I keep making these bold predictions, and keep hitting about .300 on them. No idea if that says I’m not bold enough or if there’s some predictability in the crazy things that happen each year.

Really, that last reason is why we make these predictions every year. Crazy stuff happens every year, and it takes a little elasticity of the mind to consider the possibilities of the coming season. Maybe by doing this we’ll be in a better spot to reap the rewards when crazy things do happen. Sure, 70% of the following will not happen. But 30% probably will! And as long as you don’t invest too much in the possibility, and keep an eye on the floor, you might be able to use our bold predictions to your advantage.

This year, there’s a bit of a wrinkle: Jay Long of Razzball and I are having a gentleman’s wager regarding our Bold Predictions. With some right of veto on each other’s predictions, we’re putting our ten up against each other. His will publish on Razzball later today. Loser buys the winner a six pack of craft beer.

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In last year’s Bold Predictions, I strongly advocated Jean Segura and Jarrod Parker, while steering people away from Starlin Castro. Those surely helped fantasy owners to various extents. However, we’ll ignore the fact that I predicted Brett Anderson to be a top-30 starter. Sorry about that.

Let’s get to the bold predictions for 2014.

(1) Chris Carter will hit at least 40 home runs and be a top-25 outfielder.

Earlier this offseason, I noted how Chris Carter’s hitting profile compared favorably to that of Chris Davis from a year ago, leading one to believe the power spike could be possible. Carter has also hit 39 homers in a single season before in the minors, so it’s not as if we’re worried about the requisite power being present. Furthermore, the 27-year-old slugger didn’t do the one thing everyone thought he would do last season: mash the baseball in Minute Maid Park.

Minute Maid Park is extremely friendly to right-handed hitters, largely due to the Crawford Boxes, and Carter did little damage there. If his numbers bounce back at home and he’s able to continue his power-hitting ways on the road, we could be looking at one of the biggest power breakout seasons of the year. Considering he’s currently going 193 overall in drafts — behind the likes of Jed Lowrie, Kendrys Morales, and Alejandro De Aza — I’m buying hard on Chris Carter as we head into the 2014 regular season.

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When people much smarter than myself, e.g. Jeff Zimmerman, get to be self deprecating over going 1-for-10, what does that make me? Time to see how well poorly I did. As a refresher, here are my 10 Bold Predictions from the preseason. We’ll pretend this is a double-header and I received 10 plate appearances, one for each prediction.

1. Paul Goldschmidt will go 30-20 while being the most valuable first baseman in 5×5
Close, but no cigar. No doubt Goldy posted an excellent season, but 36 home runs and 15 steals still isn’t quite 30-20. Given that Chris Davis out-performed Goldschmidt as the best first baseman, I can’t even call this half a point. We’re 0-1 thus far with a strikeout looking.
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I’m going to open with a caveat: I chose my 10 Bold Predictions towards the very end of prediction season (i.e. last in the group). The issue with that is that I was trying to make bold predictions and avoid duplicating the predictions of others.

Now, that’s not an excuse, because I actually thought all of these things would be true, believe it or not. Let’s reflect, gloat and laugh in self-deprecating embarrassment, shall we?

Jedd Gyorko is the real deal
Stat Line: 125 GP, 525 PA, 6.3 BB%, 23.4 K%, .249/.301/.444, 110 wRC+, 23 HR, 63 RBI
Gyorko was a bit of a mixed bag this season. His mid-season injury limited his counting stats and his batting average wasn’t much help, but his 23 homers ranked second among second basemen. All things considered, Gyorko ranked 16th among third basemen and 15th among second basemen, making him useful if not a set-and-forget type.

There’s also the matter of his split season: Gyorko was .284/.341/.461 with eight home runs in 60 games before his injury, .111/.147/.194 with two homers in his first 19 games back, and .258/.308/.522 with 13 homers in his final 46 games. If we’re willing to forgive his post-injury re-acclimation, the rookie had a heck of a season.
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Last week, I reviewed my bold hitter league leader picks from the preseason. Now it’s time to flip the coin and check how I did on the pitching side. For a refresher on my initial thought process for each choice, here is the original post.

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This is my first venture into the Rotographs “Bold Predictions” series and mainly I’m just hoping a big league general manager notices my predictive prowess and I rule baseball by August 2015. I will admit, I am a bit concerned I asked my Magic 8-Ball how spot on these prophecies were and I just got an f-bomb back in return. Oh well. Go big or go home.

So Billy Beane, can I have Jonah Hill’s job yet?

Clay Buchholz will be a top-25 mixed league starter.

Thank you, ERA and WHIP. By games played, Buchholz was the one of the American League’s top starters this year, however, another season marred by injury caused him to only toss 108.1 innings this season. However, those inning were insanely valuable, with Buchholz posting 12 wins (in 16 starts), a 1.74 ERA, and a 1.02 WHIP. With a nice spike in his K/9, even with the abbreviated season, Buchholz finished 20th on ESPN’s Player Rater. Win.

