Brandon Warne’s 10 Bold Predictions

No fancy intro here. I tried to make them all fantasy relevant for uh, the first time ever. So here goes:

1. Kyle Gibson holds top-50 value in leagues this season.

Gibson is currently coming off the board at No. 363 according to Fantasy Pros, which ranks him the 109th starting pitcher on average being drafted. And I see why most are meh on him; he’s not exactly young, walks too many guys and is much more of a contact/grounders guy than strikeouts. He’s the quintessential Twins pitcher. But if you strip down his 6.7 K/9 mark, you’ll see that he fanned six batters TOTAL in April, and had respectable rates thereafter.

Here’s his month-by-month K/9:
April – 2.4
May – 5.4
June – 8.2
July – 8.6
August – 6.1
September/October – 8.3

While it isn’t totally clear what the ceiling is here, he fanned 7.4 batters per nine in the second half. Combine that with a better than 50 percent groundball rate, and you might have something there.

2. Zach Britton is the No. 1 closer in fantasy this year.

I’m going nuts for his combo of nearly 80 percent groundball rate, 10.8 K/9 and virtually no walks. I don’t care if his team isn’t likely to be good. I think he saves 40-plus games with ease. He’s also going nearly 30 picks after Craig Kimbrel, and exactly 30 after Kenley Jansen.

3. Jeremy Jeffress is a top-half closer.

He’ll first have to fend off Will Smith for the regular role, and he’s also going to be closing for a bad team. But I like the stuff; he combined nearly a strikeout per inning with a nearly 60 percent groundball rate. Oddly enough, neither he nor the left-handed Smith were all that effective against lefties last year, but I’d wager manager Craig Counsell would be more likely to want to have more flexibility to use the lefty than Jeffress. Then again, maybe Smith gets traded as well.

4. Aaron Hicks becomes Carlos Gomez, 2.o.

This is just based on things I’ve seen visually. Hicks made a lot more loud contact in 2015 as he worked his way into a full-time role with the Twins. I also think he can overcome his woes against right-handed pitching over time, especially playing at Yankee Stadium. There’s a very real chance the Twins could rue this deal much the same way they did with the Gomez deal, even though both times they got back perfectly useful players.

5. Alexei Ramirez bounces back/is at least two wins more valuable than in 2015.

Ramirez was at least a +2.0 WAR player the last six seasons before slumping to -0.5 last year, and at 34 it seems like forecasting a bounceback would qualify as bold. Especially considering his home park will be Petco this year. Still, some BABIP issues (.264 in 2015, .291 career) dragged down his overall stat line last year, and I like to think the leap to a +1.5-win player isn’t that tough if he can get closer to his career mark.

6. Jose Quintana outproduces Chris Sale.

I realize “outproduces” is flimsy — I took flack for this last year on Josh Donaldson/Brett Lawrie — but this is probably insane. I just like Quintana to hopefully win more than nine games this year, and as a poor man’s Cole Hamels. Though, that was before Hamels’ strikeout rate bounced back last year. I really, really like Quintana in quality starts leagues. He ranked second in the AL in that measure last year, behind Dallas Keuchel but ahead of Davis Price, Sonny Gray and…..Sale. He was also second to Keuchel in quality start percentage at 78 percent.

7. Raisel Iglesias finishes top five in the NL Cy Young balloting.

I’m all in on the Iglesias hype train after he fanned nearly 10 batters per nine last year with a good walk rate and 47.2 percent groundball rate. Top five in the NL would be incredible, as the entire league is a gauntlet for any outsider in the Cy Young race. Being on a team that is rebuilding, or at the very least retooling, doesn’t help.

8. Each of Joe Mauer’s triple-slash numbers exceeds the following: .300/.360/.400

Mauer last beat all three of those marks in the same season in 2013, the year he suffered the concussion which has since derailed his Hall of Fame path. I buy that his recovery has been slow and is still ongoing, and there has been some talk about vision issues that he’s actively *trying* to work on. For what it’s worth — and that is very, very little — he’s hitting .286/.389/.429 this spring while working with some sunglasses to curtail some of the issues he’s been dealing with. I will say this; I’ve been the last to jump off the Mauer bandwagon — like I was with Hicks — but if he doesn’t show progress this year, the show’s over.

9. Hector Olivera wins NL Rookie of the Year award.

How often does a darling candidate like Corey Seager actually pan out? I don’t have the answer for you, but I like pretty good players on pretty bad teams. He’ll probably have to match his “fans” projection to be anywhere close though: .273/.329/.444. Side note: It’ll never not be weird that any 31-year-old is eligible for Rookie of the Year. I say this as a 30-year-old.

10. Miguel Sano finishes top five in the AL MVP race.

I’ve had some lengthy Twitter battles with Ray Flowers of Fantasy Alarm about Sano, but he keeps recommending people keep Todd Frazier in keeper leagues over Sano. That just blows my mind. He also keeps alluding — casually, I think — that Sano could/might be the next Chris Carter. I see that comparison in the stats, but I just don’t think Carter has ever commanded the strike zone like Sano did last year. I know how silly that sounds to say about a guy who fanned 35.5 percent of the time last year, but Sano collected a TON of walks (15.8 percent), and it never felt as though he was at odds in a plate appearance even if he did end up striking out. His ability to make adjustments was very, very good; he looked like a hitter that was much, much more mature. I’ll leave you with this, which is a good post from our own August Fagerstrom about how Sano tackled facing Corey Kluber last year. It’s a good one.