It can be fascinating to look back and see where some players were ranked in the preseason. After all, many of these breakouts are easy to see now with the context of the first half to work with. Whether it be improved health, repeating a breakout performance, or just getting called up for the prospects, these players are now ranked well ahead of where they were entering the season. While these guys may not be the biggest surprises, they’ve certainly made the leap.

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I had two goals going into my initial Bold Predictions: To go really bold, and to not repeat what the other RotoGraphers had done. I think I accomplished both and now that we’re halfway through season the season, I’ll see how the predictions look and revise the ones where I missed big.

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Disappointment is entirely about expectations. Hence the hedging and inclusion of “potential” in the headline. If you weren’t expecting Michael Brantley to have a 20-20 season, he is not disappointing you at all right now. If you were, he has been kind of a bummer. I’m taking a closer look at four players ranked in the preseason RotoGraphs top 35 who may have not performed quite as expected.

I’ve addressed Edwin Encarnacion, Carlos Gomez and Troy Tulowitzki in other articles, so I won’t revisit those potential disappointments. Since we’re already working with smaller-than-ideal samples, I’m not going to include anyone who’s played fewer than 40 games (Anthony Rendon, Yasiel Puig and Jacoby Ellsbury). Statistics through June 24.

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Fresh off the buzz of excluding Joe Panik from my top 15 second base rankings, I’m doubling down and ranking the top 10 overall.

In late February, I tackled the task of ranking the safest hitter picks in the first round. Here are the safety rankings I came up with: 1. Mike Trout, 2. Andrew McCutchen, 3. Carlos Gomez, 4. Paul Goldschmidt, 5. Edwin Encarnacion, 6. Jose Bautista, 7. Giancarlo Stanton, 8. Miguel Cabrera, 9. Jose Abreu, 10. Anthony Rizzo

It doesn’t look too bad, though Gomez and Encarnacion are the obvious misses. Now I’ll work off of those rankings, but scrap the safety angle since it doesn’t really make sense at this point, and simply rank my top 10 players for the rest of the season. Statistics through June 17.

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Robinson Cano and Ian Kinsler have disappointed at the top, but second base has been full of solid performances. Below I’ve taken a stab at the top 15 for rest-of-season value. For the record, Joe Panik (148 wRC+) and Logan Forsythe (136 wRC+) were the toughest omissions. Statistics through June 10.

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This was not the plan. With Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes among the top group, shortstop was always at the mercy of injuries. Poor performance while on the field was not supposed to be the issue. While they’ve thwarted countless fantasy seasons, the star shortstops have tossed the keys to the position to… Brandon Crawford. No kidding. Crawford leads the position in wRC+ with Jhonny Peralta right on his heels.

What went wrong? Let’s take a gander at the top 5 by RotoGraphs preseason consensus rankings.

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Much has changed since those uncertain and perilous first two weeks of the season. While most players who stumbled to slow starts have steadied themselves, we’re still early enough where a poor couple of weeks weighs fairly heavily on the season statistics. With that in mind, I’m going to focus on some of the top hitters from the past 30 days who have been playing better than their overall season numbers indicate. Statistics through May 20.

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It started with Anthony Rizzo in March. While taking a close look, I noticed he has a rarish combination of low strikeout rate and high ISO. The basic logic on why that’s a rare combo makes sense. Batters who hit for a lot of power generally strike out a lot. But what we want is on the other side of that “generally.” The Rizzos, if you will.

To see who’s fitting the definition this season, I first settled on limits of an ISO of .200 or above and a strikeout rate of lower than 15. Why those rates? I looked at the top 50 in each stat and found the closest round number. For reference, Victor Martinez and Jose Bautista made the cut last season. Though Albert Pujols (short on power) and Edwin Encarnacion (short on strikeout rate) were both very close. In 2013, it was Encarnacion, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera and David Ortiz. For even more reference, ISO stabilizes at 160 AB. Statistics are through May 13.

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We’ve hit our second stabilization point! Let me allay your concerns immediately: Despite last week’s similar theme, this won’t morph into a column dedicated to pointing out when exactly each stabilization point is reached. Walk rates stabilize at 120 plate appearances and many players have already hit that point, so the timing was right. Plus it fits well with last week’s column on strikeout rates. I’ll cover the three highest walk rates and the three lowest. I also cherry picked two more players who don’t quite have 120 plate appearances yet, but are well on their way to posting some interesting numbers. Statistics are through May 6.

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We’ve hit our first stabilization point! Said point being 60 plate appearances, officially rendering strikeout rate useful. Being an opportunistic sort of fellow, I am immediately diving into some analysis of early strikeout rates, as if the numbers are chiseled in granite since we passed that magical 60-plate appearance line.

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