5,966 people submitted entries in MLBTR’s annual free agent prediction contest! The contest leaderboard is now available.
The goal of the contest has always been to see who can do the best at predicting where MLB free agents sign – a very difficult endeavor. However, in the past I have always allowed for freebies – if a player signs during the week or so that the contest is open, you were able to change your pick to the correct team, and it would count as correct. Typically this has only been for a couple of players.
Though some people like the freebie simply to reward diligence, that’s not why I’ve done it that way in the past. Instead, I’ve left signed players in the contest because we didn’t have the technical resources to alter the leaderboard midstream. Now, we have that person, and removing the six signed (or in the case of Clayton Kershaw, close to a deal for three weeks) players from the contest was easy. Six would have been an abnormally high number of freebies, as well, so it served as a tipping point for me.
Additionally, some contest participants do not receive the confirmation email from Google Forms that allows them to modify their picks, so those people were missing out on freebies for a technical reason I was not able to solve.
I changed my mind on freebies because I think it’s better this way, and always doing something a certain way isn’t a good reason to continue. While this change is going to lower batting averages for all participants (including participating MLBTR staff!), nine prognosticators still maintain a perfect batting average after the signings of Mike Clevinger and Jose Abreu.
I’m #1 please fix thanks.
I can see the dilemma if some people weren’t getting the Google confirmation form to make changes.
Great work, and I agree with the logic behind the change!
Is there any way to get a composite list of the 50 free agents and the teams most often picked by guessers? Would be kind of cool to see how close we came as a combined group to being right.
Yes, I’ve done that in the past. I think I could do that again.
Much appreciated.
I’d love to see that as well, that’d be dope.
Let the “drums” role/banged…No, Freebies!!! loll
BIRNG BACK FREEBY IM CRYIGN
Have been crying over no freebies all day now. Last year my mom bought me a new PS4 for getting 8th and now with no freebies those odds of repeating are severely hampered. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to leave my basement again due to the stress this has put on me
Thank you for removing the freebies, I agree that it is significantly better to go simply of predictions. I may be biased as I was one of the ones who couldn’t edit mine this year but I do think that this change is much better, and should stick around.
Or, don’t make your picks changeable. Just say “once you hit submit, you’re done”. Problem solved
No, that’s a bad idea. It’s more fun to incorporate new info that comes out while the contest is open, and the contest needs to be open for about a week so most people see it and have time to enter.
I just think that adding prediction to what aren’t really prediction doesn’t make sense. I understand the fairness system in making sure you update it, but even then you could still beat someone who didn’t change their picks but did the actual predictions better.
Or that, I also think we could do that assuming we still remove any that are signed before the entry period ends.
THe only problem with that is that some of the picks like Martin Perez, Anthony Rizzo and Anderson were made at the initial vote and for sonme were not changed before those signings were announced and thus should be counted.
We don’t have the resources to look at specific pick timing within the week window to see if a person made it before or after the signing.
Can you confirm the contest is now based on the 44 players who were not “freebies” and 6 more players were not added after the fact? Thank you
Confirmed
I’m with Rangers on this. That’s my issue with the freebies being removed. I took two days to go finish my predictions, but once I set them, I kept them as is. They were freebies for those who changed them, but others rightfully guessed that they’d resign.
I get the reasoning that some didn’t get notifications. That stinks for them. I don’t even know if I got notified because I wasn’t paying attention. I’d already settled on my picks and had no plan to change them.
So while some people were likely picking rangers for kershaw or giants or somebody for rizzo in hopes of getting a leg up by being right if they chose to leave, others of us chose those as our safe bets for points, while looking at others as our ones to hopefully land us that extra point by making a dark horse pick.
I just think it’s overall going to leave some with less enjoyment of the contest. Some of us would’ve had a couple points, and still not be in the lead by way of getting Abreu and Clevinger wrong, but we’d of at least been able to say we got a few picks right.
I get that there isn’t a way to check when picks may have gotten changed. But it still feels a bit like some of us getting points taken that we should’ve got. Kershaw especially was a safe bet choice for us to the dodgers. Anyone picking the rangers was either a rangers fan choosing it if they wanted him to land there or someone just trying to gain an extra point if he did somehow end up there. But realistically it should’ve been a “freebie” for anyone selecting it way before he even signed. He’s shown so little sign of leaving the dodgers that they’d either have to be uninterested or lowball him hard for him to choose anywhere else, even his home state.
Life isn’t fair. And the more you want it to be. The more it’ll boot you in the nuts and laugh at you
This isn’t the hill you want to battle the fairness argument is it?
Right, but I guarantee more people changed them then had originally correct. This is the fairest way.
Nooo i liked my freebies. 0 for 2 looks so sad 🙁
(On a serious note, this is a good change since its fair for people who dont spend every hour checking to see if someone signed)
im all for the removal of the freebies, still a small advantage to the diligent who made edits to their picks. I broke my phone and couldnt edit on my backup (Nokia KaiOS)
the site works well on the Opera browser in KaiOS by the way, one of very few sites that do.
I vote that all the complainers here about the freebies are made to read everything ever posted on ESPN about athletes’ fashion notes and shoe selections.
‘Tis the season to be grateful, not to b*tch and moan about a friggin’ contest.
I’m grateful that MLBTR even has such a FUN contest. Keep it fun.
It really is a strange thing to complain about.
this is fun.
can i get a half point for putting clevinger in the right city? lol
How frequent the leaderboard is updated? I have two correct predictions but it’s not reflecting in the leaderboard. Still indicating “0”
That doesn’t make sense…you’re saying you got Clevinger and Abreu correct? The email associated with your username didn’t enter into the contest.
No. The predictions I made were Montero with the Astros and Perez with the Rangers. But that probably was the problem. I did not log into the app account. Went directly to the google form. Oh well lesson learned.
Those players aren’t part of the contest anymore, because they signed while the contest was open.
826 out of 5996 with one or more right, Bill Murray of Scrooged fame is 1 for 2, Robbie Ray, starter for the Seattle Mariners also 1 for 2
Some of the “names” on the leaderboard are just too good to be true haha I see that Mr. Vandertulip is batting .1000 as well.
dont know any Vandertulips – there is a tulip field in Gilroy, CA at the east end of the Hecker Pass, perhaps that’s his spread?
I don’t have a dog in the fight this year. So, it doesn’t really matter to me. And, I understand why the rules changed. But, when you enter a contest with a certain set of rules. Those rules should absolutely not be changed after the fact. It’s Bush league. For the first time in the years that I’ve been a daily reader of trade rumors posts. I’m disappointed in your decision to do this.
See my take above. Lighten up.
I am glad to see the readership pays off. If I calculate at straight 1/30 odds that should produce 6.62 people with two answers correct. 9 is much better. I would have done better on the first two but the A’s and Reds are waiting till December to spend all that money they have been saving.
Glad to see that Adam Ottavino is participating in the contest!
(Could someone with more time on their hands please go through the entire list and tell us which other MLB players are getting in the mix?)
I’ll be curious if more or less people enter next year.
Would have been nice to get an alert about this!!!!!!
Damn, I picked at least 3 of those freebies the day before they happened too. I had Anderson to the Angels and Peterson and Perez taking the qualifying offer. Oh well!
Why aren’t there any women on the MLBTR staff?