Grading My Pre-Season Predictions
Before the season started, I made a series of bold-ish predictions about what would happen in baseball this year. I focused on things that were unlikely but possible, unexpected playoff teams or players that you’ve heard of but didn’t expect to be great. You can find those eight predictions here and here.
Today, I’m grading myself on these predictions. The season is still going, but we’re close to the end, and reading about pre-season speculation will soon take a deserved back seat to actual playoff baseball. I’m assigning each of the predictions a grade of a win, a push, or a loss. Fair warning: I’m grading myself on a curve. Coming close on a high-percentage prediction is clearly a loss. Getting something half right when it was a 40-to-1 shot? I’ll claim half credit whether I deserve it or not. That’s simply how this goes — doing your own grading comes with advantages. Let’s get to the predictions.
Wins
Kolten Wong Will Out-wRC+ Keston Hiura
The verdict: Hard to imagine a clearer win. Two years removed from a sterling rookie season, Hiura looked completely lost and hasn’t played in the majors since July. That’s not to say that he’s washed — he acquitted himself well enough in Triple-A, and the Brewers haven’t solved their first base situation, which means he’ll surely get another bite at the apple next year.
Meanwhile, Wong has excelled. His 111 wRC+ is the best mark of his career. He achieved it by trading patience for power — he’s walking less and striking out more, but making more authoritative contact when he connects. That’s not to say he’s suddenly a slugging machine — he has only 14 home runs. It’s also not to say he stopped getting on base — his .340 OBP is well above league average. He simply made a tradeoff that made him incrementally better, and kept his excellent defense while doing so.
In the final tally, Wong certainly posted a higher wRC+ than Hiura — by a whopping 58 points. What more is there to say? The worst case came true for Hiura, Wong surprised to the upside, and that’s that.
The lesson: Low-contact hitters need to compensate with a standout skill. Hiura needs to achieve premium results on contact given how often he gives away strikes. He did just fine when he put the ball in play, but “just fine” won’t do when you strike out 40% of the time. Be willing to believe in power hitters — but be skeptical if they need a lot of things to go right, or need to maintain elite power numbers just to be an average hitter.
Pushes
Carson Kelly Will Be an All-Star
The verdict: Wait — no more wins? It was not a banner year for hitting predictions, to say the least. I do feel like I had the right idea on a few of these, but I’m absolutely certain that none of the other seven predictions will come true, so the best they can do is push.
Kelly looked like he might lock this one up for me early on, ending May with a 153 wRC+. He slumped a bit in June, but was still hitting .260/.385/.460 on June 19, a 122 wRC+ line that was borderline All-Star caliber.
Sadly, June 19 was a rough day for Kelly. A Walker Buehler fastball fractured his right wrist, a devastating injury for a hitter but also for a catcher. He didn’t return until July 30, and he’s been awful since coming back; his power has completely vanished, which isn’t great for a slow hitter who puts the ball in the air. His barrel rate has been cut roughly in half, and his hard-hit rate has dropped too.
Hopefully, an offseason to rest and rehab will restore some of the form he displayed early this year. He’s capable of it, at least for stretches, and that’s still a valuable skillset for a catcher. But pair his injury with Buster Posey’s resurgence, Omar Narváez combining offense and defense, and the continued excellence of J.T. Realmuto and Will Smith, and the path to All-Star nominations looks quite difficult.
The lesson: Injuries are the worst. Kelly put together a solid third of a season — but that’s not enough. You have to be durable, good, and lucky to make an All-Star team. Kelly managed one of three, and even though he beat his ZiPS projections despite less playing time and a power-sapping injury, beating the projections isn’t the same as a win.
Juan Soto Will Have a 200 wRC+
The verdict: I wrote about Soto yesterday, and reading about his complete offensive game is always a joy, so if you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest it. I thought that an increase in batted ball quality could push him to the rarely-seen heights of a 200 wRC+, though given that no one has done it in a full season since Barry Bonds, it was hardly a lock that he’d make it.
Given that he leads all batters in WAR and is second in wRC+ (first in xwOBA, if you’re into that kind of thing), I feel good saying that I got the general idea right. Soto is proving that he’s a generational talent, and anyone who walks 22% of the time while striking out 13.6% of the time and hitting the snot out of the ball has an outside shot at a spectacular season. I’d make this same prediction again if I could do it over.
