Folks, if you want to do something else we can totally forget about this. Right?

Sigh. The whole reason people like making predictions is that they garner a ton of traffic — power rankings, anyone? — and almost nobody ever holds them to reviewing them because the damn season is so long. It’s like a dog returning to its vomit or whatever, I think.

But anyway, here’s my a review of my word vomit from back in March:

1. Kyle Gibson holds top-50 value in leagues this season.

Welp. It was a disastrous season for Gibson, who saw a drop in groundball rate and strikeout rate and a jump in walk rate, leading to an ERA in excess of 5.00. Basically speaking, all the strides he appeared to be making late last year lapsed, despite his slider and changeup becoming even better pitches this year than last. Inexplicably, he threw both of them a lot less than in 2015. (0/1) Read the rest of this entry »

Last season, my inaugural Bold Predictions didn’t click, as I went just one-for-nine (I like to think my one was pretty impressive). The season, and my time at FanGraphs, has come to an end, so let’s take a look at home I fared in round two. Read the rest of this entry »

Did my bold predictions crash and burn again? Yes. But did they actually lead to some good fantasy advice this time? Possibly!

Previous bold predictions reviews: 2015, 2014

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One would expect that a fantasy writer’s success on something like bold predictions would correlate nicely with their success overall that year. After all, if you pay the low, low price to try out your bold predictions and you hit big, your teams should be excellent, right?

Well, maybe not. I had probably my least successful fantasy season in the last few years in 2016, yet easily my personal best performance on these here bold predictions. And looking back, I still think these were bold, but perhaps you disagree?
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Reviewing my Bold Predictions each season involves a little bit of back-patting, and a whole lot of laughing at what an idiot I was just a few months ago. The sweet spot for these predictions is getting three or four of them right per season. How did I do this year?

In short, not great, but not terrible. Only two of the following predictions happened, but the majority got close, or at least still look reasonable in hindsight. On the other hand, prediction No. 5 might be my worst-ever in three years of Bold Predictions…

10. James Shields is not a top-65 starting pitcher.

Shields was the consensus No. 40 SP by our experts heading into the season, and I was not about to agree. Shields’ 2015 saw him post his best-ever strikeout rate, but also his career-worst walk rate. After a hot start in April and May, the bump in strikeouts vanished, and his walk rate soared.

With this prediction, I was betting on the continuation of Shields’ June through September 2015 production, and I bet correctly. According to Jeff Zimmerman’s end-of-season rankings, Shields was this season’s second-worst pitcher. The only pitcher who damaged his fantasy owners more than Shields was Alfredo Simon.

We’re off to a good start here.

1-0

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Yesterday, I reviewed my 2016 bold hitter league leaders and was ecstatic for even getting just one correct. Today, I’ll check in on my bold pitcher league leaders. Let’s see if I could match my hitter success. Check out my original article with full reasoning behind my choices.

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Like much of the Rotographs’ staff, I made some BOLD predictions to prior to the start of the season. Like fellow Rotographer Alex Chamberlain, I was also impatient and also did a midseason review of them. Unlike Alex, I do know how to use brackets. 

1) Everyone will regret drafting Bryce Harper in the top 3.

At the beginning of the preseason, I wrote an article arguing against drafting Bryce Harper in the top three of standard leagues. It outlined his extreme jumps in many of his underlying statistics and my belief that many of these were not sustainable.

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This was my first year publishing my bold predictions, and I have to admit that it was difficult to balance making truly bold predictions while still offering useful insight for fantasy owners. Let’s take a look and see how my predictions look now:

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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 is even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. So let’s see how I did this year. Refresh your memory of my initial reasoning behind my choices here.

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I usually get three or four of these Bold Predictions right every year, and I’ve grown comfortable with that level of success. Any more and they aren’t bold enough, any less, and they’re useless. That said, wait till you see number one. It’s a doozy. It’s *so* wrong that it should probably invalidate all my hits. It’s *so* wrong that I’m questioning why any of you are here right now. It’s *so* wrong I want to throw crap.

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