Where would those of us who are passionate about full-season Fantasy Baseball be without the counsel of America’s Leading Fantasy Sports Aggregator to guide us? Our hearts accordingly leapt up when we beheld in our In Box last week ALFSA’s “Ten Bold Second Half Predictions.” And about whom were these predictions predicted? Here’s the full list: Matt Olson, Christian Yelich, Justin Smoak, Pete Alonso, Kenta Maeda, J.D. Martinez, Brandon Woodruff, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Eloy Jimenez.

Thanks, podnuh; we’ll rush right out and grab all those guys. Look—as we see it, a Bold Prediction must also be a Useful Prediction, and for anyone in a redraft league, a Useful Prediction is one involving a player who might actually be available. With this in mind, we present our own Bold Second Half Predictions, confident that most if not all these guys will be available for cheap in most if not all leagues. Five pitchers today, then five hitters tomorrow: Read the rest of this entry »

If March is bold prediction season and October is bold prediction review season, then somewhere in between is bold prediction check-in season.

As always: you don’t care about this introduction, just the midway results. But, also, as always: I try to use bold predictions as an exercise in using hard data (and a little bit of blind faith) to make actionable recommendations for leveraging market inefficiencies to your advantage. While it’s fun to predict Christian Yelich might hit 60 home runs (he might!!!), it doesn’t change your opinion about him very much, whereas a bold prediction about, say, my little king Jeff McNeil might have encouraged you to draft him ahead of his lowly average draft position (ADP) of 298th overall (34th among second basemen), per National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC).

Unlike past seasons, I actually remember some of the bold predictions I made, which makes me excited to review them. At the end of each prediction, I’ll assess the percentage probability of it hitting come October. Let’s dig in.

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Opening day is finally here!

Draft season is now ending. It is time for our fantasy teams to finally start accumulating statistics (Japan series aside). After the long winter, the excitement of a new season has finally reached its pinnacle.

Now it is time to share my 2019 bold predictions with you. The ATC Projections helped shape some of these. Others come from my own personal analysis on the player, or team situation. The rest arise from blind optimism or the crossing of my fingers. These are all possibilities that could happen, that I feel will happen if things break just right.

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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.

In an effort to avoid double dipping and naming the same pitcher in two categories, there may have been a slightly better bold choice for a particular stat. Also keep in mind that it is challenging to balance boldness with realistic, considering this requires me to bet against a group of names in which it’s like a 95% lock that one of them wins the category. I eliminated many names that I didn’t think were bold, but maybe you do. I also eliminated names that have no real chance at leading in the category. I decided against a bold wins league leader, because wins are silly and unpredictable. I also deleted my strikeout league leader, because it would seem just about impossible for any non-top projected guy to lead the league.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions, 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 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.

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

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It’s time to overly exaggerate some of my pre-season hunches and create some BOLD predictions.

Note: For the rankings, I will use our auction calculator. For ADP, I’m using the NFBC ADP from 12 Main Event leagues which drafted from March 22nd to March 25th.

1. Jung Ho Kang will be a top-10 starting third baseman by season’s end.

He is being drafted as the 26th third baseman off the board this past weekend. This prediction was easy. In 2015, he was the 15th overall third baseman in 467 PA. Why not the same production in 600 PA?

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You know the drill. Make them too bold, you’ll end up batting .000. Make them too easy, you’ll get called out for not being bold enough. I’ve always strived to find a happy medium and considering my past results (nearly always getting two to three right), I think I have. Since most of my fellow RotoGraphers have already posted their own bold predictions, I tried to discuss players not already included on previous lists. So as much as I like Ramon Laureano, I don’t need to reiterate Paul Sporer’s bold prediction of a 25 homer and 40 steal season. Here we go…

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The 2019 season is here.  Let’s get right to it.

1 – Dan Vogelbach will finish with a wOBA higher than Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.

You could say that to date neither Dan Vogelbach nor Vladimir Guererro, Jr. have accomplished anything in the major leagues.  While true, that’s where the comparison ends.  Vogelbach is 26 years old and has less than 150 major league plate appearances on his resume (career 78 wRC+). Vlad, Jr. just turned 20 years old, is the consensus #1 prospect in baseball, and is the son of a beloved Hall of Fame player.

I have absolutely nothing against Vlad, Jr. and am as excited as anyone else to watch him carve out what is likely to be a stunning career with the bat.  However, as I tried to express recently, the expectations are so high here that we may all be setting ourselves up for a little bit of disappointment.  As we are often reminded with even elite prospects, baseball is hard, and the game has a funny way of humbling even the most talented athletes in the world, at least for a time.  Patience will be prudent with Vlad, Jr., but most of us will have none of it.

Vogelbach has posted a minor league slash of .282/.391/.472/.864 over eight seasons, including a .907 OPS in 342 AAA games.  He’s a professional hitter, but up until this point he’s had Nelson Cruz blocking his path to SEA.  That roadblock is now removed, and as of this writing it’s all but certain Vogelbach will get a shot to stick on the Mariners’ roster to begin the season.  From the write up for the 2019 Seattle top prospects:

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I went just 2.5/10 last year, but I’m smashing that mark this year and going 3/10!!! For me, the real value in these is putting some names on your radar in a context you might not have considered. I’d love to be right, but these are bold predictions meaning they are unlikely to come to fruition without major skills development (I went all positive this year) and a good bit of luck. Getting the stars to align like that on one player and one pitcher is hard enough, let alone five of each. But there is still wiggle room between these bold predictions and the player’s projections to be wins for us and contribute to our fantasy titles. So without further ado…

Ramon Laureano goes 25 HR/40 SB

This is the culmination of a winter spent gushing over Laureano. I just didn’t see how I could leave him out of this piece. Same with another Oakland Athletic coming up. It’s no surprise I’m a huge fan, but I wanted to express just exactly what I think the high end could be with a bold prediction for each. Laureano’s elite defense should absolutely secure his playing time and he’s a premium speedster with emerging pop. He matched Dee Gordon’s 29.0 ft/sec sprint speed last year and stole 36 bases per 600 PA in the minors. Hopefully the A’s let him maximize the wheels.

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Another year, another set of bold predictions, and another introduction to The Process^TM. I did well last year, hitting on Matt Chapman and Miles Mikolas out-earning their teammates Matt Olson and Luke Weaver despite enormous divides in National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) as well as Madison Bumgarner being worse than a not-top-20 starting pitcher (with an asterisk for his late start in 2019). I might’ve hit more bold predictions last year than in my previous three seasons combined.

Bold predictions can but don’t have to be a frivolous exercise. As fun as it is to slap a 40-homer prediction on Franmil Reyes (…should I do that?), I don’t find it particularly illuminating unless it’s supported by evidence (…which exists for Reyes?!). You can make bold predictions without being outrageously bold — it’s exactly what I intended to accomplish last year simply by leveraging what I observed to be extreme market inefficiencies at play. I stuck my neck out for Chapman and Mikolas and Bumgarner, but not as far as folks might think. There was enough evidence in their (and, where applicable, in their teammates’) bodies of work for me to make objectively bold predictions on the basis of draft price or market consensus without them feeling particularly bold to me.

While endeavoring to go 6-for-10 this year just to match last year’s hit rate would be absurd, I do think I can hit another three, at least, in 2019 if I pick my spots correctly. So, here goes: my 10 bold predictions for 2019.

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