The lesson: Maybe just predict that Soto will be the best hitter in baseball, rather than put up a batting line that no one has achieved since Bonds. The only thing I fault myself for on this one was setting my target too high; directionally, I feel okay counting this as a win. That said, I’ll settle for a push based on the rules of the game.
Andrew Vaughn Will Win Rookie of the Year
The verdict: Vaughn got a huge chunk of playing time this year in the aftermath of Eloy Jiménez’s injury, but he didn’t make the most of it. After never having played a day above High-A, he looked somewhat overmatched at the start of the season. July and August were good months — but a brutal slump has dropped his wRC+ below 100, and he’s also missed time due to injury this month.
It’s fair to say that this one didn’t work out, but I’m not so unhappy with the call. Vaughn was in a unique position to get more playing time than expected. His potential range of outcomes was quite high. Heck, I made that prediction before Vaughn even made the Opening Day roster. Getting 400 plate appearances out of him, and a solid month where he made me feel like he might be doing it, makes this one feel like a push.
The lesson: Betting on playing time is a way to give yourself an edge, but it doesn’t guarantee success. The White Sox had a roster that made Vaughn’s opportunity greater than you’d expect for a player with fewer than 250 professional plate appearances, but he didn’t run with it. I’d do it again, and I think Vaughn will be a plus hitter next year, but this wasn’t his breakout season.
Losses
Yu Darvish Will Win the Cy Young
The verdict: Nope. Darvish started the season strong, but was never in pole position to win an award; Jacob deGrom’s historic start put everyone else in the rear-view mirror. When deGrom was felled by injury, Darvish was already on the downswing. After a strong first three months — 2.44 ERA, 3.06 FIP, and 11 K/9 — he’s been downright unplayable in the second half. In between a handful of IL stints, he’s posted a 6.78 ERA and 5.15 FIP.
The underlying numbers suggest there’s still plenty to like, as his strikeouts have stayed high and walks low. But 2.44 home runs per nine innings is going to torpedo your season, no matter how the rest of your game goes. It’s hard to know whether the decline was due to injuries, inconsistency, or even the foreign substance crackdown, though there’s not much evidence that Darvish suffered a debilitating decline in spin. He simply got bad and hurt at the worst possible time for San Diego.
The lesson: Pitching is hard! My heart wasn’t in this prediction; I simply wanted a pitching prediction and looked for a suitably long shot. A better lesson is probably to go with your heart: I was wildly bullish on Corbin Burnes before the season, viewing him as one of the handful of pitchers with a shot to dethrone deGrom. Rather than pick someone with a better median outcome, I should have gone for the gusto and picked something special for Burnes.
Kansas City Will Finish Ahead of Cleveland
The verdict: Not quite! Cleveland has indeed disappointed, going 77-79 to date, which puts them squarely outside the playoff race. You know who has been worse? The Royals, who are 71-85 and even more out of the race. They had a rough first half — 33-47 on July 1 — and never pulled out of it. The six wins that separate the teams are almost exactly on top of our preseason projections — though public prediction markets had them with an eight win gap.
If the season were longer, I might have a shot at this. Cleveland has been shedding assets as the season wears on, trading away César Hernández — still their third-best hitter by WAR despite leaving the team in July — and a smorgasbord of other bit players. They’ve dealt with injuries, too; Shane Bieber made his first start since June last Friday. None of their pitchers have surpassed 24 starts, and Zach Plesac, who hit that 24 number, has been decidedly mediocre. The road ahead looks tough for the new-look Guardians.
Kansas City had a bigger problem, though; their offseason acquisitions were more problem than solution. Carlos Santana turned into a pumpkin. Mike Minor has an ERA over 5.00. Andrew Benintendi has been blazingly hot in September — ..347/.377/.561 — and still has only an average line on the year. Their young pitching, meanwhile, didn’t pick up the slack; Brady Singer was the best of the bunch, and he put up 2 WAR in 127 innings, held back by rarely going deep into a game.
The lesson: Don’t get too excited about bad teams. The Royals were the spice that made this prediction interesting; they’ve been so bad recently, with Cleveland making the playoffs more often than not, that the juxtaposition felt fun. But they’re still bad, and counting on Santana and Benintendi to somehow change that seems silly in retrospect.
