It has been a few years since I did a bold predictions piece here on Rotographs. It is typically a fun piece to do and people like them, but I have found that I am so focused on drafts and other content at this time of year, that I just run out of time. Forgive me if I am not as bold as I should be as it has been a while since I have done one of these, but I hope you enjoy them!

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It’s Bold Prediction season! The goal here isn’t to nail 100% of these, they just don’t have a high enough probability to expect such a success rate, but rather to come up with predictions that could happen to highlight some potential breakouts and statistical surges. I know some people do downside bold predictions, but I’m especially bad at those. Let me know your Bold Predictions in the comments. Again, make sure they are actually bold – something a player has never done or a fall off that no one is seeing coming, except you.

Opening Day is so close now!

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Goes .300-35-100

He only has three small samples in his three MLB seasons (263, 343, and 224 PA), but he has improved his wRC+ each year – 103, 124, and 135 – and I see him poised for a full season breakout. Maybe this isn’t bold enough given that he has averaged .287-33-93 per 650 PA. He still needs to overperform that mark and put up over 600 PA so I think it still qualifies as bold, especially since his high in games played is 84.

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It’s bold predictions time! Last Thursday, I shared my bold hitter league leaders, and then yesterday my bold pitcher league leaders. While those picks should add some insight, they are more for fun given the loooooong odds of getting even one of them right. On the other hand, I expected to hit on several of my bold predictions, aiming for at least two to three correct calls. Let’s dive right in.

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On Thursday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders, which are all guaranteed to hit. Today, let’s jump over to the pitching side, where I’ll do the same for the throwers. Once again, I’ll use my Pod Projections to guide me toward players I’m more bullish on than the other projection systems. Unlike for hitters, I’ll only be sharing bold leaders in four categories. There will be no bold wins league leader named, because wins are silly and unpredictable.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions (which I’ll publish next week), I up the ante with my bold league leaders. If you thought nailing a bold prediction was tough, the bold league leaders are even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe would be considered bold or is already projected to finish top five in the category. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000, though I actually have hit on a couple over the years. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be, rather than any serious attempt at being right. Naturally, I use my Pod Projections to identify players with that 80th-90th percentile upside to vault to the top of the category mountains.

Today, I’ll start with the bold hitting league leaders in each of the five categories, split up by league. Next Monday I’ll move on to the pitchers.

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1) Zach Eflin is the Matthew Boyd of 2020.

Matt Boyd had a lot of buzz coming into the 2020 season. He had a stellar first half of 2019 and the high strikeout rate seemed like an intriguing option. Well, this year it seems like Zach Eflin is being touted by several analysts in the fantasy baseball Twitterverse. Last season overall Eflin produced a 3.97 ERA, 3.39 FIP, and an impressive 28.6 K%.

Of course, any time a pitcher raises their strikeout rate by 10% it will bring excitement. I’m here to temper those expectations. On the surface level let’s look at what he did in two months compared to his career average.

A ton of improvement compared to his career numbers. Eflin is only 26 so growth can occur but with improvements on surface stats, we have to look deeper to figure out why he improved.

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For the shortened 60 game season, I wasn’t in the mood to post 10 bold predictions, so I settled with six. The upside of the fewer games is greater potential for the random and unexpected to occur, which means a higher rate of bold prediction hits…hopefully. Let’s see if that turned out to be true.

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With two ratio categories as opposed to one for hitters, a shortened season is an even better opportunity for me to get a bold pitcher league leader correct! Let’s see if I did.

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Every year I take the bold and daring adventure known as bold league leaders. I rarely get any of these right, but it’s fun to decide on the names, and might give you the little nudge you need to roster a chosen player. In a shortened season, it’s a little easier to get one of these right since more luck is involved, which I need a lot of if I’m not picking the obvious choices. So let’s see how I did with my 2020 Bold Hitter League Leaders.

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At this point, when it comes to bold predictions, you should know the drill. Yet it feels increasingly cliché to lead with, “you know the drill.” Nevertheless: you know the drill. We make bold predictions before the season and we review them after the season.

One thing I make a point of highlighting I try to make my predictions sufficiently bold while also actionable. “David Fletcher will hit 50 home runs” is a certifiably insane prediction, but it is not actionable because what do you do with this information? You over-draft him, sure, but by how much?

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