The horror, the horror

I think Wade Davis may just have made the very worst start for anyone all year. He managed to put up a WHIP of 10 and an ERA of 54. That's six walks, four hits, six runs in an inning plus. And that is with a reliever coming in and bailing him out with the bases loaded and no one out. Will Smith managed to get a sac fly and a double play, so it could have been worse! Assuming I hit the innings cap exactly, he added 0.008 to my final WHIP and 0.043 to my ERA. Amazing.

Does anyone else have a terrible start that they would like to share?

The bold predictions, halfway in.

Luke:

1)  Erick Aybar ends the season as the #2 shortstop on player rater, 2nd only to Reyes.  Aybar is currently #10, Reyes isn't anywhere near the top (injured, obviously). Even if you throw out the Reyes caveat, Aybar will need a strong second half to make this prediction come true. 

2)  Sal Perez hits .300 with 20 home runs and 90 RBIs.   Not the worst prediction here as Perez is hitting .303 (with a slightly high BABIP), but he's not on pace to reach those power numbers. He'd need 16 HRs in the 2nd half, and 60 RBI. Been a solid fantasy option, though. 

3)  R. A. Dickey wins 20 games.  Not completely out of the question, but 13 Ws in the 2nd half is exceedingly unlikely. No one in the AL has more than 11 in the first half. Dickey has turned it around lately but it won't be enough to get him 20 wins.  

4)  Ichiro Suzuki matches his career high and hits 15 home runs.  If Kate gets 10 HRs from Ichiro in the 2nd half I imagine she'll be ecstatic. Probably not gonna happen. Luke got Lance Berkman from Kate for him. Berkman has been terrible so far for Luke. 

5)  Mike Trout will beat his 2012 roto numbers in at least 2 out of 5 categories.  Hard to compare where Trout is now relative to last year, as he missed April of 2012. It shouldn't be hard at all for him to beat last year's numbers in RBI (51 so far, 87 last year). He's on track to fall well behind last year's numbers in Rs, HRs, and SBs, unless he manages to get substantially more PAs in the 2nd half than he has so far. His average and BABIP are down slightly from last year, but barring a run of HRs or SBs, this is probably the category where he has the best chance to make Luke's prediction come true. 

BONUS (fake) prediction: Aaron Hicks' roto line this year - .327 AVG, 130 runs, 31 home runs, 84 RBIs, 50 steals.  Everyone can now proceed to laugh at Luke.

Overall, looks like 0/5 so far, with a shot at 1/5 if Trout pulls it out.

Andrew: 

1) Jon Lester returns to form, and finishes in the top 5 for Cy Young voting. At first Lester made Andrew look really smart, but he's slid backwards a lot in his last 7-8 starts. He's maintained the 3.3 BB/9 that Andrew hoped for, but his K/9 has been stuck in the low 7s. If he gets turned around in the 2nd half there's an off-chance he slides into the top 5 in Cy Young voting but it would have to be quite a campaign.

2) Glen Perkins finishes in the top 3 RP, by player rater. This could actually happen. Perkins is currently the #3 true reliever by player rater (you can toss out Iwakuma, who is starting). Perkins is just a hair ahead of Mariano, so it could change easily, but I'm giving this to Andrew right now. 

3) Justin Smoak finishes the season as a top 10 option at 1B. Oh god, no. 

4) Alex Gordon hits 40+ HR+SB. Only 25% of the way there so far. Not gonna happen.

5) Jake Arrieta finishes the year as the highest rated Baltimore SP by Player Rater. If only Andrew had guessed Chris Tillman (and not dropped him). It wouldn't be hard to be the top Baltimore SP this year, but Arrieta doesn't register right now. Struggling in AAA. Not gonna get this one. 

Overall: On track for 1/5, but loses a point for the Justin Smoak prediction.

Bill

1. Ivan Nova makes good on his promising 2012 and is the #3 SP on the Yankees, just behind Kuroda. Has not been the case so far this year, and while he's been better, he doesn't have a spot in the rotation right at this moment and it seems unlikely that he's their #3 by the end of the year.

2. Mark Reynolds returns to form and hits 30 home runs. Absolutely possible as he's sitting at 14, but only hitting 5 in May and 1 so far in June is worrisome, and his overall numbers look a whole lot like last year's right now. He's about as streaky a hitter as they come, so the 2nd half could go in a lot of different directions. Right now it's a maybe. 

3. Edwin Encarnacion comes close to repeating his 2012 and outproduces either Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder to be a top two first baseman in the league. #2 on player rater, and well ahead of both Fielder and Pujols. Looking good.  

4. Carlos Santana is the clear cut, #1 catcher. No good so far, with him well behind Mauer and Napoli. It'll be hard to unseat Mauer in the 2nd half of the year. Santana has definitely been a solid fantasy catcher, though.

5. Bruce Rondon gets the Tigers closer job by May 1, if not soon, and gets 30 saves over the course of the season and strikes out 80 batters. Can't rule out him closing games for the Tigers by the end of the season, but no chance of him reaching those stats. 

Other slightly crazy predictions:
Alex Cobb...becomes the #2 starter on the Rays. Cobb made good on this for Bill in the first half, but the rest of Cobb's season is up in the air after being hit in the head with a line drive.
Brett Gardner or Coco Crisp outperform Michael Bourn. Bill should have used this one above, as he would be on target even if he wrote AND instead of OR. 

Overall: 1/5 so far, with a solid chance at 2/5 if Reynolds keeps hitting.