Oakland Will Finish Below .500
The verdict: The A’s have already clinched a winning season, and we project them to finish with 87.5 wins. That’s bang on where prediction markets had their preseason win total. They got there differently than you’d expect — a hot start had their playoff odds at 77% on June 18, with a 44-27 record that topped the AL. They’ve gone 41-44 since to slide out of playoff position.
The path doesn’t really matter that much. Whether the A’s got here in fits and starts or with great consistency, they got here. Injuries and suspensions hurt them, but deadline trades helped them reload. In aggregate, they are who everyone thought they were, a high-80s-win team with some superstars and some holes. That’s not enough to make the playoffs, but it’s definitely better than the sub-.500 fate I predicted for them.
The lesson: Don’t get too cute reading into the 2020 season. I was worried about Matt Chapman’s availability and Matt Olson’s rough 2020. The first concern was valid, though Chapman has reached 600 PA; we were projecting him for 650, and there’s more downside than upside risk from there. But Olson? He had a brief blip last year, then put up his best season this year. The bullpen was quite bad, as I feared, and the starters couldn’t quite pick up the slack, but I was simply wrong about the offense.
The Rays Will Miss the Playoffs
The verdict: Whoops! I was worried about the lack of pitching depth after an offseason where two of the team’s top two pitchers departed. Tyler Glasnow is now out for the season, which added to the problem. The Rays simply didn’t care. Their starters were bad this year. So far, they’ve produced an uninspiring line — a 4.17 ERA, 4.00 FIP, and a bottom-four amount of innings pitched. Their bullpen simply picked up all the slack.
Their relievers cover a ton of innings. They have the second-best K-BB% mark in the majors. Thirty-seven different relievers have appeared for them, the second-highest mark in the majors. The only team that used more relievers is the Orioles, and their bullpen was abysmal — but the Rays’ squad was incredible. They leveraged their depth and ability to identify and deploy pitching in a way that I simply didn’t predict.
The offense has been great too, of course. I’m less surprised by that development, though I didn’t expect Mike Zunino to be at the forefront of the attack. For the most part, though, I simply missed on the team’s ability to create a top-10 pitching staff out of a group that I thought was, at best, average.
The lesson: Don’t doubt the Rays. I was generally down on the class of teams I’d best describe as economizers — the Guardians, A’s, and Rays. I still think that general view was fine. In the aftermath of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, all three teams leaned hard into austerity, and the other two suffered for it this year. The Rays were just better — better at identifying players, better at making the most of scarce resources, and better able to adapt to the rash of pitching injuries that threatened to derail their season.
I’m pretty down on my predictions this year. I think I had the right idea on several, but I didn’t do enough refining to hone in on which ideas were backed by credible evidence and which were more guesswork. I’m sure I’ll try it again next year — the offseason is a great time for predicting — but I hope my process is more rigorous, and that I stop trying to outsmart the Rays. Also, I hope I put Burnes in there somewhere.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Once again, those sabermetric stat geek nerds completely miss out on the Rays, a team built on the old-school values of grit, fundamentals, innings-eating starters, and the will to win.
(record scratch)
wait
honestly I think 3 of those 4 values fit the Rays pretty well. At least watching their defense, they’re definitely fundamentally sound.
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think they’re a gritty team; ties in to the fact that old-school values vs. new-school metrics is kind of a false dichotomy. Personality traits and performance are different, but they’re not opposites!
The rays best starter is Drew Rasmussen, which is fascinating. And the dude is nails for five innings at a time. I have nothing but respect for how the Rays continue to construct and reconstruct their roster, year after year.
Yup, they have this winning-in-this-baseball-era thing nailed. But man oh man are they a chore to watch. They’re not the only ones, of course, but the grinding nature of their approach just exhausts me and I have no interest in watching their games. I wonder if that is a widespread opinion.
The bullish predictions for the Royals and the bearish predictions for the Rays that were popular on here both seemed to be wishful thinking born out of a frustration with tanking and cheap owners. I mean the Santana signing looked horrible from day one, but it seemed like people were pulling punches when discussing it because they admired that the Royals were willing to spend money and weren’t tanking.
It gets kind of boring singing the Rays praise all day. I like the Rays, but I like fangraphs because the writers write on interesting things. A possible Royals resurgence is far more interesting than continued Rays dominance.
It’s a bit more specific than that. There are other bad, non-tanking teams that people were not very bullish on (like the Rockies and Dbacks). I think people saw the division the Royals were in (as opposed to the NL West) and said, why not if things go right. Things did not go right.
