Chad Young’s 10 Bold Predictions Mid-Year Review
I promised myself I would make a mix of positive and negative predictions this year, and I aimed to make them really bold, refusing to make any prediction that was less bold than one made by another writer about the same player.
Let’s see how that is working out as of the All-Star break.
1. Billy Hamilton steals less than 25 fantasy relevant bases. I thought Hamilton would spend a lot of time on the bench, stealing bases as a PR, where they are extremely unlikely to have fantasy value. Instead, he has kept his job, having taken a big step forward in his offense (which is still really bad). And he has 22 SB, every single one as a starter. After years of avoiding him, I finally traded for Hamilton in my 5×5 to try to make up ground in SB, so it would be awfully fitting if my prediction somehow finally came true and cost me a title – but this is probably going to be very, very wrong.
2. Zack Greinke ends up outside the top 30 SP. Per CBS, Greinke is…#30. That’s right, I set my over-under at 30, and here we are. Greinke was coming off the board in the top 10 SP, so in spirit, this prediction was spot on. He also has 10 wins for a pretty bad team right now – assuming that falls off and he does not take a step up elsewhere (his peripherals give no reason to expect improvement), this should be a win.
3. Jordan Zimmermann ends up outside the top 50 SP. Zimmermann is around 52 (there are some SP/RP swing guys ahead of him) and now he is hurt. I feel pretty good about this one. My argument was that his 2014 was the outlier, based on peripherals and underlying performance, rather than 2015 being the outlier based on surface results. So far, that has been spot on.
4. Santiago Casilla finishes third in Saves – on the Giants. This is a definitive loss. Casilla has 21 saves and while his performance has been less-than-great, it has certainly not required a change in role. Even if he lost the job today, he is likely to end the year as the team-leader in saves and there is no chance TWO teammates pass him.
5. Francisco Lindor is not a top 12 SS. Uhhhh…nevermind. Lindor is the #5 fantasy SS and there is a legitimate case to be made for him as the top real SS in MLB. He’s a legitimate MVP candidate, though not the best candidate. Incredible.
6. Eugenio Suarez is one of the SS to surpass Lindor, going 15/10 with 70+ R and RBI, and solid rates. This falls apart on the last two words (also the passing Lindor thing…). 15/10 looks good, as he is at 15/6 at the break. He has 41 R and 40 RBI, so 70/70 is well within play. But his .228/.295/.402 line is not great. He is still an excellent MI option in almost all formats, particularly those that give you some credit for those SB, but he is not what I predicted.
7. Carlos Santana returns great value, ESPECIALLY in OBP leagues. Santana is the #12 1B in my CBS OBP league. Among guys who are used at 1B (i.e., they don’t also qualify at more useful positions), he is 6th. That matches my top 12 and top 8 in OBP leagues, easily.
8. Freddie Freeman is a top-6 1B. Among guys who are being used at 1B, Freeman is currently 9th. That is very solid, but not good enough. Hopefully you picked up your 1B one spot earlier on this list.
9. Wilson Ramos his .270 with 20 HR. Ramos at the break has 13 HR, so that 20 is well within range. And he is hitting .330, so as long as he hits something like .200 in the second half, he’ll match that .270. Depth Charts projections have him ending up with 19 HR, so this is no sure thing, but I still think he comes through. Of course, with Ramos the question is always health – that has to stick.
10. Pedro Alvarez leads the AL in HR. Alvarez has nine HR. That’s right. So few that I do not even need to use numerals to type it out per AP style. Not enough to lead the AL at all. Not enough to lead his team. I mean, Alvarez leads the Orioles in PA as a DH and doesn’t even lead his team in HR as a DH (Trumbo has 12 as a DH). This one was bad.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's writes for RotoGraphs and PitcherList, and can be heard on the ottobot podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @chadyoung.
Greinke struggled in the first two months but had been much better in the six June starts. You’ll probably need some luck to get that one.
