See, I Told You So

Here in Charleston, SC, we attend to hurricane forecasts as if our lives depend on them -- because they do. About every three years a big gust rattles our cages and about every 50 years a Biblical-style storm levels everything in its path along the coast, much like Albert Pujols' contract.

So when the National Hurricane Center in Boulder, CO pronounces an active hurricane season upcoming, non-perishables fly out of supermarkets and plywood sales spike. What folks in these parts don't seem to notice is how utterly, thoroughly, completely and consistently their forecasts are wildly off the mark. Even mid-season, when the Hurricane Center updates its prediction, it nonetheless manages to swing and miss like Adam Dunn facing R.A. Dickey. People here would be well-advised to act upon the opposite of the forecast.

So much for experts. The same could be said about the people who cover, follow and even sometimes work in baseball: they're so often misinformed that any third-rate blogger from a minor league city can feast on the carcass of their predictions. As Father Time rolls out the tarp on 2013 it's a good time to look back and see how often a little Braindrizzling out-guessed the experts.

Let's start with last December, when the Mariners signed Jason Bay and Philadelphia inked Michael Young to contracts. We offered a big raspberry to both teams for aging without grace. Here's the Bay post, which suggested his signing was redundant on a team that already couldn't hit. Sure enough, in a platoon designed to hide his deficiencies, Bay batted .204.

Young hit much better, as was expected, but he was still 36. His third base defense was so putrid he graded out below replacement. The post suggested the creaky Phils would finish fourth in the East. They obliged.

The same month, Braindrizzling exploited its last opportunity to pile on Jeff Francoeur, scratching the metaphorical head about the Royals' continued employment of potential that never was. Francoeur posted a .238 on base percentage en route to employment in another field.

A week before Christmas, a bewildering trade between Tampa and Kansas City sent #2 starter James Shields and swingman Wade Davis to the Royals for a grab bag of Minor Leaguers including phenom Wil Myers.  We called it the "Gift of the Magi" trade because the developing team sacrificed the future for a present that didn't exist while the contenders relinquished a current asset for a future star right when the division seemed theirs for the taking. That's not quite how it worked out.

Shields was his usual brilliant self (13-9, 3.15 and leading the league in innings pitched) and helped KC come closer than ever to contention. (Davis, not so much.) Still, KC finished third in the division, six games out of the Wild Card. And now Shields gets expensive in '14 in his last season before free agency.

The trade did work out for the Rays though. Myers was all that and a box of Oreos, earning Rookie of the Year honors with his .293/.354/.478 body of work. His mid-season promotion coincided with Tampa Bay's lurch into the Wild Card. Myers helped solidify a lower-middle tier offense while he pitching starts were divided nearly equally among six quality hurlers even without Big Game James. The lesson: if Rays GM Andrew Friedman does something mystifying, assume he's up to something.

Seattle GM Jack Zdurencik gets no such benefits of the doubt. He signed 41-year-old Raul Ibanez to complement Jason Bay in an inconceivable outfield platoon and lit up this blog post, which called the combination a punch line. Ibanez defied the hourglass for awhile, hitting .267 with 24 home runs in the first half while butchering left field. With Seattle hopelessly out of contention, Zdurencik failed to cash in his new asset for some farm help and watched Ibanez turn into a pumpkin (.203, five homers) in the second half.

On New Year's Eve, Braindrizzling picked a fight with the venerable Bill James, godfather of Sabermetrics. Bill had it coming for projecting Josh Hamilton would play 147 games and hit .289/.356/.540 with 35 home runs. We called that "exceedingly generous" which was an exceedingly generous description. Hamilton managed to stay upright for 151 games, but that wasn't necessarily good news as he slumped to .250/.307/.432 and 21 homers.

Outfoxing Bill James is just dumb luck; outsmarting the Royals, Mariners and Phillies, well, that's like shooting fish in a barrel. We'll examine the success rate of in-season prognostications in a subsequent post.