Then again, the Giants are in the NL West and were supposed to be mediocre at best (some even picked the D-Backs to finish better than the Giants), and they may very well wind up winning the division AND finish with the best record in the NL.
Sometimes, you just have to pick the correct “bad, non-tanking team.”
We see this a lot now. The Reds were praised for giving $64m to Mike Moustakas, not because it was a smart decision but because it was just a team spending money for the sake of spending money
This comment makes me smile. They really have leveraged all aspects of talent evaluation, both traditional and new, extremely well and managed it with a deft touch. I wouldn’t ever bet against them.
I think the primary strengths of the Rays is that they build teams based on platoon numbers and versatility and great bullpens. They know what hitters stand the best chance against what types of pitchers and its not lefty righty that they settle on. its he hits top curveballs well so he bats against curveball pitchers, but he is weak against sliders so he benches against slider pitchers. they do that analysis while having guys they Think are above average defenders at nearly every position, but also versatile so they can mix and match easily. defense is cheaper per win than offense, so it saves money. Also they always have a top notch bullpen. They really try to identify and develop guys early who they see as top bull pen arms. most teams make bullpen arms out of failed starters. The rays make bullpen arms out of pitchers that fit molds that will work better in bullpens. That’s a different and more effective approach. Why spend a great deal of effort developing a 5th starter who will have a 4.50 to 5 ERA era while hoping he will get better, when you can turn that guy early into a reliver with a low 3s era and get him to the majors faster. Or why not draft guys to be relievers with a high chance of success. Great bullpens and defense are two very important parts of winning close games. Nobody more consistently wins close games year and year out than the Rays.
Vaughn also looked like he fatigued before his back got hurt. Not surprising since this was by far the most he has played in a year and he didn’t play any real baseball on 2020. He also played the field much more than planned until 2 days before the season started.
Fun fact, he is the only White Sock to play 100 games or more in the OF this year.
I’ll revisit mine too, grading on a curve of “did I more or less get this right, even if it wasn’t as extreme as I predicted?”
WINS:
-Eugenio Suarez is so incomprehensibly bad at shortstop they pull the plug on him there and shift him back to third, but he’s so rattled he has a career-worst offensive year.
No commentary necessary.
-Bryce Harper wins MVP.
I wasn’t right about him hitting 62 homers but I was right about the Harper resurgence. I think he’s probably the favorite for MVP at this point and I’ll take that as a win.
PUSH:
-Andrew Vaughn isn’t even the best rookie on his own team as Kopech wins RoY.
I’m legitimately tempted to move this to the “win” bucket because Kopech is a legitimate dominator and Vaughn didn’t quite figure it all out until July, and that didn’t stick. Kopech has 1 more win than Vaughn, too. But he’s not a legit candidate for RoY. I think Arozarena wins it just like all the boring predictions said, and I’d probably give it to Luis Garcia instead.
-Jordan Montgomery emerges as leader of the Yankees’ staff, emerging as a beacon of consistency in a struggling Yankees rotation.
This was predicated on not just Montgomery having a real breakout, but Gerrit Cole being inconsistent like he was in 2020. I figure, Cole puts up 3.5 wins and then Montgomery edges him out, getting close to 4? Montgomery did his part, and aside from Cole it wasn’t pretty, but Cole is back to being a 5-win pitcher so it didn’t quite happen.
LOSSES:
-The Reds defense is spectacularly bad, led by Suarez but not just limited to him
It actually wasn’t! Castellanos and Winker were bad but not incomprehensively so. Barnhart is a good catcher defensively, Jonathan India was below average but not terrible, etc. It probably helped that they stopped playing Suarez at SS too. The Reds dodge another bullet.
-Blue Jays finish last in their division as the pitching falls apart.
This was predicated on the Orioles being surprisingly competitive, so this would have failed even without the Blue Jays playing well. But Manoah came up big, Ryu stayed healthy, Ray was very good and Matz was functional. Nobody really got hurt, so my prediction that a total pitching implosion would doom them didn’t happen, and even if they finish 4th they’re still alive for the wild card today. So that didn’t happen.
-Mets dominate the NL, win the world series
This was roughly about as likely as what actually happened, which was virtually everyone becoming bad or hurt.
