Collette Calls: 2024 AL East Bold Predictions

All ADP references are from 33 NFBC Draft Champions drafts held during January 2024

Baltimore Orioles

Heston Kjerstad is a top-400 player (current ADP 574; min 390, max 719)

The amazing class of young players in Baltimore — Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Grayson Rodriguez — are like those nerds in class who blow the bell curve for everyone else on tests. They have set an impossibly high bar for what rookies can do with Baltimore, and that doesn't even include the pending debut of Jackson Holliday. I'm going with Kjerstad here because the opportunities exist for him to ascend this season in one fashion or another.

Anthony Santander is a free agent after this season, so should Baltimore struggle to repeat its level of performance, he could be on the move. (Before you write this off as poppycock, may I present to you the 2009 Tampa Bay Rays, who fell to 84-78 just one season after shocking everyone by winning 97 games and making it to the 2008 World Series with a squad built around a young core of talent.) Then we have whatever Ryan O'Hearn is, because that guy is not real. How does someone get dropped by the lowly Royals and come to Baltimore and post his first above-average offensive performance since his rookie season back in 2018? 

Kjerstad has raked everywhere he's played on his climb to the majors. He was one of the best hitters in the SEC while at Arkansas and left with a .343/.421/.590 career line. He has hit .305/.384/.502 in 827 minor-league plate appearances and had 58 extra-base hits and a .303 batting average across Double-A and Triple-A last season before an espresso cup of coffee in Baltimore. James Anderson has Kjerstad ranked 43rd in his latest top-400 prospect rankings as well. 

The challenge with Kjerstad is he is UT-only in drafts, so the only way to target him is in the reserves of deeper leagues. Those in standard 15-team league formats could potentially use their final reserve pick on Kjerstad, but even I would rather draft someone more likely to finish safely in the top 400 versus someone who has it as a stretch goal this season. Simply put, the opportunities are there for KJerstad to come up and do what he's capable of doing with his bat, but the amazing class of rookies who recently blazed the path for him have set an impossibly high bar for him to clear. 

DL Hall is the MVFP of the Baltimore bullpen (current ADP 424; min 323, max 511)

MVFP = most valuable fantasy player. It will be an interesting season for Baltimore after fans were spoiled by Felix Bautista for most of the season, as well as Yennier Cano before he faded down the stretch. Those fans will now go from watching one of the more dominant closers in recent memory to one who was once that guy a decade ago and still shows flashes of his former self in Craig Kimbrel.

Kimbrel has blown five saves in each of the past three seasons and, at times, has lost his manager's confidence in his ability to close out games without making them search their dugouts for any cigarettes Jim Leyland may have left lying around. The 10 homers Kimbrel allowed last year should be helped, in part, by Mount Camden in left field, but Kimbrel has shown volatility in these later stages of his career, as he hasn't had consecutive full seasons with a 20 percent K-BB% since the 2017-2018 span. Where there is volatility, I see opportunity, which is why I am pushing Hall here.

Hall is by no means without his own flaws, as he's been charitable with walks throughout his career, but around those walks come flashes of dominance, especially once the organization had him work purely in relief. He began the season as a traditional starter in Norfolk and then served as a hybrid opener over the summer, working 1-3 innings as a starter. He moved to pure relief in August, and in the 27 innings he worked between Norfolk and Baltimore over the final two months of the season, he struck out 41 batters while walking nine.

Hall has the repertoire of a starting pitcher, throwing upper-90s heat with a nasty slider to lefties and adding a changeup to the picture when facing righties. All three of those offerings generated 30 percent whiff rates last season in the time he worked in Baltimore, and with Bautista on the shelf, Hall has the highest Pitching+ score among the returning Baltimore relievers from 2023. He trails only Kimbrel in this year's bullpen. Should Kimbrel have another case of Saberhagenitis where he cannot put together consecutive excellent seasons, the opportunity is there for Hall to step in and be a late leverage weapon either as a closer or in the role Mike Baumann filled last year, allowing him to vulture double-digit wins in relief. 

