Finally, the season is about to begin! Typically, my bold predictions comprise 10 crystal ball forecasts. However, I ended up coming up with just six and am not in the mood to try to come up with four more. I simply can’t boldly predict things when the season sample is small, and frankly, anything could happen (Dee Gordon – 10 home runs?!). They all happen to be positive predictions as well, even though I usually like throwing in a couple of negatives. Oh well, you get three hitter and three pitcher boldies. So let’s do this…

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Yesterday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders, of which I expect to go 10 for 10. The pitching side of the ledger is a bit easier. Given that there is both more luck and factors outside the specific pitcher’s control that shapes his surface results, it’s more conceivable that a non-favorite leads the league in a category. This is even more so over a shortened season.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions (which I’ll publish on Thursday), I up the ante with my bold league leaders. If you thought nailing a bold prediction was tough, the bold league leaders are even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe would be considered bold or is already projected to finish top five in the category. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be than any serious attempt at being right. That said, if there’s any season to get a bold league leader choice correct, this is it. We might see some very surprising names atop the categorical leaderboards.

We’ll start with the hitting league leaders in each of the five categories, split up by league.

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As I type this, it’s now July 19, and my 2020 fantasy season auctions and drafts have all officially been completed. That is such a strange sentence to type. I am guessing the majority of you are in the same boat, with some of you auctioning/drafting this week as well. Not only is it hard to be excited about the season, but I still feel like it’s going to be a complete crapshoot between small sample performance randomness and COVID-related injuries and issues galore. Given the smaller sample size, I thought the correct pitching strategy was to discount ratios and buy strikeout rates. That strategy gave me five names to target if executing it.

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Yesterday, I discussed five starting pitchers to buy cheap, with the idea that over a smaller sample of games this season, ratio categories are going to be much more volatile than counting stats, and therefore should be discounted on draft/auction day. Instead, perhaps we should just buy strikeouts and cross our fingers the ratios settle into a good range after 10-12 games started. Today, let’s apply the “discount ratios, buy counting stats” concept to hitters. This time, I’m going to ignore batting average and buy power.

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I think we all know that this is going to be a truly wacky real and fantasy baseball season. New MLB rules and only 60 games instead of 162 means a chance to adjust our strategies to try to gain an edge. Ratio categories are always volatile, even over a 162 game season, so in just 60 games, there gap between the league leaders and laggards is going to be even wider than usual. And the names of those leaders and laggards could be more surprising than ever before just because randomness and pure luck are going to play a larger role.

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Alas, we finish our 2020 Prospect Opportunities series discussing potential opportunities for prospects to earn starting jobs at positions currently manned by a player at risk of losing his job if his poor play continues. Last team up is the Rockies.

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Today, we continue through our last division, as we finish our series in the National League West to discuss potential opportunities for prospects to earn starting jobs at positions currently manned by a player at risk of losing his job if his poor play continues. We’ll move on to the Padres.

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Today, we continue through our last division, as we finish our series in the National League West to discuss potential opportunities for prospects to earn starting jobs at positions currently manned by a player at risk of losing his job if his poor play continues. We’ll move on to the Giants.

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Today, we continue through our last division, as we finish our series in the National League West to discuss potential opportunities for prospects to earn starting jobs at positions currently manned by a player at risk of losing his job if his poor play continues. We’ll move on to the Dodgers. LOL at the notion they have any players that might be at risk of losing their starting job due to poor performance. They have literally no players, whether a hitter or a pitcher, that would fit the criteria I have been using for this series. So, I will just discuss a handful of prospects who should be kept on fantasy radars.

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