STUFF THAT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE EVEN AT THE TIME
-Adalberto Mondesi steals 100 bases.
-Trea Turner steals 100 bases
I started doing the math on it and I realized within an hour there was no way anyone was going to steal 100 bases, but if you’re making bold predictions why not predict the impossible? Mondesi looks like he might not even be an everyday guy anymore due to health. Turner is still a speed demon but no one is greenlighting him to run enough for him to sniff 100. Too bad, this is what I really wanted.
All in all, this was fun. I kind of think if you’re getting more right than I did then you’re not making crazy enough predictions. Let’s come back and do it next year.
The Mets talent remains entirely overrated at all times. What lead you to that prediction? That’s about as crazy as the 100 sb predictions
nothing brings me more joy than the mets underperforming every year. by underperforming, I mean some peoples expectations and i guess ZIPS. But they aren’t underperforming, theyre playing exactly the way you’d expect, its just made more fun by the baffling prediction by some that this team would be above 500
I couldn’t think of a single division winner prediction that would shock anyone that I thought was possible, so I had to up the ante a bit. And I couldn’t do something like predict the Yankees or Dodgers to win the world series, either. It had to be a team with a ton of talent but a huge range of outcomes, like the Mets. What’s something nobody expects to happen? The Mets dominating in the World Series.
Hey, like I said, if I get too many of these right I’m not taking enough risks.
As someone who has been a Mets fan for 30+ years, I can assure you that every Mets non-pitcher starter suddenly being 1-2 wins worse than anticipated is far more likely than them putting it all together and winning the World Series.
Mets fans: “Why be optimistic when your misery can keep you company?”
I think those are fair grades for now, and Harper is odds on favorite to win so a pretty dang good prediction there. It’s easy to quickly forge that even the smart crowd that didn’t care about Harper’s batting average and RBIs had mostly moved on from him as a legit MVP candidate. Kudos to you for picking that right.
For me, I only made one prediction, which was Max Fried hitting a home run. I guess it could happen, but I almost feel like giving myself a push here anyway as he is likely going to (definitely should) win perhaps the last pitcher silver slugger in history this year.
Well the goal with these predictions is to pick something that is definitely counter to conventional wisdom, so it’s not an accident that I picked him when no one else did. That I got it right is *mostly* an accident because there are a lot of other good players in the NL. There’s a reason everyone else picked Soto, Tatis, Acuna, and Betts. If you were actually betting in real life you’d probably pick one of them.
But it is also true that everyone seemed to have given up on Harper and he absolutely ripped the cover off the ball in 2020 even if the bottom line results were more “all-star” than MVP. He’s a guy where , when he’s on, he’s unstoppable. Dude has a wRC+ of more than 200 in both August and September (individually). I know he’s a bit of a knucklehead and he’s not always locked in but man is he a treat to watch. Plus, he plays in a very offense-friendly stadium so even though he strikes out more than most traditionalists like, he’ll often do well in the traditional but not-very-useful stats.
Actually, I think a lot of gamblers actually go for the second tier choices so that they can make more money if they win while still having a decent likelihood that they will win.
Some may also place relatively small bets on their favorite teams when the odds are really low so that they can celebrate double if their team actually pulls off a Cinderella story.
I’d give you a “push” on the Fried prediction – he’s been ridiculously good at the plate.
I’ll also give myself a “push” on one of my two predictions (Nicky Lopez being an All-Star). For my other prediction (Pat Valaika being an All-Star), I’ll seek the appropriate professional help.
german marquez swingin it pretty good this year… but maybe we can just write it off as COORS for the sake of your prediction
You could make a decent case for him, too, and I’m not sure if the pitcher silver slugger voters weigh the Coors Field Effect much.
There is no Coors Field effect. The (definite) advantage a hitter gets from playing 81 games at altitude is balanced — more than balanced actually — by the disadvantage of having to adjust to sea level whenever they go on the road.
Yes, Rockies hitters do hit worse on the road than hitters on other teams do on the road, but overall batting lines are still significantly inflated by playing half their games in Coors Field. The disadvantage on the road isn’t anywhere near balanced with the advantage at home.
to be clear, i was joking
Your point about Fried raises a really interesting subject: just how bad pitchers have been at hitting this season.
HRs by pitchers were very stable over the past half decade. From 2015-2019, pitchers collectively hit 25, 24, 23, 24 HRs each season. This season? 12 HR. Predicting a pitcher HR is quite a bold take these days!