Boston Red Sox

Triston Casas is a top-75 overall player (current ADP 113; min 89, max 137)

The risk with this prediction is the strikeouts, as Casas did admittedly swing and miss quite a bit last season, with whiff rates and strikeouts which ranked in the bottom third of the league. That is a real issue, but it's also one which improved over the course of the season:

Those improvements led to a second half in which Casas hit 15 of his 24 homers with a rather tidy .317/.417/.617 triple-slash line, well above his .225/.330/.398 line from the first half. 

Casas' plate discipline gives him more value in OBP leagues than he does in batting average leagues, as he loses base hits with his poor running speed, but his power as well as his all-fields approach are very inviting. He has not yet shown an ability to handle lefties consistently, which may be what truly ends up keeping him outside the top 100. However, he's hitting in the middle of a nice lineup with a good home park and has many favorable road parks within his division, so it wouldn't be surprising to see Casas pushing 35-plus homers this season if he can continue his progress from last year, when he added more elevation to pair with his hard contact:

Nick Pivetta is a top-50 pitcher (current ADP 170; min 132, max 200)

Pivetta is the 69th pitcher off the board over the past month at pick 170 overall, while the 50th pitcher, Cole Ragans, is going 60 picks earlier. Pivetta's 2023 season showed promise, as it was his best by ERA and by far his best season by my go-to metric for pitchers, K-BB%. The 22.7 percent measure he posted in 2023 bested his previous career high of 19.7 percent, set in 2018. Only two pitchers had ERAs over 4.00 with strikeout rates over 30 percent in 2023: Pivetta and Hunter Greene. Greene has now done that in consecutive seasons, and someone named Blake Snell has done that in both 2019 and 2021, as a reminder of what Blake Snell does in seasons in which he doesn't win Cy Youngs.

PIvetta slung six different pitch types at batters last season, even messing with a splitter a little bit. I know I just cited the Yu Darvish rule for using too many pitches in the last installment of this article, but understand that the other five pitch types Pivetta uses each generated at least a 25 percent whiff rate, while only the cutter had a batting average against of more than .220. This is how he ended up with four double-digit strikeout contests last season, with all four coming after the All-Star break. 

PIvetta pitched to a .195/.253/.376 line with a 28.8 percent K-BB% after the break last season, and those are simply elite numbers. It's also worth noting that Pivetta had the best pitch modeling numbers of any pitcher in the second half of the season, as his 113 Pitching+ led all starting pitchers, while only Corbin Burnes and Kyle Bradish bested his Stuff+:

I am not recommending taking Pivetta over this entire group, but judging by where his current ADP sits compared to a group he went pitch-for-pitch with last season according to pitch modeling, his market price is ripe for the buying, with strong upside if he can pick up where he left off. 

New York Yankees

Juan Soto outhomers Aaron Judge (current ADP 11, min 6, max 17)

Yes, this happened before back in 2019, when Soto played a full season and hit 34 homers while Judge missed nearly half the season and still hit 27 homers. Last season, Judge missed nearly 60 games and still homered 37 times while Soto played all 162 and hit 35. This prediction isn't assuming an injury to Judge to make it happen as much as it's looking at the circumstances and envisioning the possibilities.

First off, the spray charts for Soto don't tell the full story. It is easy to go to BaseballSavant and see this image at the top of his screen showing Soto's batted balls with a Yankee Stadium overlay and drool at the possibilities:

However, the expected home run chart toward the bottom of that page says Soto would have hit 27 homers at Yankee Stadium in 2023 when you account for "wall heights, distances, and environmental effects." That isn't why I'm excited for Soto's potential this season.

Soto is also heading into his contract year after he plays out his final season of team control at a cool $31.5M this season. Soto is a Scott Boras client and is only 25 years old; he's going to the free agent market after this season to see if he can best Shohei Ohtani's contract in some way, shape, or form. Contract years are no guarantee of success, but we've seen several players use the motivation to post big numbers that season. That isn't why I'm excited for Soto's potential this season.

What excites me is that he's hitting second in the lineup with Judge hitting behind him. What pitcher, in their right mind, will plan to pitch around Soto to get to Judge? We already know Soto is incredibly accepting of his walks with a career 19 percent walk rate and has an elite ability to avoid chasing pitches out of the zone, so if pitchers are going to get him out in front of Judge, they will have to challenge him in the zone. Few pitchers are able to command their non-fastballs consistently enough to get strikes in the zone, so pitchers will either have to trick Soto in sequencing, showcase precise pitch execution, or as many will have to do, challenge him with fastballs. Soto loves fastballs.

