Cold Predictions

“Cold” because we’re late for the predictions-feast, and the earlier arrivals have eaten a lot of the tastiest victuals. If it’s a “bold” prediction, not everyone’s making it. So here and there, we, and therefore you, are stuck with leftovers. But don’t worry, because we’ve brought some delicacies of our own. Here are our top ten, in reverse order of preposterousness. A couple of them we’ve mentioned before, but Spring Training developments make them worth mentioning again. If we’re right about our two or three most outlandish picks, we’ll claim Fantasy immortality.

10. Jose Ramirez will hit .180 and spend most of the season in Akron. Just kidding: wish we could think of something to depress his draft-day price. Like every other goddamn blogger in the Fantasy universe, we boldly envision that Jose Ramirez will excel this year. We can’t forbear to note that we were on this bandwagon early. We touted him to you in February and took him as our starting middle infielder in the 22nd round our NFBC slow draft in January.

9. Carlos Beltran will come almost all the way back. We don’t know much about bone spurs in the elbow—we must have missed that class in law school—but we know that people can come back from surgery on them (cf. Jason Isringhausen), and it’s now generally conceded that Beltran should have had that surgery when the problem first became acute, back at the start of last season. More importantly, though, we detect a pattern match. Baseball Reference says that the most comparable player to Beltran in baseball history is the great Dave Winfield, and Winfield, you’ll perhaps recall, missed the entire 1989 season—when he was 36, just as Beltran was last year—with a back injury. He returned in 1990, and, once he escaped Steinbrennerland about a month into the season, had four more productive years. They didn’t approach his best performance, and neither will Beltran’s 2015 approach his best. But we’re tossing out Beltran’s 2014—pausing for a moment to note that, even though impaired, the 2014-model Beltran posted above-average hard contact and power ratings, maintained an 80% contact rate, and showed a strong batting eye–and predicting only the age-related decline of a great player. Beltran was the 227th pick in the Tout Wars Mixed League Draft last week. He was 71st the year before. We’re inclined to split the difference.

8. T.J. House will get Cy Young votes. Here’s another guy we’ve had occasion to rhapsodize about before, and are doing so again, now that he’s a lock for the Indians’ rotation. To summarize: his peripheral numbers last year were sensational, and indeed suggest that, though he pitched superbly, he was somewhat unlucky. We will also note that, contrary to caricature, he’s not your standard undersized, soft-tossing lefty, because (1) he’s not that short, and (2) he throws pretty hard. We see him as this year’s Cory Kluber, by which we mean not a right-hander but rather “an Indians starting pitcher whom everyone projects to improve but significantly outperforms even those projections.”

7. Ender Inciarte will be a starting outfielder. This is the last of our previously-mentioneds. We like him for a variety of reasons, among them that his second-half performance last year suggests that he figured out some things about hitting over the course of the season, and that opposing pitchers figured out that he’d figured them out. We mention him again because of the Yasmay Tomas situation. To no one’s surprise, Tomas can’t play third base, which means he has to play left field, which means that Inciarte won’t have a starting job. Except: To many observers, Tomas has also looked clueless at the plate. It’s easy to see a therapeutic trip to Reno in his future. (Indeed, we’d enjoy a therapeutic trip to Reno.) Then there’s the reasonably foreseeable Diamondbacks injuryfest to contend with. And the fact that Mark Trumbo is terrible in right field. The D-backs’ pitchers no doubt swoon over Inciarte’s defense. Last year, his glove was worth 2.5 WAR, including double-digit assists despite his part-time play. We think Inciarte winds up with the same 400 or so at bats he got last year, with (conservatively) a plus batting average and 20 steals. And he’s done nothing to hurt his chances this Spring, with a .424 batting average in regular playing time.

6. Marlon Byrd will hit another 25 home runs. Byrd, as many before us have said, is a strange and wonderful case, and suggests the limits of statistical projection. A dismal 2012 season at 34 suggested, to him and the rest of MLB, that it was time to head for the announcing booth. Instead, Byrd completely refurbished his swing. Result: two rather good seasons, with unprecedented power. Some of this was due to the ballparks he called home: Citizens Bank Park (as everyone knows) and Citi Field (as not everyone does) are very congenial places for right-handed power hitters. But so is the Great American Ballpark, where he’ll spend 2015. We can’t quite recommend him for an OBP league—anything over .300 for him will be gravy—but otherwise, he’s a worthwhile pick.

