Last March, I wrote up a summary of my favorite targets for the upcoming fantasy baseball drafts. These were the players that were my type of guys and had opportunity to deliver big value. This was different than my deep sleeper fantasy predictions as this was a mix of bargains in early and later rounds.
Well, I put those names out there on the internets and some made me look good and others made me look bad. For the sake of being a responsible blogger, let’s revisit these wacky fantasy baseball predictions. We’ll look at the pitchers that I predicted would be successful later but, first, let’s dive into the batters that I was high on in the preseason.
- Julio Borbon (Epic Fail): This is what I predicted for him: .290, 5 HR, 45 SB, 90 R, 40 RBI. Instead, he gave us this ugly stat line: .276, 3 HR, 15 SB, 60 R, 42 RBI. Without the loads of stolen bases, he was worthless. My bad!
- Chris Davis (Epic Fail): This is the last year I put any trust in him to live up his prospect status. He was just very, very bad.
- Elvis Andrus (Neither): He wasn’t a big success nor a big failure. He got over 30 stolen bases and nearly 90 runs at the shortstop position so that’s nice. But he didn’t give you much else.
- Nelson Cruz (Success): If only he could stay healthy for a full year! Give him 162 games and he’s a top 10 fantasy player.
- Carlos Gonzalez (Success): Top producing fantasy player in the league while being drafted in the 10th round of your draft? Um, yeah, that’s some nice value.
- Chris Iannetta (Epic Fail): Miguel Olivo beat him out for his job. That’s not a good thing.
- Garrett Jones (Neither): He was perfectly adequate.
- Dustin Pedroia (Injured): He was having a decent year before injuries derailed him. If you drafted him, you’re not happy but it’s hard to say if this is a success or failure without a full year of playing time.
- Placido Polanco (Success): It probably didn’t win you a fantasy baseball title but Polanco produced well enough to start on most fantasy teams if still eligible at 2B despite being drafted in the 20th round on average.
- Nick Swisher (Success): Nick Johnson’s injury opened up the gates for Swisher to go on a tear. Batting average used to be his Achilles’ Heel but not anymore. The average will likely fall next year as his BABIP was way too high to sustain.
- Nick Johnson (Injured): Got injured way early on so can’t say much about him. He was a 291st pick on average so I’m sure you didn’t lose sleep over his injury though.
- David Ortiz (Success): He’ll never be a .300 hitter again and that .238 average in 2009 scared everyone away. But the end wasn’t here yet for Big Papi as he put together a great power-hitting year again and he brought that average up to more respectable levels (after a horrible start to the season again).
- B.J. Upton (Neither): He may never reach the full potential that I dream of for him. If he could just return to hitting anywhere close to .300 again, he’d be a huge value with those 40+ SB’s and 15-20 HR’s. Not sure if that will ever happen though. Besides that batting average, he had a decent fantasy season.
- Carlos Beltran (Epic Fail): Thought he was a nice buy low candidate with the injury to start the year but he never seemed to get on track.
In summary, I had 5 big successes, 4 epic failures, 3 who played up to par, 2 seasons ruined by injury and a partridge in a pair tree. Overall, it’s up to you to say whether I failed or succeeded but I think it was a decent showing overall. Lessons were learned along the way and hopefully I’ll improve more next year with even more fantasy baseball research here.
