Brandon Warne’s 10 Bold Predictions: Year of our Lord 2015

After completely missing the point that these bold predictions — published on Rotographs, after all — should be fantasy related the first few years, I think I’m going to actually make the leap and, you know, do my job correctly.

With that said, here are my 10 hot ta Bold Predictions for the upcoming season:

1. Kyle Gibson is no worse than the second-most valuable Twins starter in fantasy this year.

With Phil Hughes, Ervin Santana and even Ricky Nolasco in-house, I think this qualifies as bold. Through just over 230 big league innings, Gibson holds a 4.92 ERA, 5.3 K/9 and is a game under .500 at 15-16 record-wise. Still, when digging into his PITCHf/x, I found his slider picked up considerable steam in terms of results (.846 OPS in 2013; .517 in 2014) and it can’t be chalked up to any discernible usage difference. In fact, he threw it more often in 2014. Add to that an emerging changeup that’ll probably play up with the tutelage of former Rays minor league pitching coach Neil Allen on his side, and I think Gibson has some sleeper potential. The bowling ball sinker (54.4% GB rate last year) will always be there, but health and better stuff seem to be coming down the line. I’m buying Gibson this year.

2. The rookie home run leader is not Kris Bryant.

I don’t have a ton of names at the ready for this one, but I still think it’s pretty bold. Maybe Jung-Ho Kang of the Pirates? ZiPS has Bryant pegged for 29 home runs — and Joey Gallo for 31!!! — but I still think there’s an extremely outside chance someone could sneak in and usurp him. That’s why these predictions are bold, right?

3. Jose Altuve’s value completely collapses.

Any semblance of a BABIP collapse for Altuve from last year’s .360 mark would be catastrophic, especially for a player who never walks (5.0% percent career, 5.1% 2014) and relies a ton on balls in play. Look no further than his previous season, where he had a totally reasonable .316 BABIP and hit just .283/.316/.363. The year before was a bit different (.325 wOBA), but if people are buying him as anything like even an .800 OPS-type second baseman — .830 last year — I’m selling on that front. Hard.

4. Brett Lawrie outproduces Josh Donaldson in some form or fashion.

It’s not often that first-round picks find themselves traded twice before their 25th birthdays, but that’s where Lawrie is at with his third team in five seasons. Still, it’s a testament to the type of prospect Lawrie is/was that he’s still younger than Donaldson was when he first saw significant time with the A’s as a 26-year-old in 2012. It’s hard not to see the A’s as a team that can extract maximum value out of the pieces that come through those doors, but you can throw that modifier on the Blue Jays too, and Lawrie showed virtually no growth in his parts of four seasons with the Jays. In fact, outside of his aberrant rookie cup of coffee where he hit .293/.373/.580 and blew the lid off his expectations, the much-maligned youngster — he just turned 25 in January — has hit only .261/.316/.406 while appearing in just 302 games over that three-year span. It’s possible his act wears thin, fast.

5. Billy Hamilton becomes the first player to steal 80 bases since 1988 — two years before he was born.

In 1988, Rickey Henderson and noted firecracker enthusiast Vince Coleman each swiped over 80. Hamilton seems to be that sort of transcendent speed guy, and by my reckoning could probably do this if he simply hit .275. No projection system on our pages has him over .262, but is it unreasonable to think he could have a BABIP-fueled season like Altuve last year? Is a guy like Hamilton really going to stick around the .304 BABIP he posted last year? My first projection was pie-in-the-sky 100 steals for Hamilton, but even 80 would be downright bonkers. The Reds aren’t going to be good this year, so maybe they’ll just run for fun? I don’t know.

6. Groundball wizards Trevor Cahill and Justin Masterson are both resurrected in 2015, and become fantasy relevant again.

I don’t know that there’s a good reason to believe either of these will happen, but as part of my evolution as a baseball mind, I’ve become quite fond of guys who can get grounders if strikeouts are not readily available. These two guys — like Gibson up top — fit that bill, and I want to believe they can make comebacks. Especially with Masterson, whose meltdown last year cost him a ton of cash.

7. Dallas Keuchel — deep AL Cy Young sleeper.

Keuchel posted an unconscionable 63.5% GB rate last year. The next best was Tyson Ross at 57%. Only 10 pitchers came within 10 percent of that mark. And at that park, grounders are the way to go — at least unless you’re Collin McHugh. Nevertheless, it’d be easy to deem Keuchel a GB wizard and move on, but I like to think there’s some room for the lefty to improve on his 6.6 K/9 from last year. Among qualified starters last year, Keuchel’s 9.0% whiff rate ranked 40th. That’s pretty impressive on the surface until you realize just 88 starters threw enough innings to qualify. Enhance that bracket to at least 100 innings and you’re looking at a lefty checking in 65th among 149 qualifiers. So that settles it, Keuchel is decidedly middle-of-the-pack whiffs wise, which to me leaves a bit of wiggle room. His biggest struggle is righties (a reasonable .252/.307/.366), which makes sense as a left-handed sinker-slider guy. The struggle is more evidence in his rates, where he fanned 8.8 per nine against lefties but just 5.9 against righties. It’s hard to know if his good slider (19.1% SwStr%) or changeup (15.3%) still have any room to help him in that respect, either. If they can, he just might sneak his way into the Cy conversation — which is nuts.

8. Kansas City finishes under .500.

GAH. I can’t help myself. I do not buy into Kansas City this year, and I don’t think that any of their starters are particularly ownable — or all that good — outside of Danny Duffy, whom I prefer to Yordano Ventura. Before you ask why, I shall answer: I think Duffy induces a ton of weak contact and I think there’s still plenty of room for the stuff to play up.

9. Wil Myers is the outfielder to own in San Diego.

This is crazy solely on the fact that Justin Upton and Matt Kemp are going to be flanking him on either side. The 2014 season was an unmitigated disaster for Myers, who lost most of his season to a dreaded broken wrist and was simply not good even when he was on the field. Tampa Bay rarely moves on from a position player who shines elsewhere — see Delmon Young, Elijah Dukes, B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford — so there’s plenty of evidence against Myers, who hit just .222/.294/.320 in 87 big-league games last year. I still believe in the skill set, and apparently so do the fan projections on our pages with a .273/.343/.444 line expected. That would fit the bill here, I think.

10. Yasmany Tomas is Dayan Viciedo 2.0.

Per some Arizona conversations and film study with noted swing-mechanics enthusiast Dan Farnsworth as well as some in-game observation, I came away feeling not particularly good about either player. I want to buy that the Blue Jays can resurrect Viciedo, and in some ways I think they maybe even can. But when Farnsworth played Viciedo’s swing frame-by-frame…eesh. It was not pretty. When I watched Tomas play, I saw a lot of the same things. In fact, they look physically identical, even down to wearing the No. 24. Like Viciedo, he’s really bad at third base, and there are some questions about his swing. Ultimately, I guess we shall see.