Thursday, December 26, 2013

2013: The Year in Irony

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I can't seem to predict things correctly.

Really. I'm wrong a lot. I'm the blogosphere's worst oracle, and gleefully so. A lot of these things I get wrong are easy to guess from hindsight, and more like 50/50, with me taking the wrong side.

Still, like last year, I think I owe it to you guys to depict everything I was wrong about in 2013. We'll start riiiiight in the offseason, in late 2012, and we'll see how ridiculous this gets.

November 2nd, 2012: The first post of the offseason, even, on Torii Hunter's potential trade to the Yankees. "He is indeed a fun player, but he might be too old to perform for us." Hunter had a comeback season in Detroit. Yet I imagine he would have never came back big had he gone to the Bronx.

November 7th 2012: "So there. I want 2013 to be an absolutely immaculate year for steroids. Nobody will get caught. I can already see myself being incredibly wrong." EXACTLY TWENTY DAYS LATER! SERIOUSLY!

November 13th 2012, and this is probably my most embarrassing one, on how the firesale deal helped the Blue Jays: "Ensures that Boston will end up in last (I really hope I don't end up calling this irony next year)" Yes. I said that. I predicted that the Blue Jays would push the Red Sox to last, and then I predicted I'd be wrong about it. Man, I'm outdoing myself.

November 16th 2012: This is off topic, but read this. This was the one, strongly opinionated thing that I was 100% right about this year, and it's almost like I knew it was coming.

November 28th 2012: "Today, the Reds signed someone to do Aroldis Chapman's old job. So either he's getting a promotion or he's getting cut." Okay, I was really off, because I banked on the fact that Jonathan Broxton could still close games. He couldn't. He barely even did anything for Cincinnati. Secondly, Chapman wasn't promoted or cut. He's better as a closer, because if he started he'd lose his fastball even more. Chapman, like the Hulk, is better in smaller increments, as I'd explain in a later post.

January 6th, 2013: My first crack at predicting NFL matchups. 0-4. All of these were wrong. I predicted a Packers-Seahawks NFC Championship, and a Texans-Broncos AFC Championship. Boy was I off.

February 28th 2013: "I think Chris Young is the outfielder that Oakland needs right now." Well, seeing as how they didn't really need him at all during the postseason, not really.

March 2nd, 2013: On Eric Hosmer: "I think he's gonna do well in 2013. I don't know if his Royals will, but I think he'll have a decent enough year." Surprisingly, it was the opposite. Royals were great, Hosmer was not.

March 3rd 2013: "Pablo Sandoval is just too much of a fun player to have a down season." Well, it wasn't fun seeing him get hurt this year.

March 4th 2013: Four screw-ups in five days. Takes skill. "Though my Yankees are a series of question marks, I feel like the Phillies are going to do slightly better this year." While the Yankees finished in third, like the Phils, the Yanks had a better record, and had a much better chance than the Phils of making the playoffs.

March 7th 2013: "Choo is an aging outfielder, and his best years have most likely past, unless something spectacular happens this year." This year was a definite comeback season for Shin-Soo Choo, so I retract that.

March 18th 2013: On Prince Fielder: "I don't know about him appearing in another World Series, but you never know."  I was right, here, but I was very, very close to being wrong.

March 29rd 2013: "Still, Wieters will likely have a strong season, make it to another All Star Game, and maybe, just maybe, lead his team to the playoffs again." No, no, annnnnd no.

April 1st 2013: On Bryce Harper's double homer debut to 2013: "remember folks that this is only the beginning. He hits two today. Imagine how many he'll hit over the course of 161 more games." 18.

April 17th 2013: On the Dodgers: "It's sad, because a lot of these people deserve better than third place." You know, I was right. They didn't. Which is why they settled for 2nd in the NL.

April 22nd 2013: I make a joke in this post that since I'd already been talking about perennial themes, I would tomorrow have a post that would be wrong by the end of the year. Well, the post was actually kinda accurate, so that counts as a wrong item. However, at the end of this post, I call the Rockies the best team in baseball.

May 8th 2013: "Can Soriano do anything at all to reestablish his ability to hit consistently? Well, it doesn't look like it, however if he's traded to a team that isn't the Chicago Cubs, maybe he can hit slightly better." Wow, I was actually right about this. How about that?