1 for 1.

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It’s revisionist history time at Rotographs, where we go back and look at the buffoonery that was and is our bold predictions for the 2013 baseball season.

Here are mine:

1. Chris Parmelee leads the Twins in home runs.
Brian Dozier ended up leading this M*A*S*H* ward with 18, as Parmelee could never get going this season. Sadly, Parmelee finished ninth on the Twins with 8 round-trippers, right behind Pedro Florimon (9 HR, .273 wOBA).

(0/1) Read the rest of this entry »

Before the season started, I stated my Bold Predictions. Time to get the shaming on.

Torii Hunter will improve on his 2012 season.

After re-inventing his swing part way through 2012, I thought he could do it for an entire season. He didn’t.

81/16/92/9/.313
90/17/84/3/.304

Miss. 0 for 1

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I’m sure this was common in a lot of the bold prediction pieces from the spring, but I caught some flack in the comments for not being bold enough. It turns out that only four of my ten predictions panned out, so either I’m woefully incompetent and can’t even make easy calls, or the predictions were bolder than they were given credit for. But I digress. Let’s talk about why I’m smart and why I’m (mostly) dumb.

Jonathan Lucroy, currently the 14th catcher being selected, will be a top ten catcher.

Of all my predictions, I’ll admit that this was one of the least bold. Lucroy was a top ten catcher on ESPN’s player rater in 2012 despite only getting 346 PA because of a stint on the DL with a broken hand. So it wasn’t a huge reach to think he’d be top ten again this year. But then again, he was going 14th on average, and he was one of only two catchers going outside the top ten that ended up finishing in the top ten. The other was Jarrod Saltalamacchia who was going 15-16 among catchers. So if I encouraged you to reach on Lucroy and take him in the 14th/15th round of a 12-team league, I’m happy with that.

In 2014, Lucroy is a borderline top five catcher. He hits a lot of line drives and has developed excellent plate discipline, so the batting average will be there. And he’s a safe bet for 15 homers, 75 RBI and and 55 runs as long as he stays healthy. But what pushes him near the top five is a little bit of speed. He stole nine bags this year and was the only top ten catcher to top four steals. Read the rest of this entry »

Prior to the season, we all made “10 Bold Predictions,” and now it’s time to see how great — or awful — those turned out. You can see mine right here from March; let’s see how I did.

Prediction 1: 70% of opening day closers won’t still have their jobs by the end of the year…

Okay, let’s sort through this and see how close this one came.

These teams kept the same guys in the ninth all year long, and I won’t nitpick about things like the few days where it seemed like Tommy Hunter would overtake Jim Johnson or a short 15 days on the disabled list. I will, however, claim Chris Perez on my side, despite the fact that he didn’t lose it until late September:

BAL (Johnson), NYY (Rivera), TB (Rodney), TOR (Janssen), KC (Holland), MIN (Perkins), CHW (Reed), OAK (Balfour), TEX (Nathan), LAA (Frieri), ATL (Kimbrel), PHI (Papelbon), WAS (Soriano), MIA (Cishek), CIN (Chapman), SD (Street), SF (Romo).

That’s 56% who kept their jobs all year, and only 44% who didn’t, and I guess that counts as a loss for me. I was reasonably confident about this one in the spring, and it feels like there’s been a little less turnover than usual. Off the top of my head, only one closer got traded — Jose Veras from Houston, not including Milwaukee since Jim Henderson already had the job when John Axford & Francisco Rodriguez were moved — which seems oddly low, since bottom-feeders usually offer up their closers quickly. The only serious injuries were to Bobby Parnell and Rafael Betancourt, which kept the turnover low, too. I would — and might — make the same prediction again next year. 0 for 1.

Prediction 2: …but Brandon League will.

Oh, lord. In retrospect, I suppose I probably never should have expected that League was going to hold off Kenley Jansen, who is only one of the three best closers in the game, but I have to admit it didn’t go down the way I expected it to. If it was simply “Jansen is better and took over the job,” that I could see. But it ended up being “League was so atrocious that he was going to lose his spot regardless of whether it was Kenley Jansen or Skip Schumaker taking over,” and that really was a surprise. League’s big contract was probably never one that made sense, but he was so good down the stretch last season that it seemed like he’d at least be adequate. Instead, he fell apart, stopped missing bats, and had an ERA north of 5 for most of the season. 0 for 2.

Prediction 3: Jake Arrieta will be the most valuable Baltimore starter.

This is going to get better. I promise. Arrieta lasted just four starts — one of which was very good, at least — before getting bounced from the rotation. He came back for one more in June, then was traded to the Cubs in July. There, he’s been… also not good. Which means I’ll probably set myself up for failure when I make the exact same prediction next year. 0 for 3.

