Revisiting Some Dumb Predictions by Some Big Dumb Idiot

I’m not a terribly smart person.

I started with the parent site in the Fangraphs family of websites, and after writing enough dumb articles was re-assigned to Rotographs. I am the Bill Smith of Fangraphs.

So when I do my 10 Bold Predictions each year, I hope you’re wise enough to take them with a grain of salt. Because for whatever reason, I typically forget I’m writing for ROTOGRAPHS and end up making half of them predictions like “ZOMG WATCH BALTIMORE WIN THE EAST.”

What the hell does that have to do with fantasy baseball?

But anyway, let us not delay the pain any further. Here are my red hot preseason predictions, complete with a grading scale at the end:

1. The Minnesota Twins finish near .500 (0/1).
NOPE. The Twins finished 11 games off the pace due to bad seasons from Ricky Nolasco, most of the rest of the starting staff, and even Joe Mauer. The future looks to be brighter, but man are people sick of hearing that in Minneapolis.

2. The Kansas City Royals make the playoffs (1/2).
Seriously how is this a fantasy baseball related prediction? Anyway, yeah, this one turned out. At the beginning of the year I just liked the construction of the roster. My notion was that adding a competent second baseman would go a long way to stabilizing the roster. Instead, Omar Infante kind of sucked but the outfield defense was ridiculous, as was the bullpen and enough of the starting staff.

3. Jose Dariel Abreu leads the American League in home runs (1/3).
Look, if we knew about the return of zombie Nelson Cruz, I think we’d have reconsidered all we held dear. Instead, settling for Abreu to finish third — tied with Mike Trout — isn’t half bad. Most importantly for Abreu is that he got his walk rate up to right around league average. Whether it’s growth or respect, that is something which should bode well for his continued mashing.

4. Sonny Gray and Danny Salazar both blow up and become top-five AL Cy Young candidates (1/4).
Gray had a fine enough season (16th in the AL in WAR, 3.08/3.46/3.47 pitching slash), but the blow-up with Salazar here is quite embarrassing. Salazar pitched well down the stretch (3.50 ERA, 73 strikeouts in 69.1 second half innings), but was nowhere near this discussion. Next year’s Indians rotation is going to be nasty with Salazar, Carlos Carrasco, and this Corey Kluber cat up top.

5. The Detroit Tigers win fewer than 90 games (1/5).
They won exactly 90. Oh well. Between the bullpen struggles and the inexplicable decline of Justin Verlander, this team is going to be a hard team to read in the future. Chances are they’ll get to keep one of Max Scherzer or David Price, but if Verlander doesn’t rebound just how good is this club? Everyone — literally, everyone — in the division looks like they’ll be better next year.

6. The Padres make the playoffs (1/6).
The Friars didn’t make the playoffs, thanks in large part to an offense which couldn’t hit its way out of an already broken paper bag for the first half of the season. But the Padres were solid in the second half, going 36-31 and riding the emergence of some pretty solid arms in Tyson Ross and Jesse Hahn. Odrisamer Despaigne will at least be worth keeping an eye on, while Ian Kennedy returned to form and the forever fragile Andrew Cashner was pretty awesome when he was healthy enough to start — which was just 19 times this year. 77-85 is no small victory for this club. It’s also no victory for my dumbass predictions.

7. Both Atlanta and Washington win 95-plus games (1.5/7).
Two teams winning 95 games in the same division is easy. Tell ‘em Wash. “It’s incredibly hard.”

Washington won 96 games; no other team in the division even finished .500 as the Braves — gah! — and Mets both won 79 games.

8. Phil Hughes will be the most valuable Twins starter in fantasy leagues (2.5/8).
Y’know this one is kind of awesome, since so many people ripped the crap out of the Twins for signing Hughes. The number one argument I saw was — and I’m not kidding — an overlay of Target Field over Yankee Stadium suggesting most, if not all the home runs Hughes gave up in the Bronx would be gone in Minneapolis.

Anyway, Hughes shoved for the Twins this year — though not at Target Field as most expected. Hughes basically said “here it is, hit it” by leading the MLB in zone percentage by well over five percent (56.4 percent while next closest was 51.1). That’s borderline insane.

9. Seattle finishes ahead of the Angels in the standings (2.5/9).
I won’t take credit for this in any form or fashion, but hey, Seattle came within an eyelash of making the playoffs. That still counts for something right? Right?!

10. Francisco Liriano takes a significant step back in year two with the Pirates (3.5/10).
Here I get to use the fantasy argument as a crutch, since Liriano actually pitched to a blistering pace down the stretch while taking his place as the Pirates best, or at least second-best starter. Liriano’s win total dropped from 16 to seven, his walks jumped by a full free pass per game, and his ERA was up from 3.02 to 3.38. All of this is bad analysis on the surface, but in the fantasy world of results, Liriano was worse.

Hey, I hit .350. Not bad, huh?