I thought it may never be done. But Eric Hosmer finally cleared that impenetrable 20 home run barrier after many seasons of hardcore flirting. You see, Hosmer hates worms. So much so, that over 50% of the balls he has put into play over his career have been of the grounder variety. Those worms have likely learned not to pop out of the ground when he’s at the plate. But all those grounders come at the expense of fly balls. And a low fly ball rate has capped Hosmer’s home run potential. Until this year.

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The end of the MLB season is one of the worst parts of the year. I annually lessen the pain of this by journeying out to First Pitch Arizona for my last fill of baseball before long, stupid winter. Not only are we watching baseball, but it’s centered around a fantasy baseball conference with some of the best people in the industry… and me. I’m leaving Thursday morning so I’ll be there in time for one of the afternoon games which means with the three attendee games already on the docket, I’ll see a total of four regular games in addition to the Fall Stars Game on Saturday night.

My favorite aspect of the Fall League is learning about guys I’m not too familiar with just yet. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome seeing the Mike Trouts and Bryce Harpers of the prospect world. But for someone who doesn’t dedicate a ton of time to prospects (especially lower level ones), it’s a great opportunity to see some of the next level guys in living color. Keep in mind that any time I say I “discovered” someone at the AFL whether on the pod or in a piece, I mean for myself, not that I was on this guy ahead of everyone else.

For example, Baseball Prospectus ranked Nolan Arenado 20th ahead of the 2011 season, but I knew next-to-nothing about the 20-year old going into his High-A season. Watching obliterate the Fall League later that year put him on my radar. He was so good. I didn’t see a single bad at-bat from him in the handful of games, even the outs. Better examples would be Brian Dozier and Mookie Betts.

Neither were on prospect lists in advance of their AFL season so seeing them excel actually gave me a jump in my fantasy leagues. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone I fall for out there winds up being a stud. I loved what I saw out of Chris Heisey, Grant Desme, and Dustin Ackley to name a few. Two are fourth outfielders and the other – Desme – quit baseball to become a priest. You win some, you lose some.

One guaranteed win is watching baseball in Arizona in early November when most of the country is whipping out their jackets. (I mean, I take my jacket to Arizona because that shiz gets really cold at night! But during the day it’s sunny and awesome.)

I’ve got a shortlist of guys I’m looking forward to seeing out there this week and I should get a chance to see them all, even if it’s only at the Fall Stars game:

Gleyber Torres – NYY – SS

The key piece of the Aroldis Chapman is lighting up the league so far with a 1.077 OPS in 32 AB, good for 4th in the league. Before we go any further, I’ll note that the AFL is a hitting league due to not only the environment and ballparks, but also the talent distribution. There are often many more top hitting prospects than pitching ones. Pitchers have usually bumped up against the inning caps by season’s end so we don’t always get the cream of the crop.

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It was no secret that I was a big Wil Myers fan heading into 2016. He appeared on my 8 Hitters With Major HR/FB Upside list, which, in part, led to my bold prediction that he’d hit 25 homers and knock in 90 runs. He made me look good. Thank you Wil. But aside from staying healthy, there was another part of his fantasy performance that surprised even the most bullish of the optimists — a hefty 28 steals.

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Heading into the 2016 season, two of the biggest questions we asked related to expectations for the newest arrivals from the KBO League of South Korea — Byung-ho Park and Hyun Soo Kim. Though obtaining historical statistics was easy, translating them from KBO to MLB is a challenge. At the beginning of February, I laid out my process in creating a projection for each, by first obtaining their career statistics, turning them into ratios, and then translating them as best I could into a 2016 MLB projection. Since this is first base week here at RotoGraphs, this article will focus on Park, with Kim’s review coming when we move on to outfielders. So let’s review Park’s performance and how that compared to my forecast.

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Yesterday, we published the final 2016 first base rankings and dollar values. So let’s review my preseason Pod’s Picks and Pans at the position, where I identified those hitters I was most bullish and bearish on compared to the rest of my fellow RotoGraphs rankers.

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Yesterday, I reviewed my 2015 hitter xBABIP underachievers and the results were fantastic. Today, I’m going to review the flip side, the 2015 hitter xBABIP overachievers. Let’s see how this group performed.

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**To avoid confusion, yes this is supposed to read 2015. It’s a recap of my preseason article that discussed the 2015 xBABIP underachievers.

Today I continue to work my way through my preseason article recaps, this time focusing on xBABIP, the equation that the intelligent and very handsome Alex Chamberlain brewed up. We’ll start with the biggest underachievers from 2015. Let’s see how they performed this season.

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So as I do annually, I compared my personal dollar values and resulting rankings to the RotoGraphs consensus rankings (excluding my own of course) at each position before the season began and identified those I was most bullish on as my picks and those I was bearish on as my pans. Last week, Brad Johnson published the catcher end of season values and rankings, so we’ll begin by reviewing my 2016 Pod’s Picks and Pans at catcher.

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Yesterday, I reviewed the list of players my ESPN Home Run tracker analysis suggested had significant HR/FB rate downside this season. So today I’m going to check in on the group of players I identified as possessing serious upside. I would imagine this group would have done well simply due to the league-wide power surge. Let’s find out if that was indeed the case.

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In addition to the analysis I conduct using my xHR/FB rate equation, I also still look at ESPN Home Run Tracker after the season ends. As usual, I identified a group of hitters before the 2016 season that based on the Home Run Tracker data, appeared to have serious HR/FB downside. Let’s find out how these hitters performed.

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