Prediction 4: The National League leader in stolen bases will be someone who wasn’t in the top 10 in MLB last season.

Okay, now we’re talking. The top three NL stolen base guys were Eric Young (received nearly 400 more plate appearances than in 2012), Jean Segura (played only a partial 2012 as a rookie), and Starling Marte, who like Segura, was in his first full season. All three would count, though I got a bit lucky here, because Everth Cabrera was leading the league for much of the year before getting suspended. I’ll take the win anyway. Next year, I’ll predict that you shouldn’t draft Young for steals, because he’s really not that good. 1 for 4.

Prediction 5: Justin Smoak is going to put it together to be a top-15 mixed-league first baseman.

So here’s a fun one. At the time, Smoak had been a terribly disappointing prospect who seemed like he might be about to get lost in the Kendrys Morales / Raul Ibanez / Jason Bay / Michael Morse 1B/DH hole, though he’d tempted some by putting up a red-hot September 2012. That, along with a smoking hot spring, shorter fences in Seattle, and the switch to a lighter bat made me wonder if 2013 was finally the year.

Sadly, Smoak didn’t end up as a top-15 first baseman or anything close to it, though he did set career highs in home runs, ISO, and wOBA. That would be be something to build on, except that after four full seasons he’s been basically a replacement player. It’s time to give up. 1 for 5.

Prediction 6: Justin Maxwell will put up a 20/15 season.

This is going to be another loss, but I can caveat this somewhat by saying that any chances Maxwell had to do this died in late April when he was hit by a Hisashi Iwakuma pitch and missed nearly two months. He’d been back for barely more than a week when he suffered a concussion diving for a ball, sidelining him for more than two weeks. When he returned in mid-July, he played only 12 more games for Houston before being traded to Kansas City, where he played well (.268/.351/.505 with five homers).

On the season, Maxwell received only 262 plate appearances and put up seven homers and six steals. If he’d managed to play a full season, he’d have come pretty close to my prediction, but he didn’t, so I’ll take the hit. 1 for 6.

Prediction 7: Cliff Lee will pitch almost exactly the same as he did in 2012, yet double his win total — or more.

This was in response to Lee pitching wonderfully in 2012, yet going just 6-9. Lee did end up pitching in 2013 relatively similarly to how he did in 2012, and in fact improved somewhat…

…and went 14-8 on another lousy Phillies team. That’s a win. 2 for 7.

Prediction 8: Yasiel Puig will be a fantasy disappointment.

Nope. Obviously. My rationale for this at the time is that Puig would end up spending so much of the season in the minors that his ability to impact fantasy seasons would be limited. Of course, when I said that I had no idea that Matt Kemp would be injured approximately 72 different times, including once when Carl Crawford was also injured, and the Dodgers would have no choice but to recall Puig in early June. (Counting Andre Ethier’s late-season injuries as well, the Dodgers had all four of their outfielders healthy at the same time for something like 10 innings all season.)  2 for 8.

Prediction 9: Matt Harvey will be a top-20 NL starter.

I realize that this doesn’t sound bold at all now, not after he started the All-Star Game and led baseball with a 2.01 FIP and would have had a pretty solid case for the Cy Young if he hadn’t A) been injured and B) unfortunate enough to share a league with Clayton Kershaw.

But at the time, remember that he was a guy who was entering the season with only 10 major league starts under his belt, and that the NL is stacked with elite starters like Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Stephen Strasburg, Mat Latos, Lee, Cole Hamels, Madison Bumgarner, Adam Wainwright, etc. — and Jose Fernandez, who we didn’t really know about at that point — and so for as silly as this sounds now, it was hardly a guarantee in March.

The funny thing is, now that his elbow is a huge question mark, if I make this prediction again next year, it might be a lot bigger of a risk than it was this year. 3 for 9.

Prediction 10: Juan Uribe will at some point be owned in at least 5% of one of the three main fantasy sites — ESPN, Yahoo, or CBS.

I would like to say that this was my boldest and best prediction of all, that I saw something in the man who hit just .199/.262/.289 in his first two seasons as a Dodger that indicated he’d suddenly be productive. I didn’t; this was a joke, because “bold predictions” should be fun, and embedding a GIF of Uribe corkscrewing himself into the ground on a badly missed swing was fun.

Not only did Uribe end up sticking with the Dodgers all season long — notable because a DFA would have been my real prediction — he actually took over the third base job and was shockingly productive, finishing as one of just seven third basemen with at least 5 WAR. While that’s largely on the strength of his defense, his offensive numbers rebounded as well, making him fantasy-relevant.

But just how relevant? Five percent relevant?

Yes!  4 for 10.