FanPost

Three Bold(ish) Predictions for Spring Training...and Beyond

1. Ben Heller will spend spring training shaking off the rust…

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…but will show just enough to nail down the last bullpen spot. And once he does, he will become one of the most valuable members of the 2020 bullpen. Should there be a need for an opener, he and Chad Green might well switch spots.

Heller’s peripheral numbers have always been kinder to him than his health. At the end of last year, in an extremely small sample size at Triple A (just 11 innings), he seemed to have regained his form after what amounted to nearly two lost seasons. The key statistic: his SO/W ratio, at 4.33, was the second-best of his career. Heller has always had strikeout stuff (his career SO/9 number, in both the majors and minors, is 11.6), but like so many Yankees prospects, he’s struggled with control. This spring, he’ll find it at last — and the result will be a breakout season from the forgotten man in the Andrew Miller trade.

2. J.A. Happ will become the fourth starter…

…because Mike King will end up beating out Jordan Montgomery for a role in the rotation, and will become the de facto fifth starter. Montgomery has seemingly been handed this spot, but he’ll battle command issues in spring training as he finishes his fight back from Tommy John surgery. King, meanwhile, will just do what he’s done throughout his career thus far: get batters to drive the ball into the ground (a career rate of about 45 percent, as noted in this Joshua Diemert profile from last December). He’ll have the most outstanding spring of any young pitcher in camp, and he’ll be impossible to keep out of the rotation when Montgomery struggles.

(However, Montgomery will eventually end up back in the rotation, and after James Paxton returns and records two solid starts before the All-Star break, Happ will be dealt to a National League team — how about the going-for-the-gusto Reds? — in a depth move for a low-level prospect or two. People will gnash their teeth until one of the prospects turns into the next Luis Gil.)

3. The Yankees will end spring training healthy enough…

…that they will be able to justify the long-rumored "surplus" package deal to bring back an upgrade somewhere. You’ve heard all the names. I won't try to predict who comes — a 3B? 1B? CF? (Whoever it is, they’ll bat left-handed, even if their name is Josh Hader.) Nor is it possible to predict who goes. Urshela? Andujar? Voit? Frazier? You’ve heard all those names as well.

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That is therefore not a bold prediction, but this might be: a key piece of the trade will be Domingo German, an 18-game-winning lottery ticket for a team willing to absorb the PR hit because he’ll only be part of a package headlined by a theoretically bigger fish. (And German will go on to have a successful second half of 2020 when he returns midseason, and Yankees fans will rue the day, etc., etc.)

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