Last week, I shared the end of season rankings and dollar values of the 40 first basemen I ranked during the preseason. I began with the hitters that earned a profit of at least $4 on their projected value, and then shared the hitters that took a loss of at least $8 versus their projected value. Today, let’s discuss the unranked — those hitters who failed to make my top 40, but found themselves inside the top 40 most valuable first basemen at the end of the season.

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With the season over, it’s time to find out how hitters performed who didn’t let an injury heal and played through the pain. Whether these hitters cause permanent damage to their bodies or pick up bad habits, they continue to underperform their projections. Besides collecting the names myself, I’ve asked for some help (article) for this past season’s list.

First, here is a look at how 2023 hitters performed compared to their Steamer projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I shared the end of season rankings and dollar values of the 40 first basemen I ranked during the preseason. I began with the hitters that earned a profit of at least $4 on their projected value. Today, let’s dive into the misses, or those that earned at least $8 less than forecasted.

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For the first time this year, the RotoGraphs team introduced a formal, organized positional ranking series that we updated on a weekly basis during spring training and through the season opener. I chose to take ownership of the first base position and you should refresh your memory of my final rankings before the season began. Let’s now review those final rankings and how each of the hitters ultimately performed.

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During the all-star break, I polled you fine readers about hitters and your expectations in the second half. The poll pitted the 10 greatest xwOBA overperformers against the 10 most significant underperformers. I asked you which group would post a higher second half wOBA and which range each group’s wOBA would fall into. Let’s now review what happened.

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In mid-February, I compared wOBA projections from THE BAT X and Steamer forecasting systems. I then shared each system’s “favorites”, or the hitters each was most bullish on compared to the other, and added my take on which system I thought would prove to be closer. Given the size of each group shared in the original post, it’s clear that Steamer’s wOBA projections were generally higher, as the system was more bullish on significantly more hitters, so keep that in mind. Let’s now review the results.

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For several seasons I’ve attempted to collect the hitters who have played through an injury. These banged-up guys underperformed their projection by ~20 points of OPS the next season. That works out to a 5% drop in production. What I need is help trying to collect all the possible batters while this season is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Here are the names I have so far:

Does anyone know of any others and I’d love to have a link to verify? I’ll assemble a complete list with the links in a future article. Thanks.

In late March, just a couple of days before opening day, I shared the names of six starting pitchers and a hitter who I thought the projections would prove wrong. I incorporated various new information we learned over the offseason and during spring training that the forecasting models are unaware of to identify these names. I then commanded you, okay, suggested, that you targets these players, or go the extra buck in auction leagues. Let’s find out how my calls went and these players performed.

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The 2024 regular season is officially in the books, which means it’s time to review alllllll my pre-season and some in-season posts. Some of the reviews will follow my promise to be held accountable for my advice, while others will be more of the “let’s see what ended up happening to a pitcher’s velocity or hitter’s FB%” kinda stuff. We’ll start with a fun one, the most polarizing hitters. For this exercise, I used the default NFBC ADP at the time, created a formula to calculate how polarizing a hitter was based on the implied cost of his min and max pick values, then sorted by the difference. Let’s find out whether the crowd, the bulls, or the bears proved correct.

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Before this 2024 season, Brent Rooker had never stolen more than four bases. He now has 11. With just a few games left, he’s projected (Steamer RoS) to steal no more. Brent Rooker was never supposed to steal 11, he wasn’t even expected to steal more than three. But now, in 2024, Brent Rooker steals bases. Read the rest of this entry »