A Look At My 2010 Predictions

When I started at Halo Hangout last off-season, my “dream” was to do a full projection on every player that would have a significant impact on our team during the 2010 season. As you can tell by checking the 2010 Projections Page, I didn’t quite make it. I was able to get seven of them done, however, and now that the 2010 season is in the books it seems like a good time to take a look back and see how I did. First up, the hitters:

Kendry Morales

The story of Morales’ 2010 season is well known, and there’s no reason for me to rehash that pain now. Because of the injury, though, any projection someone that isn’t Miss Cleo made is going to be way off. Mine was no different, at least when it comes to

the counting stats. While I called for Morales to have a 28 HR, .295/.347/.535/.369 AVG/OBP/SLG/wOBA, 4.0 UZR season, this was of course based on him playing a full season. Shockingly, outside of his SLG (which I vastly overestimated), I ended up pretty damn close in both AVG and SLG, as Morales put up a .290/.346/.487/.357 line for the season, along with a 3.8 UZR in a ridiculously small sample. I’m not going to claim this as a great victory, given the useless sample size, but when I started looking into how I did with my predictions, I didn’t guess that I’d be within 5 points on AVG, only off by 1 on OBP, and only 12 off on wOBA. I certainly didn’t expect the 0.2 difference in UZR, either. It’s a small and generally useless sample size, but I’m happy with how close I ended up, anyway. I’ll take it as an encouraging sign that the rest of this isn’t going to be embarrassing to me.

Brandon Wood

Okay, so some of it will still be embarrassing. In what is probably a rare instance of letting my optimism overwhelm my more level-headed evaluations, I predicted Wood would have a fairly decent year, posting a .240/.300/.440 line with 15 HRs. Instead, over 243 PA Brandon posted a .146/.174/.208 line with a sad 4 HR, and even finished with one fewer RBI (14) than the number of HRs I thought he’d hit. We all know Wood sucked this season, it’s no secret, but it’s still shocking to see that number in black and white. A .174 OBP? That is terrible. We may’ve saved money in not resigning Figgins, and he obviously had a down year himself, but… damn.

Torii Hunter

For whatever reason, I went kind of light on my prediction of Hunter, skipping over HRs and wOBA and pretty much everything else outside of his slash line, which I thought would finish at .280/.345/.470 for the year. I actually expected that I’d be further off on this, since I thought Hunter would sort of come back down to earth after his crazy 2009. Instead, he finished with a .281/.354/.464, which only put me three points off in total OPS. I guess I surprise even myself sometimes.

Hideki Matsui

Unlike with Hunter, I went a little more in-depth with the Angels’ DH, predicting 120-130 games played, with 20 games in LF, 20 HR, and a .269/.355/.445 line.  I was a little off on his games played, as he ended up with 145 total, but only 18 in LF, which I’d say is one in the win column for me. He also only hit one more HR than I predicted, with 21, and posted a .274/.361/.459 line. So, all told, I was off by 15 games total, but only two played in LF, off by only 1 HR, and off by 5 points in AVG, 6 in OBP, and 14 in SLG. I’m kind of proud of that one, I have to admit. Jered Weaver Who saw this season coming from Weaver? After amassing a 3.73 ERA and averaging 168 IP and 136 K’s over his first four seasons, Weaver went from a solid #2 to one of the top pitchers in the AL, finishing first in K’s, and 5th in both FIP and WAR. I’d love to say I predicted all of this, along with his 13 wins and 224.1 IP, but I’d be lying. Instead, I expected 30+ starts from Weaver along with a 3.85 ERA, 11-14 wins, and 165-175 K’s. Hey, they can’t all be winners, right?

Scott Kazmir

Who saw this season coming from Kazmir? People with nightmares, that’s who. I’ve already written about the downward spiral that Kazmir’s career has become, and 2010 did nothing to slow that descent into uselessness. With that said, even I underestimated the levels of ineffectiveness that Kazmir would reach in 2010, predicting he’d basically repeat his 2009 season with 155 IP, a 4.50 ERA and 4.30 FIP, and 115 K’s. Instead, much to the dismay of Angels fans everywhere (and the delight of Rays fans, no doubt), Kazmir put up a 5.94 ERA and a 5.83 FIP while only striking out 93 people. At least I was close with my innings prediction, as Kazmir was able to struggle through 150 IP. It’ll be quite interesting to see what CHONE predicts Kazmir will do in 2011. Could it possibly be worse than what we’ve already seen?

Joe Saunders

Last but not least is our old pal Joe. My player preview for Saunders started a bit of a back-and-forth between myself and some readers on Saunders, with them rating him far more kindly than I did. I made little secret of the fact that I wasn’t a huge fan of Saunders, mostly based on the fact that he seemed to me to be vastly overrated by people that overvalued pitcher wins without considering even some basic peripheral stats, much less the more advanced ones like FIP. With this in mind, I predicted what would no doubt be a disappointing season for the Saunders supporters,

with 155 IP, a 4.50 ERA and 4.30 FIP, and 115 K’s. In the end, Saunders is probably the pitcher I came closest on. He outpaced my IP prediction, throwing 203.1 IP between the Angels and Diamondbacks, and also didn’t live up to my FIP prediction, finishing  with a 4.57 mark. On ERA and K’s, however, I was almost right on the button. His 4.47 ERA was only 3 points off, and his 114 K’s only a single punchout away. I obviously won’t be making a prediction for Saunders for the 2011 season, since it’s enough work to do people still on the Angels, and watching Dan Haren take the mound for us every fifth day is going to be much more fun in the long run, but I’ll still be keeping an eye on Joe, just to see if he has the ability to prove me wrong and show that I shouldn’t have doubted his win total so easily. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.

(Nate Proctor is the lead writer for Halo Hangout.  You can stay up to date on all of Nate’s work by following him on Twitter, Facebook, or by way of the Halo Hangout RSS feed.)