May 23rd 2013: On the D-Backs: "And if they keep it up, this team will be very, very big come September." Hahahaha. No. Really, no.

June 16th 2013: Not too long after I posted this about Evan Gattis, he gets injured and benched for the better part of the season. Wow. I'm that good.

June 19th 2013: I start a sentence on consistency by saying "It's why nobody is too surprised that Dan Uggla's hitting well". This season was Uggla's most inconsistent in terms of overall offense. I just doomed people this year.

June 25th 2013: On the Twins: "They don't have a big time prospect, because they're been giving most of those away." Their big two were just climbing up the farm system right after I posted this.

July 2nd 2013: Whole post about Cuddyer's streak. That night he breaks it. My fault.

July 23rd 2013: On Soriano: "I don't think he'll perform as well as he did for the us back in the early 2000's. I don't know if this is gonna work for us. I just don't." He ended up playing beautifully for us in the last half of the season.

September 1st 2013: I never resolved the predictions for September, so here goes:
1. Great baseball stories, like the rise of the Pirates and Dodgers, to reach fulfillment, and not keel over and die come postseason. Sadly, these two teams fell in the postseason, however the Red Sox became an even bigger baseball story.
2. Somebody to stick a fork in the Rangers', Red Sox' and Cardinals' seasons. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
3. Mariano Rivera to finish out the regular season strong, and if his final season ends there, I hope it goes out with a bang. It did indeed, with a gigantic, emotional bang. Mo will surely be missed.
4. The Phillies to at least not finish in last. Done. Thanks, Marlins and Mets.
5. A setup to a playoffs that won't have me shaking my head and turning on the Eagles game. The Eagles games in September made me want to watch baseball.

September 3rd, 2013: "Still, I hope the Bucs at least exceed expectations heeded by the last couple seasons of not making the playoffs." How about blowing everyone's expectations for half the season, and pissing off their underrated QB, and replacing him with an okay rookie? How's that?
 
September 8th, 2013: With these football predictions, I could write a book, so I'll just pick the most embarrassing prediction from each week. I picked the Vikings to win over Detroit. I even said "This will be the season where Ponder breaks out, I think. If not...then I'm just wrong again, I guess." I was wrong again.

September 15th, 2013: My worst prediction this week was picking the Eagles over the Chargers, flying too high on last week's win. Yeah, that didn't go too well.

September 22nd, 2013: I picked the Vikings to win over the Browns. Hell, I even said "We're talking about one of the stronger offenses in the NFL, a young, yet playoff-experienced quarterback, and a nice defense, going up against the Cleveland Browns. Yeah. I really hope this isn't massive irony." You can say I saw this coming!

October 6th, 2013: I picked the Texans to win over the 49ers, saying " Still, the Texans are the tougher team, and they'll probably win it." Tough they were...last season.

October 13th, 2013: Man, I kept overshooting the Vikings. I said they're beat the Panthers, saying they were a much better team. Jeez, I'm not even a Vikings fan.

October 20th, 2013: I said the Eagles would take down the Cowboys. My ending quote was this: "The game will end with a shot of Jerry Jones weeping on the Jumbotron, yet still trying to sell his tears as the greatest tears in the world." Nothing close to that.

October 22nd, 2013: I spent an entire post going over how I pompously predicted the Broncos to defeat the Colts, when it was the opposite. Also one of my funniest of the year.

October 27th, 2013: My sole oversight here was predicting the Eagles would win over the Giants. This was before the Legend of Nick Foles reared its head in Philly.

November 3rd, 2013: I said the Raiders would take down my Eagles, "Because sometimes you can just see the disappointment coming a mile away." I saw wrong. I was terrible at this. Predict they win when they lose, predict they lose when they win. I feel like Terry Bradshaw.


There are probably a couple more lurking somewhere, but I'm ending it here, for fear of the post running way longer than it should.

So yeah. I was wrong too damn many times in 2013. I'll probably be wrong even more in 2014, though I could be wrong.

1 comment:

  1. I disagree on Hosmer, he was actually pretty great. Despite a very slow start and only having one home run until mid-June, he finished with 17 homers and a .302 BA. He also claimed his first Gold Glove. His improvement from April to September was incredible! His 3.6 WAR was good for 3rd on the team.

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