From Bad to Worse: 10 Bold Predictions Revisited

Before the season started, I stated my Bold Predictions. Time to get the shaming on.

Torii Hunter will improve on his 2012 season.

After re-inventing his swing part way through 2012, I thought he could do it for an entire season. He didn’t.

81/16/92/9/.313
90/17/84/3/.304

Miss. 0 for 1

Eric Hosmer will not regress and will continue to struggle.

Over the first 2 months of the season my prediction looked good when he hit .261/.320/.333. Then the Royals changed hitting coaches and Hosmer’s turned around his season by hitting .318/.367/.494 over the last 4 months.

Miss again: 0 for 2

Mike Trout will not be a top 15 fantasy player.

Swing and miss, badly. Like Hosmer, my prediction looked fine early in the season. For the first month, Trout hit .261/.333/.432 with 2 HR and 4 SB. Then, turned back into Mike Trout.

Three in a row: 0 for 3

Yu Darvish will be a top 5 fantasy pitcher.

Our final rankings have not been released, but if Darvish isn’t in the top 5, he is close.

Stat: League Rank Among Starters

K: 1st
ERA: 9th
WHIP: 11th
Wins: T30th

He didn’t get the Wins, but had 37 more strikeouts than the next closest pitcher (Max Scherzer).

I will call it a win. 1 for 4

Yoenis Cespedes will continue to improve and be a top 20 fantasy player.

I missed badly here. Cespedes didn’t maintain any of plate discipline gains of 2012. He saw his BB/K drop from .42 to .27. The extra strikeouts destroyed his AVG taking it from .292 to .240.

But he won the home run derby, don’t I get some credit for it.

1 for 5 now

Half of the following 10 pitchers will spend time on the DL in 2013: Edwin Jackson, Edinson Volquez, Gio Gonzalez, James Shields, Jarrod Parker, Jon Lester, Jeremy Hellickson, Stephen Strasburg, Tim Lincecum and Yovani Gallardo.

Here is if each went on the DL:
Edwin Jackson – No
Edinson Volquez – No
Gio Gonzalez – No
James Shields – No
Jarrod Parker – No
Jon Lester – No
Jeremy Hellickson – No
Stephen Strasburg – Yes
Tim Lincecum – No
Yovani Gallardo – Yes

Normally, 40% of all pitchers go on the DL. I don’t think I could pick a list of pitchers where only two ended up on the DL over the course of the season.

Now, if I can get two of my bold predictions right. 1 for 6.

Alex Rodriguez will give top 10 third base production over the season’s last 2 months.

First off, I need to create predictions I can easily measure. I will look at how he compares in the second half to 3B with 180 or more PAs to see if he is close.

AVG: 18th
Runs: T20th
HR: T7th
RBI: 19th
SB: 3rd

He was going to be close to the top 10 if just the two months were examined. Since I couldn’t write a prediction I can measure, I will take the loss.

Hoping for Mendoza: 1 for 7

R.A. Dickey will repeat his 2012 Cy Young season.

Strikeouts down, walks up, ERA up, Wins down and combined they all lead to an overall worse season. He was able to turn his season around though. In the first half he had a K/BB of 2.0 and he was able to raise it to 3.5. Additionally, his ERA dropped from 4.69 to 3.56.

Keeping the streak going: 1 for 8

Jeff Francoeur will out produce Wil Myers.

It’s like I got dumber as I wrote these. I was trying to make the point that usually rookies struggle and they will be outperformed by full time players. It is not good when I pick the likely ROY winner and a player who was released before the half way point of the season.

Hopefully the next one can’t be worse: 1 for 9

Mariano Rivera will not be a top 15 reliever.

Yep, it got worse……………

1 for freaking 10

The sad part, it can still get worse next year.