Collette Calls: 2024 AL West Bold Predictions

This article is part of our Collette Calls series.

If you are just joining in on this annual series, the premise for these picks is explained in the previous installment of this article series. 

Let me quote the great Nenge Mboko and wish you a Merry New Year and toast you with some beef jerky! I trust your New Year's Eve was livelier than mine as I was in bed by 10pm with noise-cancelling headphones relaxing to some sounds on my BetterSleep app to drown out the fireworks that went until 1am according to my son. What can I say? I have but one more day of vacation until hopping back into the saddle of the day job and I wanted to spend some of that time on this article rather than hung over and in bed all day for a change. Enough with my boring life; let's get to what you're really here for!

All ADP references are from 11/30-12/30/23 across 14 Draft Champions Leagues. 

Los Angeles Angels

Jo Adell is a top-80 outfielder (current ADP 654; min 333, max 661)

Remember that scene from Rookie of the Year when Chet Steadman implores his manager, Sal Martinella, to allow him to throw just one more pitch, knowing full well it's going to be the final pitch of his career as he can feel his shoulder about to give out? Yea, that is me on the Jo Adell train. I have done my best to wishcast this guy to some fantasy success over the years, and it simply hasn't materialized. Adell has amassed 619 plate appearances in his career and has a .214/.259/.366 triple-slash line with a 4.8 percent walk rate and a 35.4 percent strikeout rate. He's earned Diamond Medallion status on Delta piling up flights between Santa Ana Airport (SNA) and Salt Lake City (SLC) the past four seasons. He has enjoyed the time in the PCL statistically with a .272/.349/.556 line, a 9.4 percent walk rate and a 29.1 percent strikeout rate around 60 homers, 167 RBIs and 21 steals in 980 plate appearances.

Adell, in his big-league stints, has also exhibited elite max exit velocity as well as sprint speed, finishing in the top 90th percentile of the latter category in each of the past four seasons. Simply put, it's tough for me to give up on the athletic abilities of Adell even when all of the other indicators tell me to do so. What is buoying this prediction is that this is put up or shut up season for Adell, as he's finally out of options. The Angels would have to expose Adell to waivers if they quit on him before I do, and his abilities would quickly be snatched up by a bottom-division club, although there may not be too many teams lower than the Angels in 2024. 

The Angels need to retool their offense and are not going be able to fill in the void left by Shohei Ohtani relocating up I-5 to the Dodgers. The best they can do is to try to create some type of Frankenstein in a lineup position and hope for the best. As it stands now, Mike Trout may lead the league with a 40 percent walk rate, because opposing pitchers will likely choose to strategically pitch around the all-world talent whenever he's in the lineup. Someone needs to step up around Trout to provide a threat in the lineup, and right now, Los Angeles is counting on Brandon Drury and Taylor Ward to be that threat. Adell and Mickey Moniak are both out of options on this club and make for a logical platoon in the outfield if the club carries both. It would be odd to see a club carry two players under the age of 26 who are both out of options, so we could see Adell relocated given the prevalence of right-handed hitting on the lineup.  Any team that decides to trade for Adell should present a better opportunity for playing time, allowing us to see if the athletically gifted younger (who turns 25 this season) can finally produce in line with his projected abilities. 

Or, Adell could dislocate his shoulder on one final big swing and eventually end up on an overseas baseball team. 

Chase Silseth is a top-100 pitcher (current ADP 492; min 245, max 439)

Many younger pitchers are often one skill away from success, and that's the case for the 23-year old Silseth. He has logged 81 innings as a big-league pitcher over the past two seasons around demotions and a concussion he suffered after an errant throw by a teammate, pitching to a 4.89 ERA, 1.38 WHIP and a 12.0 percent K-BB ratio in that time. Silseth has a strong 47.8 percent groundball rate but has still allowed 16 homers in those 81 innings, which highlights the area for improvement for the young hurler.

Nine of the 16 homers Silseth has surrendered have come off his fastballs, as the league has hit .291 off those pitches when putting them into play compared to .230 against his breaking balls and .165 off his splitter. If there was ever a case for a pitcher to pitch backwards more often, it would be with Silseth, whose non-fastballs generated swings and misses a third of the time he threw them in 2023, with both pitches improving over their 2022 performances. Yet Silseth throws his fastballs 58.2 percent of the time because he finds himself behind or even in the count too frequently. Look at his career splits in these situations:

• Batter ahead: .357/.561/.691 with a -21.1% K-BB%
• Even count: .246/.259/.474 with a 22.2% K-BB% (no walks, obviously)
• Pitcher ahead: .146/.146/.246 with a 38.2% K-BB% (no walks, obviously)

Should Silseth find the ability to get ahead early more frequently, he'll become tougher on batters because they'll have to discern which of his five pitches will be coming their way, whereas obvious fastball counts can be narrowed down to location. There is no consistent path to success for Silseth if he continues throwing his worst pitch nearly 60 percent of the time. This prediction can only materialize should he demonstrate better fastball command early in counts, allowing him to avoid the situations which consistently end up poorly for him. His fastball profile simply isn't good enough for him to use it as frequently as he has to date. It is not a velocity issue as much as much as it is ordinary. Silseth should look to how Alex Cobb and Kevin Gausman have reinvented themselves in recent years as models for success. 