It’ll be a pity if ‘the Mets were hurt a lot’ becomes the legend of 2021. Their ten preferred position players played more than 80% of the team’s games, and the guy that was hurt the most, Nimmo, is about to pip Alonso for most WAR among position players. DeGrom will probably finish the year in the top 10 by WAR for pitchers. Stroman had a career year. Walker was great for 100 innings–it’s just that the Mets destroyed his seasonal numbers as Alderson’s teams tend to do by sending him to the mound every five days with a dead arm. Megill came out of nowhere. Their one, modest upgrade to the rotation, Rich Hill, baseball’s oldest arm, is now more durable at 41 than any other year since 2007.
Most of the Mets IL days go to players like Jose Martinez and Jordan Yamamoto, where JY was more Mets ‘pretend depth’ to the pitching staff. Nearly all those guys had FIPs over 5.00, often well over 5.00, and they probably gave more innings to more pitchers with ERAs over 5.00 than any ostensible contender. By mid-September that was 18 pitchers with a combined ERA over 7.00, whereas the Dodgers had all of 8 pitchers with ERAs over 4.15. The Mets haven’t known how to build the back half of a roster in at least a decade. That’s a better story than the misguided, ‘they were hurt a lot.’
A remarkable number of things went right for this 77 win team. Almost shockingly so, given how their season is playing out.
@sogoodlooking The Mets have missed the most WAR to injury in all of MLB per baseball prospectus. But sure, it’s just Jose Martinez and Jordan Yamamoto
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/baseball-prospectus-injured-list-ledger/
Right, it’s that the players who missed time were the ones who were on fire and the ones who didn’t went through prolonged slumps.
Never bet against the Rays and Cash. They’re mad scientists.
Jesus I swear I just read Ben’s preseason predictions articles a few weeks ago.
Ben – predictions are interesting only if you push them past the point of a statistical formula. Fun predictions.
As a Durham Bulls fan, I’ve learned that the Rays are wizards at the depth trade and the depth signing. A few at the expense of my beloved Cardinals.
I hope the Cardinals learn a thing or two from the Rays.
Keep up the good work Ben.
The Cardinals have also done pretty well in that area in recent years, snatching up guys like Tyler O’Neill, Kwang-Hyun Kim, Giovanny Gallegos, Wade LeBlanc, T. J. McFarland, and Luis Garcia.
Even trading Arozarena to the Rays may not turn out to be a clear loss depending on how Liberatore turns out, and at least the regrettable Pham trade (again to the Rays) netted them Genesis Cabrera.
I hate the name “Guardians,” my Lord.
You’ll get used to it. Most team names are kind of stupid in a vacuum, and IMO Guardians is as good as any and better than most in that there’s at least a connection with a local landmark. It’s just that when we hear a team name we immediately call up a whole mess of memories and feelings associated with the team. If there was no team in Boston and it was announced that there would be an expansion team called the Red Sox, Twitter would have a field day over the total lack of imagination combined with the tryhard spelling. But with 100+ years of history, we usually don’t even think about the actual words. Give it a few years and we’ll all make that immediate connection with the Guardians name as well. Until then it seems stupid because we have to stop and think about it.
Guardians is stupid. Spiders would be better. A specific Indian tribe name would be cool too. The term Indian is a fine word to describe indigenous Americans, but it’s far too general to make a good team name. Braves is great. Blackhawks too.
“General” is one word to describe it. I’d go with “offensive.”
No, it’s not. It was originally an honest mistake, and nobody had any issue calling them by that term for centuries. It’s just fallen out of favor in more recent decades in order to be more accurate and to avoid confusion with actual Indians from India.
Is the state name of Indiana offensive, too? What about the Pennsylvania Dutch?
No, Spiders suck, and I mean the name itself, not just because of 1899!
Almost everyone here over-valued Darvish. I’m glad the Cubs got out from under that contract.
The Darvish conversation is interesting. I did not get any “shares” of him on fantasy teams this year, but as Original Greaser Bob stated, it was only because other folks put an even higher value on him. Without looking very deeply, it is hard to see what is going on. I suspected hiding an injury, but the velocity loss is relatively small and his control has been good, so those numbers don’t support the injury. He has been very homer prone though.
