The subject line of an e-mail we got from a Yahoo Group one of us belongs to made our blood freeze. “It’s been raining David Crosby,” it said. Oh no, we thought; again? Closer inspection revealed merely a Youtube clip of pre-Byrds solo-folksinger Crosby performing “It’s Been Raining.” It’s completely harmless, especially if you don’t watch it or listen to it. It occurred to us, though, even as we heaved sighs of relief, that “Raining David Crosby” might be a good metonym for our disappointing-to-catastrophic 2016 Fantasy Baseball season.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of fearless scientific accountability, we must now review our 2016 predictions, “Bold” and otherwise. We’ll look at preseason predictions this week and in-season ones next week. We’ll concentrate, as always, on the outré and the cut-rate; we can’t really take credit for predicting, say, that the Cubs would win the NL Central, though they undoubtedly will, or that Trea Turner would be NL Rookie of the Year, though he arguably is. Read the rest of this entry »

My colleagues have been reviewing their Bold Predictions this week, so I figured I would follow suit. Here is the link to my original Bold Predictions piece. I am going to take a slightly different approach when reviewing them, however, since most of mine turned out to be pretty brutal. If I were to give legitimate odds on most of these, giving them a 1% chance of working out would be rather optimistic. So I decided to break down each prediction three-fold:

What works with this prediction?

What doesn’t work with this prediction?

What would be the more reasonable prediction at this point?

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Everybody’s doing it, so I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way.  However, I will admit I’m now quite embarrassed by these laughably bad predictions.  They are so bad that forcing you to read them again might be considered insulting.  You deserve more, so the least I can do is leave you with some classic real insults (courtesy of the interwebs) for your own repertoire.  Here goes:

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I promised myself I would make a mix of positive and negative predictions this year, and I aimed to make them really bold, refusing to make any prediction that was less bold than one made by another writer about the same player.

Let’s see how that is working out as of the All-Star break.
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I thought I would spend this month reviewing some of my preseason work. Unfortunately, because I was working on a piece for The Hardball Times last week, I didn’t get to post anything. However this week, I will review my Bold Predictions article and next week I will give an update on my BARF league team. Read the rest of this entry »

Forgive me for some recycling some of last week’s introduction:

Back in March, I made some bold predictions, as all RotoGraphs staff do. Some bold predictions I make simply for the sake of being bold. Or for the sake of making a prediction. One of the two.

We don’t all review our bold predictions — some of us, like Mike Podhorzer, like to wait until October. Some of us don’t have the discipline for such delayed gratification. And, I speak for the group, whether they like or not, but all of us forget most our bold predictions anyway. I remembered a couple, but looking back on them — man, sometimes I wish I hadn’t.

Enough talk. Let’s dig in.

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Yesterday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders, with the acknowledgement that these are a lot tougher to hit than the generic Bold Predictions. The pitching side of the ledger is a bit easier, but still difficult, of course. Given that there is more luck and factors outside the specific pitcher’s control involved that shape 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 category. I opted to come up with different names in each. Also keep in mind that it is difficult to balance boldness with realistic. 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.

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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. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe should be considered bold. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000.

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

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It brings tears to my eyes seeing the Bold Predictions series I first started here at RotoGraphs back in 2011 so enthusiastically embraced. In that first post, I actually doled out 20 boldies, giving myself double the chances to look like a fool! This year, few of my bold predictions will be a surprise, as the majority of these names have appeared in at least one of my preseason articles, signaling a clear bullish or bearish stance.

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Last season, my inaugural Bold Predictions didn’t click, as I went just one-for-nine — but my one was pretty impressive — and embarrassed my entire family more than usual. I have dusted myself off and am prepared to hit it out of the park this year.

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