Soto has hit at least 20 homers in every full season off fastballs and his .283 batting average and .589 slugging percentage in 2023 against fastballs are his LOWEST figures in both categories over the course of his career. 117 of his 160 career homers have come off fastballs. The other part of this equation is that Soto will have to elevate the ball more, as he did in 2019 when he was last in a positive home run environment. His all-fields approach may adjust some with the enticing short porch in right as he takes aim at setting the market price for his future services. It is a combination of all these factors which has me excited about the possibilities for Soto this season.

Tommy Kahnle is a top-150 pitcher (current ADP 704; min 593, max 746)

Kahnle is currently the 307th pitcher off the board as he ended 2023 with a sore shoulder, so this prediction may seem a bit odd. Kahnle had Tommy John surgery in 2020, spent 2021 in recovery, missed most of 2022 with a bone bruise and then missed time in 2023 with bicep tendonitis. He is definitely injury-prone, and that's saying something coming from a guy like me who has had his share of unfortunate injuries over the years (#IYKYK).

I love Kahnle's potential because of how he executes his craft. How many relievers do you know who throw changeups 75 percent of the time? Kahnle's changeup is a unicorn because he throws it in the 88-90 mph range, and the league truly doesn't know what to do with the pitch:

Kahnle has traditionally been a changeup/four-seamer guy with a show-me slider, but last year he added a sinker to his repertoire to give him three usable pitches against righties and lefties. The last time we got a full season of Kahnle, he was pitching at a near-elite level for a reliever, and he was showing signs of doing that again last season had he qualified for enough work. At this market price, the return on investing in a Draft and Hold or a deeper AL-only league could be fantastic while most draft capital is being focused on Clay Holmes and Jonathan Loaisiga:

For more on Kahnle's changeup, see this excellent article by Ben Clemens from September of 2023.

Tampa Bay Rays

Austin Shenton finishes in the top five for AL ROY (current ADP 748; min 671, max 712)

I will say this up front: I tend to struggle with bold predictions with my favorite team. Last season, I whiffed on Brandon Lowe but was validated in my admiration for Pete Fairbanks. In 2022, I whiffed on Manuel Margot and did alright with Corey Kluber. 2021 saw me once again fail with the hitter in Taylor Walls but do well with the pitching in Joe Ryan. So, I guess what I am saying is you should ignore what I say about Shenton and go onto the pitcher? After all, I'm calling for a guy to contend for Rookie of the Year who hasn't even seen a pitch at the major-league level. Fortune favors the bold.

Shenton was one half of the 2021 trade which saw the Rays surprisingly deal their closer (at the time) Diego Castillo to the Mariners, receiving JT Chargois and Shenton in return. Shenton, at the time of the trade, was hitting .295/.418/.576 in High-A for Seattle and finished the season in Double-A Montgomery in the Tampa Bay system, hitting .271/.294/.458 for the Biscuits in a handful of games. He returned to the Biscuits in 2022 with a pedestrian .236/.338/.415 line around a hip injury, but he put it all together last season. Shenton began 2023 with the Biscuits and hit .307/.415/.567 with 15 homers before jumping to Triple-A Durham where he hit .301/.432/.603. He finished the season with 29 homers, 102 runs scored and 99 runs driven in 144 games, playing both corner infield positions. 

This is a long video highlight of what Shenton did in 2023 if you would like to see his numbers in action:

The club will obviously need to reconstruct its offense with the loss of their franchise shortstop, and the designated hitter spot is mostly something the club uses for days off rather than as a set position. Harold Ramirez is on the roster as someone who can play both first and third (in a pinch), but the club currently lacks another good hitter off the bench. Shenton has the chance to make the club out of camp, given that he's already 26 years old and that there's no need to play roster-manipulation games with someone who projects as a DH type. Get him up to the majors, enjoy his prime years, and move on.

Colby White is a top-400 player (current ADP 722; has been drafted in one of 33 drafts)

I bet my good buddy Jason Hanselman was the one guy who took White. J — if you're reading this, confirm with me. 