Houston Astros

Alex Bregman wins the AL MVP (current ADP 103; min 48, max 129)

This slot last season was used for Jose Abreu, and that did not play out well. This also feels like me pushing the Anthony Rendon redemption tour train last season, and that too played out poorly. Here me out though.

Dusty Baker never wanted to move Kyle Tucker up in the lineup and it forever frustrated outsiders who felt that Tucker being higher in the order could bring more balance to the top of the lineup. New manager Joe Espada may be more open to changing the lineup to get Tucker more at-bats, which makes things very interesting for Bregman. Should Espada move Tucker up to second, that would move Bregman to the third spot of the lineup behind Jose Altuve and Tucker and in front of Yordan Alvarez. Simply put, there could not be a better spot for a player heading into his final year before free agency with two on-base percentage threats in front of him and one of the league's most feared sluggers behind him. 

Such a lineup construction would provide Bregman with a plethora of RBI opportunities, and both Altuve and Tucker would be stolen base threats, leading to more fastballs for Bregman. 29 of his 48 homers over the past two seasons have come off fastballs, and that was with him hitting second in the lineup. Bregman hasn't driven in 100 or more runs since 2019, and while he's unlikely to repeat the 41 homers he managed that season, he could set a career high in RBI when you combine his health over the past two seasons with his elite ability to put the ball in play. I am frankly stunned to see Bregman outside the top 100 coming off the season he just had and considering what he could potentially do this season. 

Framber Valdez wins the AL Cy Young (current ADP 63; min 41, max 84)

The 2024 starting pitching market is off to a hot start because the quality near the top has been compromised with the carryover from what was lost in 2023 due to serious injuries. Whereas last season, Gerrit Cole was the only lock in the first round, Spencer Strider is now firmly entrenched there and even Corbin Burnes has crept into the first round in some drafts. If you are the type of fantasy manager who doesn't like taking pitching too early, then consider Valdez as the ace for your staff.

Valdez has all the ingredients of a fantasy ace, having won 15+ games once while posting better than league average ratios in each of the past two seasons and finally hitting the 200-strikeout plateau this past season. His extreme groundball rates remain solid, although his 54.2 percent rate from 2023 is the "worst" of his big league career. Valdez continues to lean on his sinker as his primary pitch, which leaves him to the mercy of the BABIP gods, but low walks and low homers are still quite attractive for a guy who has made each of his 62 starts since the beginning of 2022. 

Valdez, should Espada employ the aforementioned lineup changes, could see some tremendous run support this season. The offense would still be in solid shape even if the club rolled out the same lineup, but there is a potential for Valdez to pitch in front of the best offense in the league allowing him to combine the skills of 2023 with the wins of 2022. 15+ wins, 200 innings, 200 strikeouts with solid to excellent ratios; that looks like a fantasy ace to me. Cole is the chalk favorite to win the AL Cy Young every season because he is just that damn good, but Valdez could give him a run for his money this year if he just continues doing what he's done. He isn't the ace of his real baseball team on paper, but he has the skills to be a fantasy ace this season.

Oakland Athletics

Miguel Andujar is a top-100 outfielder (current ADP 734; min 514, max 700)

It was just this time last year when Brent Rooker was staring us all right in the face on this very roster with an ADP of 674, going in just 10 of the 323 Draft Champions drafts from the 2023 season. Rooker went on to earn $11 in standard 15-team leagues, outearning the likes of Cedric Mullins, Jazz Chisholm Jr., and Daulton Varsho, whose combined ADPs would still fall woefully short of where Rooker was being drafted this time last year. Rooker has blazed the trail for what Andujar could become for the A's in 2024.

Andujar, like Rooker, has shown an ability to hit major league pitching while also struggling to find a defensive home. Andujar hit throughout the farm system with New York but peaked in 2018 with the club and then quickly faded as defensive issues cost him his job. Pittsburgh got him on the cheap in 2022 and he spent most of 2023 in Triple-A where he hit .338/.404/.536 with 16 homers, a 10.1 percent walk rate and a 11.8 percent strikeout rate while manning the outfield. Andujar did not embarrass himself in his 30 games with Pittsburgh, either, finishing slightly above league average offensively over his 90 plate appearances.

