These hallowed pages have borne (bore? beared? how am I even a writer?) witness to many bold predictions — some good, most bad. Last year’s hits and near-hits include Kirby Yates, Jeff McNeil, Mike Tauchman, and Domingo German; previous hits include Jose Ramirez, Madison Bumgarner (not being an ace), Matt Chapman, and Miles Mikolas, among others, as well as other near-hits not worth repeating.

Sometimes, bold predictions aren’t entirely so. I try to make my predictions legitimately bold (bordering on impossible), actionable, and strategic. It’s not helpful for someone to boldly predict Giancarlo Stanton will hit 25 homers in a 60-game season, however fun a prediction that may be.

It’s (less than) half a season, so you get half the predictions, although I’ll include some less-bold low-hanging fruit at the end, for posterity.

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I’m going to do a standard Bold Predictions later (maybe even on Friday since I don’t think two games on Thursday will invalidate anything), but first I wanted to pick some super outliers. Projections keep us level with our expectations, but our recently added 60-game leaderboard shows us that some wild stuff can go down in a two-month run.

I focused on the skill-based fantasy categories so I’m not doing anything with wins, saves, runs, or runs batted in. There will be some crazy results with those four categories, but role and team context are so important for those that options would be too limited. For the pitching ratios, I’ll be picking starting pitchers.

25+ HR GUY | Franmil Reyes, CLE

He ripped off a 21-homer run in a 60-game stretch last year that saw him hit .273/.316/.598 in 225 PA. That’s undoubtedly a great run, but I don’t think it’s the best he can do. I feel like Reyes’ best would include an OPS north of 1.000 for sure. He almost certainly won’t play all 60 games so he’ll need to push a 1.000+ OPS to smash 25+ homers in 50-55 games.

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Opening day is finally here!

In 2020, we had two distinct draft seasons – both in February/March as well as in June/July. Some fantasy teams of mine were drafted four or five months ago, while others were assembled just this past weekend. We typically spend all winter longing for the time when our fantasy teams finally start accumulating statistics. This year, due to the tragic global pandemic of COVID-19, we had to wait even longer. We are now finally here. Tonight the standings go live!

I am well aware that there is still much suffering in the U.S. and in the rest of the world from the disease. I do not mean to make light of the world’s situation by any means in my enthusiasm for baseball’s return. At the same time, watching our nation’s pastime played day in and day out, may aid the morale of the country. Although there will be many challenges, I am hopeful that the MLB will be able to start and finish the abbreviated 2020 season without major hiccups.

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Finally, the season is about to begin! Typically, my bold predictions comprise 10 crystal ball forecasts. However, I ended up coming up with just six and am not in the mood to try to come up with four more. I simply can’t boldly predict things when the season sample is small, and frankly, anything could happen (Dee Gordon – 10 home runs?!). They all happen to be positive predictions as well, even though I usually like throwing in a couple of negatives. Oh well, you get three hitter and three pitcher boldies. So let’s do this…

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Yesterday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders, of which I expect to go 10 for 10. The pitching side of the ledger is a bit easier. Given that there is both more luck and factors outside the specific pitcher’s control that shapes his surface results, it’s more conceivable that a non-favorite leads the league in a category. This is even more so over a shortened season.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions (which I’ll publish on Thursday), 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. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be than any serious attempt at being right. That said, if there’s any season to get a bold league leader choice correct, this is it. We might see some very surprising names atop the categorical leaderboards.

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

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The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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Welcome to Podopolooza!

Over 100 fantasy baseball analysts will join me for 12 straight hours to talk baseball and raise money for Meal on Wheels! Throughout the day I will raffle off prizes. For every dollar you donate via PayPal at justinmasonfantasy@gmail.com or on Venmo at justinsalinger you get an entry into the raffle! You can see the raffle prizes and how much money has been raised so far on this doc! If you donate $50 or more, Todd Zola of Mastersball will give you a free platinum subscription to his site!

You can see Part 1 here

Here is the schedule for the event:

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It’s not quite Bold Prediction season, but we’re starting to close in on it. After all these years of boldly predicting, I’ve picked up a few hacks. I’ll never jam them past you readers – you’re always sharpening the “not bold” knives – but I can usually squeeze through a few open-ended scenarios.

Today, I’ll share 10 which might look bold at first blush but actually are pretty tame. I expect at least a 50% win-rate on these.

These are not my 10 Bold Predictions.

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