5. Jordan Schafer will lead the American League in stolen bases. Everyone knows Schafer is fast. What may be different this season is that he has a full-time job. At the start of Spring Training, he was looking, as usual, like a fourth outfielder/pinch runner type. But of course, the Twins’ starting right fielder is Torii Hunter, taking a Minnesota curtain call as he approaches 40. And then, Aaron Hicks, the putative starting center fielder, starting screwing up as usual. And then, Paul Molitor, the Twins’ new manager, started making noises about how left fielder Oswaldo Arcia might need more seasoning, and Arcia himself had the poor judgment to get a stomach flu and be sidelined for a week. Moreover, all these guys are below-average-to-unspeakably-bad fielders, each finishing in the lowest UZR quartile, so Schafer doesn’t have to be a hero with the bat to get regular playing time. Molitor is certainly letting Schafer run at every opportunity—not with conspicuous success, but hey, it’s Spring Training. Give him (we mean Schafer, but for that matter, Molitor too) 500 at bats and he will get you 50 steals.

4. Junichi Tazawa is the Red Sox’ closer by the end of May. We wish Koji Uehara well, and he may indeed have a lot left, but at 40, after last year’s late-season collapse, and with this year’s pre-season injury, do you really want him? Enter Edward Mujica, whose status as a “proven closer” (37 saves with the Cardinals in 2013) put him next in line for saves last season. He converted 8 of 9, which masked the fact that he was, by any meaningful metric, a league-average pitcher. Tazawa, meanwhile, has been uniformly excellent for 2 ½ seasons. Q.E.D. We figure that the Red Sox will reach the same conclusion fairly early, though we’d be happier if they had a different manager than John Farrell. (Don’t even think about it, Valentine.)

3. Josh Phegley gets at least 250 at bats and hits at least 10 home runs with a batting average that doesn’t embarrass him or you. We think the A’s know what they’re doing. They traded away Derek Norris and made Stephen Vogt (30 years old, coming off an injury, lifetime sub-.300 OBP, not such a great catcher) and Phegley their catching platoon. Phegley is a good catcher, and, though his major league experience so far hasn’t been pleasant, except perhaps for the meal money and the chartered flights, he can hit right-handed pitching, unquestionably has power, and has put up slash lines in triple-A that are comparable to those of some good hitters there. Plus—and this is why we love Fangraphs—according to our idol Jeff Zimmerman, his xBABIP, albeit in a small sample of plate appearances, is much higher than his BABIP. (In other words, he hit the ball better than his standard-issue batting numbers suggest he did.)

2. Todd Cunningham takes over as the Braves’ center fielder and hits about .270 with about 20 stolen bases. Eric Young Jr. is, as Eric Young Sr. was, very fast. If there were an Eric Young III, which as of this writing there isn’t, he’d no doubt be fast too. What EYJ isn’t, however, is (a) a center fielder, and (b) a hitter. This truth is well known to Mets fans, but evidently the Braves have to absorb it in their own way in their own time. At least they’ve figured out, as most other sentient beings have, that Zoilo Almonte isn’t the answer. Cunningham, meanwhile, can play the outfield, hit a little, and run a little. He’s come out of nowhere to be the Braves’ fourth outfielder, and he should become their third outfielder before too long. But, you say, what about Melvin (B.J.) Upton, who should be healthy in a month or so? Bring him on, we say; Cunningham will outplay him. And if Cunningham doesn’t, he will slide over into the strong side of a left field platoon with Johnny Gomes.

1. Juan Nicasio will have value this season. Imagine if you’d had a Dickensian childhood: orphanages, blacking factories, debtor’s prison, the whole bit. Then, suddenly, a wealthy and nurturing family adopts you, and you’re living at Downton Abbey. Maybe you can’t deal with it, and you’re in rehab before you’re 16. But maybe you appreciate your dazzling good fortune, and humbly make the best of it. We think, for no especially good reason, that Nicasio will fall into the latter camp. His entire (four-year) major league career has been spent in Coors Field with the Rockies; he’s never heard sweet birdsong echoing over manicured lawns as the butler brings him breakfast. A dispiriting experience, and it’s no surprise that Nicasio was, in fact, dispirited. As Mike Podhorzer noted before the 2014 season, Nicasio’s fastball velocity and his F-strike percentage dropped significantly in 2013, betokening disaster, and that’s what befell him. But (as far as we know) no one’s noticed that they crept back up in 2014, and that his dismal 2014 can be explained, if you’re so inclined, by an unprecedentedly dismal home-run-to-flyball rate. That rate is subject to random fluctuations, so we expect it to decline. Now (this is the Downton Abbey part) he’s with the Dodgers, who will win the NL West unless (we’re not kidding) the Diamondbacks do. He’s scheduled for long relief, but the Dodgers’ rotation is fragile, and we envision Nicasio’s entering the starting rotation before too long, and thriving (or at least doing ok) there. We know his career Dodger Stadium record is underwhelming. We know you wouldn’t confuse him with Clayton Kershaw, or even Brandon McCarthy, even on a moonless night with your glasses off. Still….