Verducci once wrote about how a 30% increase in innings pitched could lead to injury in young pitchers. Since he wrote that, many people have objectively determined that this is not the case (Carleton, 2013). Not all innings are created equally, and not all pitches put the same amount of stress on the human body.

As we have learned in many different ways that are not a lot of fun , both relief pitchers and starting pitchers can succumb to the effects of pitching (also read as, getting injured). This makes the Pitcher Abuse Point scale not appropriate for relief pitchers (see this article on Baseball Prospectus – (Jazayerli, 1998)). Other research has pointed to measures like innings pitched as being a poor determinant of workload in pitchers (Karakolis et al., 2016). Pitching on consecutive days, high velocities, and total pitches have been identified as risk factors for injury (Whiteside et al., 2016). Read the rest of this entry »

Happy April Fools Day for those of you who observe.

Tyler Glasnow was named the fifth starter for the Pirates and he had a roller coaster of a spring. His last couple of starts were solid, though. In two outings he pitched eight innings allowing nine hits, three walks, one home run, and striking out 14.

He has the velocity in his primary pitches, but when it comes to his secondary they are pretty hit or miss. No pun intended. Maybe a little pun intended. He struggles with some confidence in his changeup as well.

His minor league numbers were stellar. In Triple-A he tossed a 1.87 ERA with a 1.174 WHIP. Following his promotion, those numbers changed obviously. A 4.24 ERA with 24 strikeouts in 23.1 innings.

On the Agenda

1. Cain he do this?
2. Injury Bug Brantley
3. Will Rendon Play?

Can he do this?

Matt Cain is officially the fifth starter for the Giants which kind of bums me out because I was pretty excited to watch Ty Blach in action, but that can be on the next RR.

Anyways…

Cain in 2017 will not be the same guy the baseball world once grew accustomed to. He’s not going to be a guy to accumulate a ton of strikeouts, but his home run to fly ball ratio sits at 15-percent and it continues to increase. Batters were not only hitting him more in 2016, but they were hitting the ball further than ever off of the 32-year-OLD.

That is in caps for a reason.

Injury Bug Brantley

A slow start during spring turned out to benefit Michael Brantley which is a similar approach Sean Doolittle took, so it seems to be successful. He will be on the Opening Day roster for the Indians.

He will have resting days during the season, and the fact that he’s a target for injuries could make some nervous.

He only played in 11 games last season, but in 2015 Brantley faired well. He had a 10.1-percent walk rate with a .310/.379/.480 line and swiped 15 bags.

He’s definitely not fantasy trade bait and I’m not too excited knowing he’s going to get a lot of rest days.

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/mixing-fantasy-reality-tout-wars-miller-brantley/

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