If You’re Going to Be Wrong, It Should Be by Plenty
April 13, 2008 by Geoff Young
Filed under Odds and Ends
Matt DiFilippo at Seamheads.com re-examines some statements (h/t Baseball Think Factory) made by the writers of Baseball Prospectus over the years that ended up a little wide of the mark. Here are a few of my favorites:
On Hanley Ramirez, before his monster rookie campaign (.292/.353/.480 at age 22) with the Florida Marlins:
There’s no indication that he is ready for the major leagues, but the Marlins are apparently going to let him try.
On Jimmy Rollins, in 2004 (three years before he won the NL MVP):
In any event, his power and speed both appear to be dissipating, and without those he won’t hold a starting job for long.
On Chase Utley, before the 2005 season (in which he hit .291/.376/.540):
Utley is not going to be a star, but second base is a thin position and his extra-base power should provide the Phillies with a competitive advantage.
On the Chicago White Sox, before 2005:
Their opportunity has passed; the constant exodus of talent will relegate this team to second-tier status.
The folks at Prospectus almost nailed this one. They were a year early, and they forgot the part about winning a World Championship. Ah, the devil is in the details…
Fun stuff here. Be sure to read the entire article over at Seamheads.com.
given the statistical evidence at the time, i think most of those statements made perfect sense. Utley might be slightly pushing it considering his awsome #s in the higher minors. though it could be reasoned that he was getting old for the league and repeated those levels.
Rollins is sort of like a better version of Edgar Rentaria, where he’s # simply go up and down at random without much consistentcy but at the time he appeared on the downside.
we all know about Hanely at that time. didn’t exactly do well in AA, not awhole lot of evidence to support what happened next.
as for the White Sox, I think the predictiosn were accurate… but it’s hard to predict career years. and the White Sox just happened to get quiet a few guys at their career years that year. and then it’s hard to predict things like getting Bobby Jenks outta nowhere , and the unpredictable nature of anyone in the playoffs anyway, the fact that no one else in the AL central was that good that year helped too, the Royals were at the really low end of their bad decade. the Tigers were still in the mid rebuilding phase. the Indians were closer but they’re also in a rebuilding phase and the Twins simply had no offense that year.