Check out his numbers before and after the sticky stuff ban and you’ll have your answer. It definitely impacted some players more than others and Darvish seems to have been in the “more impacted” category.
After peaking in May, his spin rates tanked in June and July for the most part but actually rebounded in August and September. However, his pitch shapes changed as well and did not rebound with his spin rates.
That is an interesting conversation. Immediately after the ban, a great many pitchers seemed to be affected, both physically (in terms of lower spin rates) and mentally. But then many of them recovered and were close to normal again (Darvish and others excepted). I’d be very interested in an explanation of that. It doesn’t take a very cynical view of human nature to speculate on what happened.
Bryce Harper wins MVP. I wasn’t right about him hitting 62 homers but I was right about the Harper resurgence. I think he’s probably the favorite for MVP at this point and I’ll take that as a win.
I feel kind of bad for Andrew Vaughn; he was definitely not put in a position to succeed this year. Adjusting to MLB pitching is hard enough, but doing it while skipping AA and AAA, with a full year off in between, is an insane ask. Oh, and while you’re trying to focus on that, please also play left field, a position you’ve never played before in your life.
Vaughn has definitely faded down the stretch, but the fact that he even kept his head above water is a success in my book.
Yeah, he impressed me. He’s going to be a very good player.
I’m biased, and the assessment on the 2021 club is fair, but I think the Guardians will be a good club in 2022 and have chance to be even better in the subsequent years. Lot of exciting players and one would hope they’d kick off the new name with a trade for a bat.
Depends on the quality of the division. You play half your games (almost) in your division, and while the AL Central wasn’t as bad as some people thought this year, it was still pretty mediocre. If all of a sudden the Sox-Tigers-Twins-Royals start being a gauntlet rather than a source of easy wins, that’s a whole different ballgame.
It’s got to be frustrating to be an Indians fan. With all the talent that’s gone through there and to never have even a deep playoff run to show for it.
The 2016 AL Pennant was a pretty deep postseason run, as were the Pennants in ’95 and ’97. They just haven’t won a Championship in over 70 years.
: Whoops! I was worried about the lack of pitching depth after an offseason where two of the team’s top two pitchers departed
Weird sentence.
How about those Mariners? They’ve defied all logic and reason. They’ve laughed in the face of every projection system that pegged them as a 70-75 win team at best. They even beat my own super optimistic homer projection of 81-81. Their lineup has definitely played like a rebuilding team throughout the year, running a slash of .226/.303/.386, good for a 94 wRC+. Cycling through struggling rookies, AAAA journeymen, and role players. Kyle Lewis hasn’t played since May. Top prospect Kelenic faceplanted upon arrival. At best, their starting pitching is full of #3-4 types, with their one “big money” arm, Kikuchi, pitching like a really bad #5 since the all-star break. They’ve had tons of bullpen days in the first half, with names like Hector Santiago and Robert Duggar getting the bulk of those garbage innings. Paxton’s elbow exploded after 25 pitches. Sheffield took a huge step back, got hurt, and is now sitting in AAA. Dunn still is nursing shoulder problems. Their pitching slash as a whole is 4.32/4.23/4.45, and that’s with the back end of the bullpen dragging them up. For all intents and purposes, they’re not a contender. When you look at their stats, their WAR total (25.6 fWAR), they’re mediocre and have no business being 0.5 GB of a playoff spot and 4.5 GB of the division. Yet here they are, in the thick of it. By the end of tonight, they could hold a playoff spot. By Sunday, they could break that drought. Baseball is weird like that sometimes, and the Mariners are playing very weird baseball.
Keep in mind that a good portion of that is luck given their poor run differential.
Correct. By RD they’re actually mediocre. By most metrics they’re not a legitimate contender yet, in fact. It’s not even close. They’re incredibly lucky and that good luck is coming at the right time for them. Having a shutdown bullpen always helps. That said, they are in a great position to improve going forward. A strong pipeline of prospects, plenty of open payroll space to bid on high end free agents of this year’s class, and their front office has made some savvy trades over the years. They’re at that point where anything can happen, and it’s exciting.
HOW ABOUT THEM GIANTS!
Ben,
Could we see more analytics behind your predictions? Say, a chart breaking down the different prediction categories, by year, etc? Has your prediction percentage trended up over time, or down? What would be your equivalent of, say, xFIP? Are you “out-predicting” what people would expect you to predict?