Yesterday, I got outrageously bold with predictions for the league leaders in the five fantasy hitting categories. Today, I check in on the pitching side of the ledger with some equally crazy forecasts.
After a Mendoza-like .200 average last season, I hope to improve on my predictions this season. Some are based on facts, others on my gut, all BOLD. Let your mocking begin.
Torii Hunter will improve on his 2012 season.
Is it really that time of year again? Somebody pinch me. We are less than a week away from the 2013 MLB season’s first official game and with that, the starting gun for the fantasy baseball season will have sounded. I’ll be damned if that doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies in my belly and that tingly feeling in the nether-regions that us married guys don’t get to feel too often anymore. What? Too much information? Well look at the damn headline, people! It’s all about being bold today and while I would like to boldly predict that my wife will be so turned on by my fantasy prowess that I’ll get that tingly feeling all year long, I’ll just stick to baseball here. Here are my 10 bold predictions for the 2013 season. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Clay Buchholz will be a top-25 mixed league starter.
Time to put it all on the line. As you’ve likely noticed, it’s bold predictions week at RotoGraphs. There’s been a clamoring in the comment section for more “boldness” in our predictions, and I’m ready to deliver. But, unlike some of my colleagues, I’m not sure I really expect any of these to come true. If anything, this list is a rundown of my biggest sleepers heading into the season. My main goal here is that once the season is over, we’ll both be happy that we took shots on the players I’ve singled out. Here goes nothing.
I have initiated the turbo feature on my crystal ball and lo and behold, it now has the capability of sharing with us the 2013 league leaders in all five hitting and pitching categories! Who knew crystal balls were so useful. Yesterday, I was bold about individual players doing various random things, and today I will be bold about individual hitters doing specific things.
Like the work of my cohorts here at RotoGraphs, these ten bold predictions are meant to push the conventional wisdom and highlight some players (and events) that will over- or under-perform compared to their fantasy expectations. While they’re maybe not likely to happen, I think that each of these events has a fair possibility of coming to pass. Let’s get wild, shall we?
1) Fernando Martinez hits 20+ HR, making him a useful fantasy OF.
We’ve started bold prediction week for 2013, and it sounds like the readers really want BOLD predictions. Of course there is always a trade-off – don’t go bold enough, and you are just stating what we already know; go too bold and you will likely be wrong and your predictions will have no fantasy value.
But the fans want bold and I like to please the fans, so I am going to go big here. Does that mean I will likely fall short of the four predictions I made last year that were either right or at least close to right? Probably. But I’m swinging for the fences anyway.
I love making bold predictions. In no other post could I make a claim like I can here without getting laughed at. It’s easy coming up with the names you want to make a prediction for, but slightly more difficult coming up with interesting ways to express your optimism/pessimism about said players. I typically shoot for predictions that have around a 20% chance of coming true, so the hope is that I get at least two of these right. Here we go…
It’s that time of year again! One quick caveat out of the way — these are bold predictions, meant to highlight interesting players in a pie-in-the-sky kind of way — and then we can start dreaming. I did okay with last year’s bold predictions, so let’s try it again:
1) Andrelton Simmons will be this year’s Jose Altuve.
Jose Altuve began last season as our 16th-ranked preseason consensus second baseman. He hit .290 with seven home runs and 33 stolen bases and ended the season as our 11th-ranked second baseman. This year Andrelton Simmons is our 16th-ranked preseason shortstop. It’s not actually that bold to predict him to join the top twelve shortstops, but hey, that’s how I get a couple right. Simmons has more power than Altuve, I like him for a similar batting average, and atop the Braves order, he might actually steal 25 bags.
