Baltimore Orioles: 2014 Predictions that were WRONG

May 3, 2014; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado (13) throws for an error on a play against the Minnesota Twins in the 5th inning at Target Field. The Twins win 6-1. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

Every year while writing about the Baltimore Orioles I do the incredibly foolish move of making predictive statements of hopeful projections for the season ahead. If you flip back to yesterday’s article on the Orioles, you can see that I hit more than a couple items correctly.

But today is my most humble and self-effacing day of the year – the day I confess to being an idiot.

How many baseball writers will confess to being an occasional idiot?

Understand, I could just let this go by without bringing up all the stuff I got wrong. Nobody would likely remember and dredge it up, at least not before I run for the governor of Maryland or something like that (which would be more idiotic!). So give me some credit for full disclosure here.

But then again, there’s not a lot of true personal pain in being wrong on this subject of the Baltimore Orioles. After all, who’s the bigger loser? Me, for saying a player is going to hit 45 home runs and bat .285? Or the player who hits 26 on a .196 average? One of those will be in almanacs and baseball stats until the end of the world, and it won’t be me.

By the way, that above example did not actually happen. But look through the next two pages of projections that did not quite turn out as I predicted before the season.

There will be one page about and overall prediction, a page on pitchers, and a final page on position players. When I write something in italics like this, that is the actual prediction from the middle of March.