During the preseason, us Rotographers focused on a position and shared tiers and rankings, updated weekly through the beginning of the season. I was tasked with first basemen, ranking 40 names and publishing the last update on March 24. Let’s now review those preseason rankings and where those players actually ended up ranking, along with their end of season dollar value earned.
I was excited about my AL-Only Tout Wars team this year on my quest to defense my 2024 championship, as I filled it with a ton of offense and a plethora of young potential pitching breakouts. This is how I usually do things, and sometimes it works out, while other times it doesn’t. This was one of the seasons where so much went wrong, but enough went right that I seemingly managed to finish far better than expected given my auction.
Now that the 2025 regular season is in the books, it’s time to review my preseason posts! Let’s start with the fan favorite, the 2025 Bold Predictions. This is always a fun one to put together and every time there’s a breakout I feel like I should have seen coming, I always feel regret if that player failed to make it into this article. Let’s see who did make it, because I surely don’t remember!
During the All-Star break, I polled you fine readers about hitters and your expectations in the second half. Specifically, the poll pitted the 10 greatest xwOBA overperformers against the 10 most significant underperformers. I asked you which group would post a higher second half wOBA and which range each group’s wOBA would fall into. Let’s now review what happened.
During the All-Star break, I polled you fine readers about starting pitchers and your expectations in the second half. Specifically, the poll pitted the 10 greatest SIERA overperformers against the 10 most significant underperformers. I asked you which group would post a lower second half ERA and which range each group’s ERA would fall into. Let’s now review what happened.
Often times, a lesser known hitter makes a name for himself during the postseason over small sample heroics and is then subsequently hyped to oblivion the following season. As you might guess, these hitters sometimes end up overvalued and disappoint their new owners. Remember Randy Arozarena back in 2020?! In 86 PAs, he posted an absurd .515 wOBA, driven by a 52.6% HR/FB rate (not a typo) and .455 ISO, resulting in 10 home runs. He certainly did enjoy a very solid fantasy season in 2021, going exactly 20/20, but was that even enough to breakeven for his owners? I guess that depended on your leaguemates, but I would imagine there were many leagues where his cost became comical.
Aside from rooting for my own teams to finish in a prize spot at the end of season, I also find myself doing a different kind of rooting. That is, I love to see players continue their offensive surges and crashes that could potentially lead to overvaluation or undervaluation in next year’s drafts and auctions. If a hitter has enjoyed a surprising surge, let that continue to ensure my leaguemates will pay through the nose for him! Likewise, if a hitter has suffered a surprising crash, the hope is there’s no turnaround before the season ends as I love to scoop up players coming off down years, as they are typically undervalued.
Are you fighting for a prize finish and have a hole or two on offense you’re dying to plug in the final week? These seven hitters have recently earned regular playing time and could be worth speculating on, particularly in deep leagues.
Yesterday, in an attempt to benefit from every possible advantage as the regular seasons comes to a close, I reviewed a slew of hitters whose teams will be playing in the top home run parks in baseball this week. Let’s now look toward next week so you have some time to plan your roster. Park factors are this year only.
With just two more weeks of regular season action, it’s worth doing the research to benefit from every possible advantage. So today, I’ll focus on hitters playing in the top home run parks in baseball this week. Taking advantage of park factors on a weekly basis always makes sense. However, I typically limit my research to Coors Field, as that’s consistently the most favorable hitting environment in baseball, or at least close to it when it fails to top the leaderboard. As usual, I’ll limit the names to those that are lesser owned (less than 50% owned in CBS leagues).
