Jeff Zimmerman’s Bold Prediction Recap
After crushing my BOLD Predictions last season, I was in for regression and it came hard. For my rankings, I’ll use Razzball’s combined rankings.
#1 Dinelson Lamet will end the season as a top-30 pitcher.
A horrible start by jinxing a guy into Tommy John surgery.
0 for 1
#2 Greg Bird will outproduce Aaron Judge.
I was lower than the industry on Judge and higher on Bird. I was right on expecting some regression from Judge (#89) but Bird (#701) never got off the ground. Bird needs a clean start somewhere, hopefully in Triple-A. He can get healthy (power down three straight years) and quit hitting so many flyballs (50% FB%).
As for Judge, I see him settling into a second round pick depending on how many dingers he hit the previous season.
0 for 2
#3 Adrian Beltre will outperform his ADP (158) and be a top-75 player.
Health did in the 39-year-old. With fewer than 500 PA and only his lowest home run total (15) since 2009, he finished 249th. There is no way I should have been betting on a player one year from turning forty to have a rebound season. I should have been smarter than the logic behind this prediction.
0 for 3
#4 Luis Severino will outproduce all but one of the top-4 starters.
I was betting on Severio’s youth and some regression from the big-4 starters (Scherzer, Sale, Kluber, Kershaw). All four stayed productive while Severino regressed.
0 for 4
#5 Luis Perdomo will out produce both Dallas Keuchel and Marcus Stroman.
Keuchel (#209) and Stroman (#654) tried their hardest to help with this prediction but Perdomo (#787) failed to produced anything.
0 for 5
#6 Masahiro Tanaka will outperform Shohei Ohtani.
I had to go back and read my intent on this projection. I’m getting desperate to get one right. Looking over the paragraph, I only compared them as pitchers, so I will luckily move forward as pitchers (Ohtani was the 130th hitter).
Tanaka was ranked the 146th overall with Ohtani the pitcher coming in at 390th. I take the controversial hit.
1 for 6
#7 Yulieski Gurriel will outproduce Miguel Cabrera.
I blew this one out of the water with Cabrera barely playing and Gurriel coming in at 110th.
2 for 7
#8 Josh Bell and Xander Bogaerts will outperform their ADP by 20 spots.
Bell never got going and ended up as the 210th rated player with a 189 ADP to start the season.
Bogaerts had several factors working for him to improve on his 79 ADP. He played 2018 healthy, unlike in 2017. Also, he dropped his GB% from 49% to 43% to finish 44th overall.
2.5 for 8
#9 Jason Kipnis will outperform Ronald Acuna.
I wonder what I was smoking and/or drinking when I wrote this projection. I should find some more.
2.5 for 9
#10 Ryan Braun will outproduce Corey Seager.
While I lost a couple hits early on because of injury, I’ll gladly take this easy win with Seager missing the season.
3.5 for 10
After a horrible start, I got myself on track for a respectable .350 overall finish.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
You should cut yourself some slack on the Severino prediction. In my points league, he (#7) outproduced Sale (#9) and Kershaw (#29) while putting up almost identical predictive stats (FIP, xFIP, SIERA) and K/BB rates.
It also looked like a very good prediction for the first half of the season. That ridiculously bad run from the ASB to mid-September did it in.
Sure, it was a good prediction, but he didn’t outperform 3 of those pitchers so it still counts as a 0.