Somewhat, yeah. But he had a bad start @COL (and yeah, it is @COL, but they are in his division…) and his start vs. LAD was not as good as the results suggest. His June FIP/xFIP were 3.12/3.99 vs. 3.51/3.81 for the first half as a whole. But his last five starts he is at 3.81/4.65 (with a 1.99 ERA). Those five starts, he struck out under 6 K/9 and really only survived thanks to a .219 BABIP, a nearly 90% LOB% and a 7.7%HR/FB rate that seems unsustainable in that park as the weather heats up. If he pitches like he did in June, his results are going to get a lot worse the rest of the way.
Came here to post on Greinke… he had 2 blowup starts in April. Since then, he has a sub-3.00 ERA, with K & BB rates pretty much in line with his career. If you’re going to take his last 5 and predict a win, i’ll cut out his first 5 and predict a loss.
First, I did not suggest taking his last five alone – only that his last five look awfully similar, in sum, to his season as a whole, and probably a bit worse. Enough to suggest that there is not a significant upward trend in his performance.
Second, he has a 3.20/3.65 FIP/xFIP after his first five starts is definitely better than his first half overall, but not a ton. If he keeps that pace but has his wins fall off, as I suggested he would, due to a crappy team (with a bullpen getting worse as they make trades), I still think this ends up being a win for me.
I could be wrong, and this could be one I lose because my prediction was technically wrong (he finishes inside the top 30) but is right in spirit (he was a bad investment at SP8).
His HR/FB% might be unsustainable, but it won’t be because of the weather heating up. Chase Field is a retractable roof stadium and living in Phoenix, let me assure you they close the roof about June 1st and rarely open it until late September, either because of heat or late afternoon monsoon storms starting in mid-July.
Really, he pitches in a dome for all practical purposes.
The sentence “assuming that falls off and he does not take a step up elsewhere (his peripherals give no reason to expect improvement)” seems off to me. When a guy has a extensive track record, isn’t that a better predictor than first-half peripherals?
Sure, but his career peripherals are only a bit better than his 1H peripherals, and he is 32 years old, so it is not a surprise that they are a bit worse. His track record doesn’t look much better than his first half, his first half is more recent, he is getting older…all that added up, I don’t see anything to suggest he will improve meaningfully in the second half. Doesn’t mean he WON’T but I see no reason to think he will.
I guess I’m being too literal or bogged down with semantics. But how can you see “nothing” to suggest he will improve his ERA and WHIP? If his ERA doesn’t improve it will his worst since 2011, and his WHIP would be the worst since 2012 if it doesn’t improve. His rest-of-season projections predict better ERA and WHIP numbers after the all-star break than before.
Again, I admit I am being too literal, but if one thinks his numbers will improve or if one thinks his numbers won’t improve – for BOTH conclusions – there are reasons and evidence for the opposite conclusion.
Yeah, this is all accurate. When I say I see nothing to suggest he will meaningfully improve, what I am really saying is that I don’t see a strong argument in the evidence to make me think meaningful improvement is likely.
Cool.
Yeah I don’t see a chance he finishes up outside the top 30 SP. He’s had one of his worst first halves and he is the 30th. If I was to make a betting line for this, I’d make it -700 he finishes in the top 30.
But the entire premise of my argument pre-season is that I EXPECTED him to have one of his worst seasons. He is doing exactly what I expected, without luck playing a major role – why would I expect that to change?
Put another way – he is almost 33 and playing in a bad pitcher’s park for the first time in his career, other than his stint in MIL (when he was 28). Of course he is putting up a bad year by his standards – that’s what he SHOULD be doing.
-700! PLEASE let me bet that! He is ranked 30th! All it would take is a bad stretch, or any of the dozen guys behind him getting super hot, or a little injury that puts him on the shelf for a bit…
(I agree that he is more likely than not to finish inside the top 30, but -700 is completely ridiculous. Will empty my bank account to take that.)