10/04/17

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I talked a big game about my bold predictions this year spawning from research. Like, instead of just being gut instinct types of things, or just being bold for the sake of being bold. Truth of it is I didn’t do as much research as I would’ve liked. My rotisserie-league drafts were not particularly strong, and while I hit the trifecta (1st, 2nd, 3rd) in my three home leagues (I live modestly), I could simply feel my drafts, as well as my bold predictions, were inferior relative to what I hoped they’d be.

You probably don’t care, though, so this is all filler text, for all intents and purposes. You want to cut to the chase. I don’t blame you! Let me drag this out a bit longer. I’ll review each prediction from March with their corresponding midseason “probabilities” of being correct from July before finally reaching a verdict. I don’t remember half the predictions and I honestly have no idea how I’ll do until I reach the end.

1) Alex Dickerson is a top-30 outfielder. (Midseason odds: 0%)

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Given my standing as the President of the Jake Lamb Fan Club, I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I did not revisit his 2017 season one final time, in the event that the Snakes are sent home on Wednesday night in order to enjoy the splendid weather in the Valley this time of year. At the beginning of the year, I made some rather nonsensical bold predictions about the third base position. Within that, I declared that Jake Lamb would make the biggest move up the third base leaderboard.

Which…didn’t happen.

However, Lamb did demonstrate improvement primarily within the fact that his 158 games represented a new career high. Unlike his 2016 season, a good chunk of those were not hindered by injury, either. There were some cold spells sure, but he was able to graduate from 16th in WAR among qualifying third sackers in 2016 to 14th (2.5), while making the move from 12th in Off rating to 10th (9.7). So Off has him as a top ten player at the position, which isn’t a far-fetched idea to consider.

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After squeaking out the top finish in the inaugural 2016 Tout Wars Head-to-Head league, I moved to the 15-team mixed auction league. It was an interesting season and here are some of my “highlights”.

• To the frustration of auctioneer, RotoWire’s Jeff Erickson, I was just pulling names out of the air during the end game. The room lost its lighting (the sun) and my paper draft list was useless.
• Buster Posey and Chris Davis were my most expensive hitters ($57 combined). I’m pretty sure I got no more than $15 of value out them.
• On the pitching side, I spent $26 combined on Rick Porcello and Danny Duffy as my #2 and #3 starters. I may have been lucky to get positive value from them.
• Additionally, I found it necessary to roster Adam Wainwright, Shelby Miller, and Rubby de la Rosa on auction day.
• For my first waiver wire splash, I spent over a quarter of my FAAB on the recently anointed Nationals closer Blake Treinen. And release him a few weeks later once he lost his job.
• Got ravaged by injuries. In late May, I sent four players to the DL in one week.
• Around mid-season, I traded my Elvis Andrus for Nomar Mazara because I need some more power. In the season’s second half, Mazara hit one fewer home run, had 14 fewer R+RBI, five fewer stolen bases, and an on-base percentage 16 points less.
• Right after the Andrus trade, I lost my other stolen base threats, Kevin Kiermaier and Eduardo Nunez, to the disabled list.
• Picked up Zach Davies and Mike Clevinger off waivers and just let them go waiting for Rick Porcello to catch fire.
• Spent over 10% of my FAAB and Matt Chapman, watched him struggle on my team, and then released him. He hit 14 home runs in the season’s second half.

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Last year was my first attempt at making bold predictions here at RotoGraphs, and it didn’t go very well (1/10 correct, with Kyle Hendricks my lone win). This year things looked better at mid-season, but let’s take a look at the final results!

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For the last three years I have run an industry mock draft during the month of September. It has been a fun exercise that suits three purposes: Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Judge, my thank you card is in the mail.

This was my fourth year in the American League only Tout Wars league after winning the inaugural Tout Wars mixed draft league back in 2013. I’ve had two bottom tier finishes, a second place in 2015, and now…a Yoo-Hoo shower! And since this post is partially meant to give me a pedestal to brag from, I will giddily share that I not only won, but set multiple league records along the way as well. My team scored 109 of a possible 120 points, the most in AL Tout history, while my 26 point victory margin was also the most. In addition, I set a couple of category records, and actually won eight of the 10 categories. It was quite the season.

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I take immense pride in my ability to set a sufficiently low bar. Exhibit A: 2016’s Bold Predictions. I got one. One right. The downside to that is self-explanatory. The upside is that any improvement would make for a dramatic one.  So let’s see how I did?

All rankings used are from ESPN’s Player Rater  Read the rest of this entry »

Time for the final review of Bold Predictions. I checked in on them back in mid-July and unfortunately, things didn’t get much better for me!

James Paxton Is A Top-15 Arm.

In the end, the injury sank this one as Paxton wound up with just 24 starts. However, he posted a 2.98 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in the 136 IP and still slotted 18th on ESPN’s Player Rater among SP. It’s a loss by the letter of the law as he’s not a top-15 arm at season’s end, but even with the sub-150 IP output, I can’t imagine anyone feels like they lost out by taking Paxton. I’m going to take half-credit on this one if that’s OK.

0.5 for 1 (.500)

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Once again, heading into the all-star break, I presented two lists of 10 pitchers each — both lists composed of pitchers on each side of SIERA-ERA differential. I then asked you to vote on which group, the SIERA overperformers or underperformers, would power a lower second half ERA, and which ERA range each group will land in as a group average. Amazingly, the results suggested these two groups of pitchers were identical! Both garnered between 44% and 45% of the vote to post the lower ERA, while nearly 11.5% of you couldn’t choose a side, predicting the groups would finish within .05 earned runs of each other. Furthermore, 29% voted that 4.00-4.24 would be the ERA range that both groups would settle into, with 3.75-3.99 the second highest vote-getter at 27% and 28%. Pretty crazy how close these votes were! Let’s see what actually happened.

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