Dollar-Store Inventory: Reviewing The Birchwood Brothers’ 10 Bold Predictions for 2017

We’re back after a long silence—too few things to say, too few good ways to say them, too few time—to review our Bold Predictions for 2017. Our forecasting shtick, as some of you may recall, is to detect Fantasy merit among the cheapest of the cheap—the fourth outfielders, fifth starters, and sixth men out of the bullpen who, in defiance of logic but in our view, might have value in the coming season.

So our Bold Predictions were ten guys who either cost a dollar, went in the reserve round, or weren’t taken at all in the Tout Wars Mixed League Auction the week before the season started. As we reckon it, two of our picks were derailed by injury, two (all right—three, but one of them was too whimsical to really count) were bad, one was not-bad, and four were quite good indeed. If you convened a panel of Roto experts and asked them to pick ten $1 players, would they do better than we did?

Really, we have no idea, and we’d like to know. One way or another, we actually had most of these guys on our teams this season. But then again, we played in enough leagues to have had most of the rest of MLB as well. Hope we’re at least a bit responsible for at least some of you having at least some of the guys who panned out.

DERAILED BY INJURY

–“Andrew Toles will do as well in 450 plate appearances as he did in 115 last season.” 32 games into the season, this one was looking pretty good. Toles was at .271/.314/.458 in 102 PAs—not quite the .314/.365/.505 of 2016, but he was just starting to heat up. In the 33rd game of the season, however, Toles tore his ACL, and that was that.

DERAILED BY INJURY, BUT WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER

–“You will get four or five months of the 2015-model Matt Duffy.” Duffy had a fine 2015, but a 2016 that was compromised by an Achilles tendon problem that led to late-season surgery. As it happens, one of us had the same problem and the same surgery, and made a full recovery in about six months. So we figured Duffy’s timetable would be about the same. But here it is late September, and here Duffy is, getting in a few instructional-league licks after zero major league appearances and a second surgery. Evidently, “full recovery” means something different for an elite athlete in the prime of his career than it does for an elderly, overweight Fantasy Baseball writer.

BAD PREDICTIONS

–“Matt Boyd will be a top-40 starting pitcher.” Our hypothesis had two prongs: (1) Boyd is a good pitcher, but has trouble third time through the batting order; this problem will be alleviated by (2) the Tigers’ good bullpen. We couldn’t have been wronger. Boyd was lights-out third time through, but was so bad first and second time through (.874 OPS) that he seldom got there. And the Tigers’ bullpen was epochally horrible (5.66 ERA, nearly a run worse than anyone else). We have to say, though, that we still kind of like Boyd, and think that the pitcher he’s been this month is the pitcher he’ll be next season.
–“Ryan Pressly will get at least 20 saves.” The concept behind this one was sound. The Twins figured to be much improved this season, and the incumbent closer, Brandon Kintzler, seemed vulnerable to us. Well, the Twins were great, and eventually Kintzler got traded (though he was superb theretofore), but by that time Pressly had been exiled to Rochester and dropped behind several other guys in the closer pecking order. He’s pitched very well since his return from the minors, and we can imagine that he will be to 2018 what Kintzler was to 2016 and Matt Belisle to 2017. But, for immediate purposes, so what?

WHIMSICAL, BUT STILL BAD, PREDICTION

–“Jaime Schultz will be a valuable starting pitcher in the second half.” For the second straight year, Schultz—a local lad whom we’ve been hearing about since he was 16—was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Bold Prediction. As we remarked at the time, his pitching style and his credentials match up well with Blake Snell’s. He had a great spring, but in early April did something to his groin—we still don’t know what—and disappeared until July. He immediately went back to doing what he’s always done, which is strike out opposing players in wholesale lots (21 Ks in 11 2/3 IP at Triple-A, for example). He still hasn’t pitched in the majors, though. Maybe next year.

PRETTY GOOD PREDICTION

–“Taylor Motter will be a guy you actually want.” Motter played the role we thought he’d play: Mariner super-utility guy. And he got the playing time we thought he’d get: 264 PAs (we expected 200). In some ways, he did exactly what we predicted: 5 to 10 home runs (he hit 7) and double-digit stolen bases (he had 12, with only 1 caught stealing). We envisioned, however, a guy who’d hit .260 or better, not a guy who’d hit the .202 he actually hit. So give us a B on this one, or maybe a B plus if one his HRs or SBs put you over the top.

GOOD PREDICTIONS

–“Delino DeShields will do approximately what we thought he’d do” in 2016. Noting that DeShields had played well in 2015, bulked up in the offseason, played badly in 2016, debulked in the next offseason, and gone 12-for-12 in stolen bases in the spring, we envisioned (for the second straight year) a return to his 2015 form, and we nailed it. 2015: 492 PAs, .261/.344/.374, 25 SBs; 2017: 414 PAs, .272/.349/.368, 29 SBs.
–“Aaron Altherr will also do approximately what we thought he’d do last season.” In early 2016, we opined that, in the coming season, Altherr would win a starting job, hit some home runs, steal 20-plus bases, and generally improve on the .241/.338/.489 he posted in 2015. Instead, he tore a ligament in his wrist, missed most of the season, and was awful when he returned. This year, he still had plenty of DL time (two stints, hamstring), but played enough to get 386 PAs and hit .273/.345/.523 with 19 HRs and 5 SBs. We’ll settle for the shortfall in SBs if that’s what his hamstrings need to stay hamstrung.
–“Scott Schebler will duplicate his second-half stats over a full season with a nearly full-time job, except he’ll show more power.” We opined that he had established himself as a professional hitter and a good all-around player, and envisioned something like the .290/.357/.461 he managed in 213 PAs in 2016, plus at least 20 home runs. We got .232/.309/.487 and 29 home runs in 514 PAs. If, like us, you got him in the reserve round, you’re in no position to complain, to us or to him, despite the low batting average. But it may be even better next year. By his own account, Schebler didn’t tell anyone how bad his shoulder felt after he injured it on June 2nd. He finally went on the DL after two months of futility, and eventually came back strong. So let’s take a look at his aggregate stats from the start of the season through June 2nd and from August 19th until now. In 331 PAs, he hit .245/.319/ .542 with 22 home runs. And that, prorated to about 500 PAs, is what we think you’ll get from him next season.
–“Jimmy Nelson will be a top-40 pitcher.” This one we’re proud of. We noted that Nelson was—by a metric we devised that appears to have predictive value—2016’s unluckiest pitcher, and that his spring numbers were outstanding. And he was indeed a top-40 starter, even though he missed his last three or four starts after an extremely ill-advised headfirst slide produced a torn labrum. Hope he was safe. We’ve never really liked the Designated Hitter rule, but after Nelson and Chase Anderson (8 weeks on the DL after straining his oblique on a swinging strike) torpedoed our season, we’re reevaluating our position.