The move to Oakland affords the player as much playing time as his abilities earn. Andujar is out of options, and Oakland is running out of names to insert into the lineup. One has to figure Seth Brown is on a month-to-month lease if he even makes it to April with the club. That likely opens up right field for Andujar on a regular basis, an improvement on what currently looks to be a platoon with JJ Bleday in left field. Oakland will want to show that Andujar still has some value (he turns 29 early in the season) and will want to play him with the hope of potentially flipping him or turning him into an everyday regular, as Rooker morphed into after the club acquired him off waivers from the Royals over the winter. 

Again, this out-of-nowhere Cinderella story just played itself out this past season, when we let Rooker go undrafted in 97 percent of 50-man draft formats. Andujar's upside is just begging to be selected in the reserve round of AL-only leagues, much like Rooker was last year.

Lucas Erceg leads the roster in saves (current ADP 558; min 436, max 655)

This prediction is not a slight on the abilities of Mason Miller, as I've absolutely loved watching that kid pitch since channel surfing late in March of 2023 and coming across his spring debut on a late mid-week night. Miller is being discussed as the primary closer and absolutely has the stuff to do the job, but he has been hurt frequently since joining the Oakland system. Miller has thrown 72.2 innings of baseball since the start of the 2021 season, and the 33.1 innings he worked last season were a career high. Forearm soreness cost him four months of the season.

Erceg has elite velocity and has five different pitches classified by BaseballSavant, with his four-seamer and changeup leading the bunch. His changeup had a 38.4 percent whiff rate, while the league hit .190 off both the change and his four-seamer. The challenge with Erceg is commanding those pitches because he is incredibly charitable with walks, with his best career walk rate coming in at 12.4 percent while he was in Double-A. The saving grace is that Erceg allowed just one home run last season in 55 innings, so he was able to keep his ERA below 5.00 despite a 1.58 WHIP. He did close the season with a mixed bag of success in the month of September allowing one earned run in 12.2 innings while striking out 15 batters...and walking 8. 

Erceg is much like Dany Jimenez was with this team last season when Trevor May was picked up on the cheap and ended up having a productive saves total for fantasy managers. GM David Forst is already on record saying there are some opportunities out there on the free-agent market as well, so be watchful for any late Oakland signees before adjusting draft plans around this prediction. 

Seattle Mariners

Mitch Garver is not a top-300 player (current ADP 213; min 178, max 246)

Garver was a big part of my overall fantasy success last season, including his role on my AL LABR-winning roster. I took Garver just about everywhere last season despite the UT-only label he carried on draft day, and it was worth the $5 or less I spent at the end of the day even if he only played in 87 games thanks to his production from the catcher position.

This season, Garver took his talents to the northwest to provide Seattle with some much-needed offense, something the club lacked even before they sent Eugenio Suarez packing. Garver should settle somewhere in the middle of the Seattle lineup and perhaps even hit cleanup, but he also has to stay on the field to take full advantage of his situation. Garver has never had more than 360 plate appearances in a season as something has derailed him every year. 2019 saw him miss time with a high ankle sprain, 2020 had an intercostal strain, 2021 was reduced with a sports hernia surgery and back troubles, 2022 with an arm injury and this past season with a knee sprain. The saving grace now is that Garver should be very limited in his catching duties with Cal Raleigh taking most of those starts and Seby Zavala picking up the rest.

Garver is currently going 17th at the catching position, so it feels like the marketplace is also cool on him, but he is still going well in front of some players with upside including Danny Jansen in a contract year, Elias Diaz at Coors and Freddy Fermin in Kansas City. As much fun as I had realizing the return on my heavy portfolio investment with Garver in 2023, I'm expecting him to take a step back closer to his 2021-2022 profile. The park change is a wash, as the three-year park factors don't give us any reason to panic, although the 2023 park factors tilted heavily in Globe Life's favor. However, the change in surrounding talent cannot be ignored and the Seattle offense is a step down from what Texas rolled out on a nightly basis. At the end of the day, the injury history here is simply too much to ignore for me and I will be fading Garver as aggressively as I rostered him last season. It also would not surprise me to see him go all Nelson Cruz on us, as Cruz flourished in the full-time DH role in Seattle when it was thought the signing was a terrible one for the player and the club. 