Caleb

1) Casey Janssen doesn't get more than 5 saves this season, while Frieri grabs 40 and is a top 3 closer this year. Hard to claim credit on this one. The crux of the prediction was that Frieri was going to have a better season than many people though. He has, but not quite as good as I'd predicted, and Janssen has been even better. 

2) JJ Hardy gets 600 ABs, hits 30 HR, and has a batting average greater than .270. This could actually fall my way, and all it would take would be for hardy to hold his current pace with a slight uptick in his batting average. He's hit .265 in 306 ABs, with 15 HR. He's been a fantastic, and inexpensive, fantasy shortstop and allowed me trade Elvis Andrus away for a nice return. 

3) Joe Mauer misses enough of the season with various ailments to cause him to be just shy of qualifying for the batting title...which he would have won handily with his .340 batting average. Mauer is hitting .332...with a BABIP well above his career average and league norms. He hasn't missed any time, but IS 3rd in the running for the batting title so far. I don't think I'm gonna get this one. 

4) Miguel Cabrera wins the batting title instead, and leads the league in HRs again. He misses out on the Triple Crown, as he finishes behind Prince Fielder in RBI. Projecting Fielder to beat Cabrera in RBI was foolish. Ignoring the 100 point difference in their batting averages, it's hard to compete for RBI with a guy who keeps clearing the bases in front of your at-bats. Not gonna happen. 

5) Jason Hammel, Jarrod Parker, and Tommy Milone are all in the top 10 in voting for the Cy Young award, but none of them have a particularly strong campaign for the award as Hammel only wins 10 games, Parker doesn't get a ton of Ks, and no one knows who Tommy Milone is. David Price wins it instead. This, in a nutshell, is why my team has been so terrible this year. A projection of David Price winning the Cy Young seemed perfectly reasonable, and even that is not possibly happening. None of these guys will be sniffing the Cy Young award this year. 

Overall: I'm gonna give myself Hardy for now, and say I'm 1/5. 

Anyone want to make any bold predictions for the 2nd half? Smoak for MVP?

Josh Hamilton's terrible, no good, very bad day

Josh Hamilton had just about as bad a game as a hitter can have last night, going 0-5 with two strikeouts and three GIDPs (with Mike Trout on base, no less). I was curious about just how bad it was, so I took a look at his WPA for the game. For those that don't know the stat, WPA stands for win probability added, and gives you a rough idea of the sum of a players contributions to the victory or loss. A team's expected winning percentage starts at 50%, and WPA looks at how each player's results change that. For example, if Jacoby Ellsbury hits a lead-off home run to start a game, and the Red Sox expected winning percentage goes from 50% to 65% (these numbers are totally made up), that plate appearance would be worth 0.15 WPA. It's a counting stat like runs or RBI, in that someone with more at bats or innings pitched will be able to accumulate more. It's also context dependent- a grand slam down three runs is worth a hell of a lot, while a grand slam up five runs is worth very little (as the team is already very likely to win the game).

Hamilton's performance was worth an amazing -0.477 WPA. That performance was so putrid it really got me thinking. First off, it's just amazing that a player can make eight outs in five at bats. Second, it got me wondering just how bad this performance was, in the grand scheme of things. Using Fangraphs custom leaderboard, I took a look at the players that had accumulated the most -WPA (that is, only the negative portion of WPA). I figured this would be a good proxy for players who have really bad games, but it's not ideal since WPA is a counting stat, so I'll end up with guys who have bad games and still have playing time. Unfortunately, I can't do a leader board for individual game WPA.

Here's what the "top" 10 looked like:
1 Melky Cabrera Blue Jays -6.23
2 Adam Dunn White Sox -6.20
3 Martin Prado Diamondbacks -6.13
4 Elvis Andrus Rangers -5.97
5 Josh Hamilton Angels -5.96
6 Alexei Ramirez White Sox -5.95
7 Mike Trout Angels -5.93
8 Alcides Escobar Royals -5.91
9 Jacoby Ellsbury Red Sox -5.82
10 Starlin Castro Cubs -5.80

Our man Josh Hamilton slides in at five, joined by fellow Angel and surprise pick Mike Trout at seven. Mike Trout's name is interesting here, but he does have an overall positive WPA. It's also important to note that WPA is not really predictive- it's a good way to look at what has happened, but that's about it.

Anyway, I took a look at the game logs for each player, and other than Hamilton, none of the top 10 managed to even break -0.4. Travis Hafner did have a terrible game that amounted to -0.53 WPA, but it was a game that ran 18 innings. I also took a look at Aaron Hicks, since he had such an awful start, but even he only managed a worst game of -0.3 WPA. Hamilton's game last night was really, really, really bad, but I suppose these things happen when you use up THIRTY PERCENT of your team's outs while managing to accomplish nothing at all.

Out of town

Hey all - I'll be gone for the next couple weeks on my honeymoon (Greece!) and won't be checking email/baseball. I've left Andrew with instructions on how to do weekly lineups, but obviously I won't be able to make any trades in the meantime. So for the only time I'll likely ever say this, don't bother making me any offers.

What if Major League Baseball had an auction draft?

Interesting article from Grantland... My one change would be that players would be required to go to the highest bidder. This should also be immediately implemented for the NFL, which would be fantastic.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9348666/the-mlb-draft-work-quite-possibly-immoral-replace-it

More Trades

I'm looking to sell low on R.A. Dickey.  I'd like to trade him for a mediocre hitter, or in a 2-1 for a hitting upgrade.  If you believe that Dickey can regain part or all of his 2012 form, you can get him from me for a song right now.  I'm satisfied with the rest of my staff right now, so for me Dickey is just depth.

Also, after trying and failing to get some value in return for Hafner, I'm now willing to trade him for any decent player currently on the DL.