Like seemingly every Royals hitter at some point in the last couple of years, we have been waiting for a major Eric Hosmer breakout since he debuted in 2011. He teased us with his power potential by posting a .303 ISO over about a third of a season at Double-A back in 2010, all the while making excellent contact at most of his minor league stops and even showing some speed. A first baseman who might not only sock 20+ homers, but also swipe some bags and hit for a strong batting average? Fantasy gold!

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We’re moving on to our recap of the first basemen this week, so let’s begin by reviewing my Pod’s Picks for the position.

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Chris Davis, the 2014 bust, was obviously a massive disappointment to fantasy owners. But did you know that he was also a catcher, playing for the Seattle Mariners? Check out these two cherry-picked batting lines:

Without looking, are you sure you know which one is Mike Zunino and which is Davis?

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Each season you nabbed him as a sleeper. You expected him to deliver on his top prospect promise. But he kept disappointing, or simply didn’t earn the playing time you had hoped for. So you gave up. And then he broke out. Sound familiar? It happens a lot. It’s when the former top prospect sheds all the hype, everyone forgets about him, and then he goes off. Everyone then remember that perhaps they hadn’t given that player enough of a chance, jumping off the train far too soon.

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It was another productive season from Salvador Perez, at least from a fantasy baseball perspective. He earned the fifth most value among catchers and set a new career high in plate appearances and homers. But all is not well.

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After a ho-hum small sample performance in 2012, Jason Castro enjoyed a big breakout in 2013, driven by a power outburst and inflated BABIP. With nothing in his performance history supporting the offensive surge as being real, it was an open question whether he could repeat. Personally, I was a believer, and actually drafted or bought him in each of my three leagues. But alas, he was a bust, ranking just 20th in catcher value. So what happened?

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I made a lot of predictions this year, all of which were enjoyable to make. But they were all shared for the same reason — to point out players I believe to be undervalued or overvalued. Aside from the assortment of bold predictions, I also annually compare my personal rankings to the rest of the RotoGraphs ranking crew and dub the series Pod’s Picks. So let’s see if my rankings proved more accurate for the players we differed on most. We’ll start with the catchers, of which you could check out the original picks here. Actual ranks are taken from the soon-to-be published dollar values by Zach Sanders.

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Yesterday, I reviewed my 2014 bold hitting league leaders, so today it’s time to take a gander at the pitching side of those predictions. Since debuting the pitcher league leaders back in 2012, I did get one correct that year, but followed up that performance with an 0-fer. Let’s find out if I could add another tick in the win box this time around.

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Aside from inspiring the annual bold predictions, I also go out on a further limb by boldly predicting each league’s leaders in the standard five fantasy categories. These predictions are obviously a lot more difficult to get correct, so even just one right is quite an accomplishment. I also rule out a lot of players that I personally don’t consider all that bold, making it a real challenge. I whiffed on all my picks back in 2012, but did manage to bat .100 last year. Let’s see if I failed just a bit less so this time around. And of course, refresh your memory with full explanations back in the original post.

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Another regular season of baseball has been completed and it has been a disappointing one for my fantasy teams. But that doesn’t mean that everything went wrong. So let’s take a look at what I boldly predicted in March and find out how well my crystal ball was working. For a refresher, these were my original 10 predictions with explanations. For the last two seasons, I have hit on three of my 10 predictions, so the hope is that at some point I’ll nail four of them. Perhaps this will be the year.

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