Phew! The season has officially ended! Well…almost. For many owners, tonight’s one-game tiebreaker will not count toward the standings. For others, it’s one last night of nail biting as you hope your lead holds up. Even though the regular season technically hasn’t ended just yet, I’ll be starting the recapping efforts. As usual, I provided 10 bold predictions in late March. Let’s see how I did.

1. Justin Ruggiano surprises everyone, except for myself and FanGraphs readers, by going 25/25

My favorite offensive sleeper this preseason finished the year with 18 home runs and 15 steals over 468 plate appearances. Although he eventually did wrangle the starting center field job away from Chris Coghlan early in the season, he was cursed by a low BABIP and gave way to prospects Jake Marisnick and Marcell Ozuna later. Extrapolating his numbers over a full season of 600 plate appearances would have still yielded results that fell a bit short of this bold prediction, but he did prove that his surprising 2012 wasn’t a complete fluke. 0 for 1

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It is often said that closers are made, not born. Any experienced baseball fan knows this; it seems that for every Huston Street type who arrives with hype, four or five Jason Grillis, Andrew Baileys, or John Axfords slip into dominance after finding dead-ends in other roles. As such, predicting who will ascend to MLB closer roles (beyond the obvious “the best MLB non-closer relief pitchers”) is often a fool’s errand.

This becomes even more difficult when one attempts to find future closers in the minor leagues. Many of the pitchers who end up closing MLB games were starters all through their minor league careers, but it’s tough to project a minor league starter as a closer outright–in doing so, one is essentially saying “This pitcher will fail badly at the role he’s currently in and subsequently find tremendous success in a role he’s never pitched in.” Certainly plausible, but not something that seems like it can be said with much confidence. And minor league relievers–well, they’re equally problematic to forecast. After all, if a pitcher has a big future, why isn’t he able to crack a minor league rotation?

It’s certainly possible to envision any number of minor leaguers closing out ballgames–as so many sabermetricians are fond of saying, the role of garnering save totals can be accomplished reasonably effectively by any number of players, and the minor leagues have no shortage of interesting power pitchers that could fit a closer profile if things go their way. However, it’s quite another thing to actually predict that a minor league pitcher will end up amassing saves in the big leagues.

I think White Sox pitching prospect Daniel Webb merits such a prediction, though.

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Like some of the other newer writers here at RotoGraphs, this is my first entry in the Bold Predictions.

Here’s to hoping .300 is still good enough for the Hall of Fame.

Feast up commenters!

10. Despite injury, Adam Eaton will still steal 40+ bases.

Not exactly BOLD, I know. Trying to ease y’all into this. But if Eaton returns by mid-May or earlier as advertised, he’ll still have enough time to wreak havoc on the basepaths.

9. Andrelton Simmons will score 80 runs, swipe 25 bags.

The Braves shortstop is more known for his leather, but with a full-season leading off in front of Heyward and the Upton brothers, Simmons should really flourish. In addition to the 80 runs and 25 swipes, Simmons could chip in a .275 or better batting average, giving those a nice return who selected him in the late-rounds of their fantasy drafts.

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After reading my ten hopefully-bold-enough predictions for the upcoming season, be sure to peruse the other Bold Prediction articles that have been published this week. We can then reconvene once the regular season has ended and discuss just how foolish the majority of these predictions proved to be.

It’ll be fun. Kind of.

(1) Starlin Castro will see his batting average fall under .275.

Although I love the power/speed combination offered by Castro and he just turned 23 last weekend, I’m worried his poor plate discipline will rise up and continue to take a bite out of his batting average this season. Consider this: his O-Swing% rose to 37.4% in 2012, while his strikeout rate, swinging-strike rate and swing percentage all increased in a similar fashion for the second-consecutive season. Sure, he’s young and has ample time to develop his skills, but those peripheral numbers are not trending in the right direction. Every projection model on his FanGraphs player page has him hitting over .290. I’m not so certain we’ll see that in 2013.

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Being the team player that I am — as well as a glutton for punishment from the comments section — I am about to share with you the reasons why you’ll win your league this season. These are my highly coveted secrets of the trade. Normally a transaction of this magnitude is done in a shady alley in the dead of the night, involving non-sequential bills and lots of glances over my shoulder. I guess in theory you could be reading this in a shady alley in the dead of night, but I digress. These are my 10 bold predictions for the 2013 fantasy season.
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I’ll be honest with you friends: I don’t love my bold predictions as much as I did last year. But I did spend a lot of time researching them so I think I have at least a somewhat decent statistical backing to what I see here.

And similarly, these aren’t bets I’d take with the money straight up. If I were in Las Vegas — perish the thought — I’d take these bets if I got pretty good odds. In spots where I don’t really have a strong fantasy angle — ROTOgraphs, after all — I’ll try throw in a little somethin’ somethin’ that I might see which could help. Read the rest of this entry »

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

You don’t need me to tell you that closers are easily replaced, and so saying that we’ll see changes in the ninth inning isn’t really that bold. So if we’re going to make this exciting, let’s say that more than a full two-thirds of closers won’t last the season, either through injury or ineffectiveness. That may sound like a high number, but then again, remember who teams were counting on to finish games for them last April — guys like Alfredo Aceves, Javy Guerra, Jordan Walden, Brett Myers, Heath Bell, & Matt Capps. Even top-tier closers like Mariano Rivera & Brian Wilson weren’t immune, though of course for other reasons. By my count, only 10 closers made it wire-to-wire, and a few more (Carlos Marmol, Huston Street, etc) had to deal with changes at some point in the season. This really drives the point home that you can almost always find saves somewhere. The bell tolls for thee, Sergio Romo & Jim Johnson.
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My comrades have been rolling out their bold predictions all week, so now it’s my turn to keep things going. I went 2-for-10 last season, which is probably replacement level for these things. Then again, I was one stupid Scott Downs save away from going 3-for-10, and 3-for-10 sounds a whole lot better than 2-for-10. Here are this year’s predictions:

1. Bryce Harper will be a top-five fantasy player.

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Batting towards the end of the week with 10 Bold Predictions is a tough spot – I don’t want to duplicate what’s been said already, but I also don’t want to go down the depth chart to my 17th and 18th boldest predictions. It’s also my rookie season making bold predictions here, so I’m hoping I can have an impact similar to that of the first guy on my list, a repeated prediction I can’t avoid.

1) Jedd Gyorko is the real deal.
Seriously, if you have drafts remaining, go buy this guy. I’ve got shares of him everywhere. Projection systems see him as a .270-15-5 type but he’s flashed much more power at times, as well as 10-steal wheels in 2011. I’ve got Gyorko pencilled in for .275 with 20-plus home runs, and Chase Headley’s injury should give him ample time to prove he’s worth keeping at the major league level. Add in some likely position flexibility, and you’ve got a stud being selected outside of the top-200.

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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.

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