White was on a clear path to join the Rays' bullpen in 2022 out of spring training until his elbow gave out and he required Tommy John Surgery in early April of that year. White had an abbreviated collegiate career that saw him pitch just two seasons while striking out 48 batters in 26 innings. 2020 was lost to the pandemic for the minor leaguer, but he pitched at all four full-season levels of the organization in 2021, compiling 62 innings while allowing 26 hits and striking out 104 batters. He has struck out 39.2 percent of the batters he has faced between college and the minor leagues around a pandemic and missed time due to his surgery.

He will essentially be two full years recovered from his surgery by the start of the season and will most likely go back to the minors to build up his workload, but this is also a bullpen which has created opportunity by trading away Andrew Kittredge and will sorely miss the work done by Robert Stephenson last season. Given they've done nothing to address the bullpen other than claim Tyler Alexander and re-sign Chris Devenski, it appears the club's plan is to improve the unit from within. White is already on the 40-man roster and is the best internal option the club has to add swings and misses to their bullpen. The club's recent track record of converting the likes of Stephenson and Jason Adam from castoffs in other organizations into effective late-inning relievers should not be overlooked here. 

Toronto Blue Jays

Davis Schneider is a top-20 second baseman (current ADP 412; min 361, max 494)

Given the hairstyle and the moustache Davis sports, I just want to pretend he's the long lost son of renowned maintenance man Dwayne Schneider from One Day At a Time. The younger Schneider made a lot of noise in his debut by homering in his first major-league at-bat against Boston and later hitting a grand slam in the series finale. He finished the major-league season with an impressive .276/.404/.603 line with plenty of strikeouts in 141 plate appearances. His combined body of work between Triple-A and the majors saw him hit 29 homers, score 84 times, drive in 84 runs and steal nine bases with a .275 average and a double-digit walk rate at both levels. 

This was an incredible season for a 28th-round draft pick from 2017 who wasn't even ranked in the organization's top prospects. He had worked to add strength to his frame and throwing arm as well as tweaking his swing to incorporate a toe tap as he told Travis Sawchik this past summer. After that glorious opening weekend, Schneider only hit .223 at the big-league level the rest of the way as he adjusted to better quality pitching, but he still accepted walks in 16 percent of his plate appearances. 

Schneider's batting average will be the riskiest part of his profile if he doesn't improve his contact this season, because his flyball tendencies won't exactly create much batted-ball luck for him. He is all about pulling the baseball in the air, so he'll need to continue to reach the fences for this prediction to materialize. The recent addition of Justin Turner at least pushes Schneider down a spot in the lineup, but his power-hitting abilities at second base are welcomed late in drafts even with the risk in his profile.

Chad Green is a top-150 pitcher (current ADP 719; min 640, max 746)

Green had Tommy John Surgery in June of 2022 after pitching just 15 innings that season. The previous year, the Yankees pushed Green to 83.2 innings over 67 appearances as he struck out 99 batters around 14 home runs. The Jays liked what they saw from Green when he pitched for them late in 2024, so the club picked up his two-year option and will be paying him $21 million across the next two seasons. 

The 2023 Jays bullpen was mainly about Jordan Romano, with other names surfacing when Romano dealt with back tightness. Erik Swanson and Yimi Garcia pitched well, while Trevor Richards continued to pile up strikeouts around the occasional meltdown with his awesome changeup. Green has an excellent chance to push himself right in line behind Romano in 2024 if his brief showcase last year was any sign. Green's velocity was back to his pre-injury levels and both his fastball and curveball regained their 30 percent or better whiff rates. Green has previously toyed with adding a third or fourth pitch to his repertoire, but the cutter, sinker and splitter have disappeared from his pitch mix in recent years. Prior to Green's surgery, he was one of the more dominating non-closers in the game, striking out at least 30 percent of opposing batters from 2017 to 2021 and having no worse than a 24 percent K-BB% in that span.

He will be two full years recovered by mid-season, but his recent injury history continues to suppress his current market price. Toronto will need another name to step up to help the aforementioned group of relievers and Green has the ability to be a weapon in the late innings in any role. It wouldn't surprise me to see him once again win double-digit games in a relief role, as he did in 2021.