After crushing my BOLD Predictions last season, I was in for regression and it came hard. For my rankings, I’ll use Razzball’s combined rankings.
#1 Dinelson Lamet will end the season as a top-30 pitcher.
A horrible start by jinxing a guy into Tommy John surgery.
0 for 1
Yesterday, I reviewed my 2018 bold hitter league leaders. Today we move to the pitching side. These are easier to get right than hitters simply due to greater influence of luck on the results.
It’s that time of year! We’re reviewing our Bold Predictions as a staff to see just how comically wrong we were… er, I mean how well we did! Look, I always want to get as many of these right as possible, but there’s also a part of it where I’m just trying to put a guy on everyone’s radar (or take them off if it’s negative one) and so hitting the exact numbers isn’t always the biggest deal for me. I’ll grade mine under that notion, but if you think I’m being too lenient you can definitely let me know in the comments.
Ozzie Albies has a 15 HR/40 SB season
OK, this one is tough. I feel fully justified in my excitement over Albies this year. I was taking him in the top 100 without incident and he finished around the top 75 buuuut he was nowhere near the 40 SB and I definitely expected that to be a big part of his performance. I had him for 55 HR+SB and he landed at 38, powered by his 24 HR. He also didn’t top .800 OPS in any month after his .988 in April. I’ll take half point here.
0.5
It’s ’bout that time, eh chaps? The regular season is over which means we can review the nonsense we said prior to the 2018 campaign. I am, of course, referring to our Bold Predictions.
I participated in two rounds of predictions: preseason and midseason. I put together the latter list during the All Star Break (ASB) because it was painful apparent that I completely whiffed on all 10 initial predictions. Sure, let’s rub my face in it.
Gosh, if you thought getting bold predictions right was a tough task, the bold league leaders is even more difficult. Not only do I have to choose a player who would be considered bold to lead the league in the category in question, but the pick has to at least be realistic enough so there’s an actual non-zero chance of the prediction coming true. Let’s see how I did this season on the hitting side. Here are my original thoughts.
I can’t believe it’s already that time of year again, playoffs and recap season! As usual, I have a ton of reviews to share in the coming months. We’ll start things off with my 2018 bold predictions. I believe four correct is my best showing. Let’s try to beat that. You may also remember that I have a disturbing knack for making bold predictions about players who end up missing a significant portion of the season to injury. Let’s hope that trend has ended.
We’re back, and as always, we’re here to help. If, like us, you play almost exclusively in redraft leagues, it avails you naught to know that a recognizedly good player who’s underperforming will probably improve, perhaps a whole lot, in the second half. Someone else has him, and probably won’t trade him, even if your league permits trades. Thus, you don’t really want to know that we envision an MVP-caliber rest-of-season performance from Justin Turner, although we do. Our beat is instead the overlooked, the disbelieved, and the unforgiven—players who will be cheap, or even costless, to acquire, and might produce some value in the second half. So what follows is an annotated list of ten players, none of whom is owned in more than 30% of CBS leagues and most of whom are owned in fewer than 5%, who might assist you when, or maybe even before, your team springs a leak. Read the rest of this entry »
I was going to review my preseason bold predictions today, but that can be done in two words. “Too bold.” There. I’m done. Pleasure chatting.
In lieu of reviewing mostly busted prediction updates, let’s make some new ones.
You don’t care about this part! You care about the predictions.
I originally wrote my bold predictions for 2018 here; they arrived late and incomplete, but they arrived in some capacity, and that’s all we can ask for at this point.
I make bold predictions not for the sake of being bold but, rather, (1) using earnest judgments of player abilities and market inefficiencies and (2) to create teachable moments. My better bold predictions include prescient forecasts for Jose Ramirez and Austin Barnes; my worse ones have typically revolved around Giancarlo Stanton and Chris Davis in some capacity.
Let’s see how everything’s going so far.
In November I used the Prospect Scorecard to take an early look at the top 100 fantasy prospects for both Roto leagues and Ottoneu’s wOBA-heavy FanGraphs Points leagues. In February I also added a quick fantasy spin on Eric and Kiley’s great preseason work ranking the top 100 prospects in baseball. Later this summer (July) I’ll update the top 100 for fantasy purposes, but today I want to briefly check in on a number of prospects that I think are rising (⬆) or falling (⬇) in value for various reasons in 2018.