Matt Brash is not a top-150 pitcher (current ADP 261; min 208, max 309)

Brash is the the 104th pitcher over the past 30 days, just behind Taj Bradley and in front of Reese Olson and Seth Lugo. Brash is immensely fun to watch on PitchingNinja gifs with his frisbee slider, and his nine wins and four saves last season with 107 strikeouts in 70.2 innings absolutely had fantasy value. Simply put, a lot went Brash's way last season to get him to 13 wins+saves in just 70 innings. A look into the StatHead database at Baseball-Reference shows just nine pitchers in the wild-card era who have multiple seasons of at least eight wins despite pitching 75 or fewer innings, led by Arthur Rhodes who pulled it off three times. The last pitchers to accomplish the feat in consecutive seasons was David Robertson from 2017-2018 with the Yankees and Wade Davis in 2014-2015 with Kansas City. There was a long drought before those two dating back to Felix Rodriguez in 2002-2003. The kind of value Brash brought from a reliever role last season was just rare.

If we throw in the 100-strikeout qualifier with the other two conditions, Brash is just one of eight pitchers to reach eight wins and 100 strikeouts in 75 or fewer innings, joining:

• Wade Davis (2014)
• Andrew Miller (2016)
• Brandon Workman (2019)
• Luke Jackson (2019)
• Paul Sewald (2021)
• Liam Hendriks (2021)
• Felix Bautista (2023)

Davis saw his wins drop by one in 2015, but his strikeouts fell by 31 despite just five fewer innings of work. Miller was still a ratio stud in 2017, but he lost 28 strikeouts and worked 12 fewer innings. Workman's career fell apart after his magical 2019 season, Luke Jackson hasn't retained the same fantasy value since his awesome season, while Sewald has lost both strikeouts and decisions over the past two seasons as a full-time closer much like Hendriks did in 2022 around his health problems.

The best way for Brash to protect his fantasy value would be to become the closer, but Andres Munoz appears to be the favorite for that job. There are pitchers in baseball who mean more to their real clubs than their fantasy ones, and that is Brash right now as long as the depth charts hold as they are. I just fear drafting the flash of Brash's slider and skills and watching them be at the mercy of late-inning rallies by a questionable offense that will not allow him to return anything positive on the investment. 

Texas

Leody Taveras is a top-200 overall player (current ADP 276; min 250, max 340)

This prediction is in part due to the looming shadow of Wyatt Langford. As it stands now, Taveras is the 62nd outfielder drafted over the last month while Langford — without a single major-league plate appearance — is the 37th outfielder, going as low as 126th and no higher than 188th. The marketplace appears to be writing off Taveras because they are even more all-in on Evan Carter after his postseason showing despite his 32 percent strikeout rate during the regular season. I see this is as an opportunity because Taveras is out of options and only recently turned 25 years old. Taveras is also the best defender in the outfield with his speed and range, so if Texas were to expose him to waivers, he would be traded to another club and earn a starting role in a heartbeat. Either way, this is a nice market opportunity for taking Taveras at a discount.

Taveras' 2023 got off to a late start after an oblique injury in spring training delayed the beginning of his season, but Taveras went on to hit .295/.339/.473 in the first half with 10 homers and nine steals. The second half didn't go as well for him due to an extremely sluggish July and August before a strong September which saw him drawing more walks (10) than he had in the previous two months (seven). Even with that recent display of better plate discipline, there is no chance Taveras is hitting in the top half of this loaded lineup, but his defense is going to guarantee him a spot in the bottom part of the order where he can once again put up a double-digit steals total.

Athletic ability and age are on Taveras's side, giving him a chance to have a bigger season than he had in 2023, where he finally gave us the double-digit homer and steals season expected from him for some time. He continues to make improvements in his strikeout rate and in making better-quality contact, as he took both of those rates from the bottom 25th percentile to better than league average from 2022 to 2023. The signs are there...

Jose Leclerc is a top-60 pitcher (current ADP 206; min 175, max 256)

Leclerc is currently the 85th pitcher going off the board over the last month, despite being projected as the closer for the defending World Champions. He is also going this low despite a 2023 StatCast profile which looks like this:

The walks are admittedly an issue, but the rest of that profile screams closer. If this were a middle reliever stuck behind a struggling closer, the script would be flipped. However, there is no clear-cut option for Texas right now unless they run out and sign Josh Hader, and given Hader's contract demands, that seems extremely unlikely. 

Leclerc had Tommy John surgery in 2021 and lost some time in mid-summer with an ankle injury. The story within the story with him, however, is how he got better as the season wore on. He began the season with a fastball averaging just over 94 mph but gained more than two ticks of velocity over the course of the season, and as he began throwing harder, he took his overall contact rate and ability to strike batters out from below-average to above-average by season's end:

Yes, Leclerc was at this point in 2018 as a 24-year-old pitcher who went from dominating closer to losing his job the next season before things went south over the next few seasons for him. He did show better resilience in the postseason around the untimely homer to Jose Altuve, which would have sent the younger version of Leclerc back, not allowing it to define his postseason. 

Simply put, this is an excellent market opportunity to add a potential 30+ saves to your draft roster as I believe Leclerc has come full circle and is again the guy who wowed us in 2018.