This is one of the most important columns I write every year: A look into projections I got wrong. It's important for several reasons:
1. I take my job as a player evaluator seriously. This is not life or death, but it is my job and I strive to do the best I can. It is commonplace in the world of punditry for accountability to sometimes miss, but I have always tried to hold myself accountable. Nobody is a harsher critic of my work than myself -- and you can check my mentions on Twitter to verify that I have some harsh critics.
2. It shows I am willing to learn, and am not married to a set of guidelines. Through the years I have been accused of having different biases, that I'm in favor of small players, Europeans in general, Russians in particular, speedsters, flashy players, problem children, anybody that isn't a goaltender and so on. I've heard many people describe to me how I think. Truth be told, I don't take a player's background into account; my job is to find the best prospects, period. My process has evolved, and part of that process is examining players I project too high or too low.
3. Lastly and most importantly, it describes to the reader why I got a call wrong and why it's important. I'm off slightly all the time -- it's the product of making hundreds of projections each year. But again, examining why a projection is wrong is more illuminating than the simple fact that it was wrong.
Without any further preamble, here are some players who I rated either too high or too low in recent seasons: