I was wrong...

I read and the Social Distortion song comes into my head.

I was wrong.

That is the one thing that I was arguing from the start; that the winner of the West would have more than 90 wins. Simply put, the West was never as bad as people kept insisting from the beginning of the season. Even in July, people were saying that the Wild Card was 99% likely to come from the East because their fancy pre-season predictions didn’t allow a west team to actually be competitive.

Of course, I thought the Rangers had no chance at that, so I’m still an idiot.

(2) I was on board with dealing Holland and Perez but not two of Holland, Smoak, Feliz.

(3) I thought it was a year early to bring up Elvis, and the defense would only be marginally improved by the move.

(4) I thought Chris Davis would hit 40 HR.

(5) I thought Michael Main would surpass Feliz as the top pitching prospect.

(6) I thought Michael Young’s best year already occurred.

(7) I thought Nelson Cruz would be an All Star. Oh wait.

I farted but I really crapped my pants

(1) I predicted the Rangers to win 81 to 84 games *

(2) I predicted Elvis would start the year at OKC and that Omar would start for the big club

(3) I agreed with many of the projections that said Hamilton and Kinsler would regress **

(4) I claimed Nelson Cruz would be plagued by injuries

(5) I thought the Rangers would deal one of the catchers at the deadline

1. I thought Face was going to be meh
2. I thought Millwood would win 16 games (he’s kinda pitched like that)
3. I thought 86 wins would win the West.
4. I thought the Angels offense wouldn’t be productive.

1) I thought the team would win around 79-80.
2) I thought the defense would be only marginally better.
3) I thought Andrus would have lots more rookie errors.
4) I thought 86 would win the west.
5) I thought MY had peaked at age 28

(1) Scott Feldman doesn’t have a strike out pitch.

Feldman in August: 8.27 K/9

WTF?

- the biggest being I thought Padilla would lead the staff in wins, innings, ERA+ and have his best year since he was selected an NL AllStar. Oh boy.
- expected Young to do pretty well, but not at the level he has produced (but not surprised about the power uptick)
- expected Kinsler and Hamilton to both be more consistent, with Kinsler getting on base more and Hammy producing more power.
- expected Brandon Boggs to step up and partially shelve Murphy and Byrd (part of expecting Byrd to K a lot and generally suck at the plate)

There are probably more assumptions that went off track, but those above push my ability to guess right down to around breakeven for 2009.

1. I thought they’d win 87 but not enough to win the West.
2. The starters have outperformed my expectations.
3. I thought Davis would mash (drafted him in FMLB).
4. When Davis went down I got Blalock on my team. Thought he would mash.
5. I had no idea Elvis would hit this well.
6. I figured between Salty and Tea we’d be set at C.
7. Hammy has underperformed.
8. I never thought we’d see Derek starting and Perez up this early (figured last month or so).

…than we can be assured there will be no appearance by JW.

…I thought he would continue to regress in OBP and would hit a pretty punchless .300. His power boost has been a pleasant surprise.

I also didn’t expect the team to be in contention quite this late in the season. I was firmly on the “improve in ’09 contend in ’10” bandwagon.

These two things have combined to make me think something I never would have believed in March: I’m devastated by MY getting hurt on Sept. 1.

that this was the year that BMac would stay healthy all season long.

1. I expected a Hamilton regression. Not sure why, but I did. However I didn’t expect this.

2. I thought Mike Young was in decline.

3. I’m not sure I thought about how many homers Chris Davis would hit, but I never would have dreamed his season would have gone this awry.

4. I didn’t expect Andrus to be this good.

5. I thought Millwood was done.

6. I thought Feldman would be good, but not THIS fucking good.

7. I thought the defense would be better, but again, not THIS fucking good.

8. I did not like the lineup going into the year never would have figured them for being this bad. Or mediocre. Whatever they are.

9. Assumed Kinsler would be the star of this team.

10. Thought both catchers would hit and that Teagarden would especially surprise.

11. Assumed Mike Young would be a better defensive 3B.

Everybody knows better defense will save runs, but nobody thought the Rangers could pull of something like they have. Nobody could have thought that. Pitchers get credit, too, of course…it’s been a remarkable turn around.

1- I predicted 81-81 for the season. Looks like we should be better than that.

2- Same.

3- Yeah, Feliz was the only one of the big four I was willing to give up as well. WRONG.

4- I was still skeptical about Beavan, but I didn’t think he’d lose the ability to miss bats entirely.

5- Don’t remember what my preseason predictions where for CD, but I wasn’t expecting him to look useless for the first half.

6- Hank used to be one of my favorite players. Didn’t take long for him to fall from grace.

7- I kind of expected Teagarden to suck, but I didn’t expect Salty to turn into a Jason Botts redux with a gimp arm.

8- I was fairly sure MY would continue his downturn this year and we’d be stuck without any production for his horrid contract. The contract is still horrible, but at least we’re getting some bang for our considerable amount of buck.

9- I expected the defense to have a big impact, but I didn’t expect it to be this huge. I expected us to be kind of mediocre in our run prevention (instead of horrible like last year), and that would help our potent offensive attack win more games. Nooope.

10- I thought Feldman was just a back end scrub who we’d use and throw away when better options came along. He’s still overrated by most of his fans, but he’s turned into a nice mid-rotation piece.

1) 82 wins
2) 86 would win the west
3) Expected Davis at 1b, not Broussard
4) Thought our pitching could win the west this year b/c of Padilla
5) Would never have guessed the pitching we have after using 10 starters
6) Hammy and Kins ughh

I facetiously forecasted Julio Borbon’s future as “assistant peep show janitor.” While part of it was a bit for me, I really didn’t see this coming.

I thought Cruz was going to be a little disappointing, maybe an 780-800 OPS.

The funny thing is, the last 2 years I’ve been calling for a MY resurgence, this year I said no mas.