The other day, my wife asked me what my next column was going to be about, and I told her it would be my annual Bold Predictions piece. She wanted to contribute a prediction, and when I asked her what it would be, I realized it would be the perfect addition to this column.
So the first-ever Bold Prediction for Mary Beth Melchior is this: J.T. Realmuto will break the all-time single-season record for home runs for a catcher.
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So here it is – my first bold predictions piece. I love making bold predictions, and all of these will probably turn out to be wrong, but here goes.
1. Yasiel Puig finishes in the top-5 of the MVP Voting.
Expecting Puig to break out in the friendly confines of the Great American (Launching Pad) Ballpark isn’t bold, but I think this is. Last year, Puig posted his best wRC+ since 2014, and the best major league .ISO of his career. Even better, his strikeout (19.6%) and walk (8.1%) rates stayed pretty much in the range of his career marks (19.2% and 9.2% , respectively), meaning he wasn’t selling out for power. Puig also raked at a .270/.329/.546 rate in the second half, suggesting that he might have even more power than what he showed this year. Moving to a hitter-friendly ballpark in a division with weaker pitching, a deceptively good lineup, and in a contract year, I expect Puig to obliterate his career highs in just about every counting stat except stolen bases. I expect 30 homers, 100 RBIs, and an OPS better than .900, and a .300/.400/.500 season with 40+ homers wouldn’t surprise me.
It’s time. Dust off your salty #NotBold hot takes because it’s bold prediction season at RotoGraphs. This year, we’re mixing things up by adding… *checks notes* ah, excuse me that was the script for the MTV reality spin off of Bold Predictions. It’s still the same game as past years. I try to name 10 things that are implausible but might happen. Later I lament about how badly I missed.
Last year I went waaaaaay too bold. This time, I’m going back to skirting the bold/not bold line. In my experience, negative predictions are massively more likely to turn out correct than positive ones. To increase the challenge, I’ll be focusing on upside more than downside.
When introducing my 2018 bold predictions, I talked about “not being bold just to be bold.” I sought to demonstrate that, by “abiding by The Process TM,” I could make bold predictions that, frankly, didn’t feel all htat bold to me. In hindsight, it’s easy to say how they really weren’t bold. But back when I made them, based on available average draft position (ADP) data, they were, by definition, bold.
It would sound arrogant for me to say my bold predictions this year could be used as a clinic on extracting value in drafts (especially with the social baggage that “putting on a clinic” carries these days). However, it might not be untrue: I hit three of my five predictions, all of them relating to guys who played key roles in the drafts of successful teams this year. Please, do forgive the arrogance, then; I’ll do my best to explain how the strategies I employed this year are repeatable.
All end-of-season values will rely on ESPN’s Player Rater.
How was your season? Ours, on the whole, was pretty good, though marred by team-wide final-week syncopes that cost us first place in two leagues. This may surprise our readers, since we make a point of following our own advice and our 2018 Bold Predictions, unlike the 2017 edition, were uninspiring. One good thing about confining our BPs to $1 and reserve round picks is that we can’t get hurt too much if we’re wrong. Here’s the inquest: Read the rest of this entry »
The MLB playoffs are now upon us. We’ve had back-to-back one-game division title games! We’ve got a statcast broadcast! Hey … even hugs are a-plenty this postseason!
Just a reminder … I am recapping my bold predictions for 2018. You won’t see anything like “Giancarlo Stanton will hit at least 25 homeruns” – that would have been too easy a prediction. Sure, I could have filled up my list in March with much more likely calls to boast that “Ariel Cohen got 50% of his predictions right!” But that isn’t the point here. I don’t expect to get most of these correct.
The aim of the exercise is to choose a few unlikely outcomes, yet achievable upsides (or downsides) – so that the analyst can highlight certain players. My general rule for bold predictions is to target somewhere between a player’s 70th & 90th range of percentile possible outcomes, or in other words, predictions which are about 10-30% likely.
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.