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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To me, the purpose of bold predictions is twofold – to say “bold” (i.e. crazy) things and to signal some unexpected outcomes I believe are more possible than others might credit. This season, I performed strongly on the signal portion of this challenge even if I didn’t get many right. I aim for a success rate of about 20-30 percent although it’s fair to say that some of these predictions were always likelier to come true than others.

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As per tradition, I made some bold calls at the beginning of the season. Knowing that FanGraphs has built its reputation on reasoned and measured analysis, I used my preseason column as an opportunity to go out on a ledge that I would not usually walk out on during my regularly scheduled writing. A few of them actually came true. Here’s how I did:

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