Community Projections: The Boppers

Figured today was as good a time as any to get started with these.

What we'll do is pick five numbers for each player, not necessarily the same numbers, either. Like, Chris Burke's stolen bases might be significant, Berkman's won't be. Or for today, I'm not worried about Carlos Lee's OBP, if his RBI's or his slugging with runners on is high.

Although I know the participants will be doing so for the sheer cutthroat thrill of being able to say they were right, I would like to go ahead with the contest. The simplest way to determine a winner would be to count the persons who come closest in the most player-categories, ties to be broken first by categories guessed exactly, and then I guess by categories guessed closest without going over. Like the Price is Right, huh?

The only thing I have of value is of course baseball cards, so those'll be the prizes, but I think they're pretty cool, nonetheless. First prize will be this gorgeous 2004 Leaf Certified Materials Mirror Emerald of Berkman. This one is numbered three of only five that exist in the world. I might guess that one of these would go for something between 30 and 50 bucks if sold on eBay.

To the second place finisher would go the mirror gold version of the same card, numbered 24 of 25, with a piece of a game-used uniform inserted into the card and visible through his die cut uniform number 17.

The gold card, should you be so frivolous as to sell it, might fetch 10 or fifteen bucks at that online marketplace we know so well.

And what the hell, since I'm in such a giving mood, to the guy or gal who finishes third goes a Roy Oz '03 Mirror Red, numbered 89 of only 100.

The Roy Oz card might get three bucks, but we know its sentimental value will be so much more.

So anyway, those are the prizes. I think they will have some value even to those who aren't card geeks like myself, and I hope we get a nice response to our contest.

Yes, yes, our contest.

We'll start with as I say uptop, the big boppers, the Big Puma, and El Kabong. Please go ahead and pick reasonable-sounding numbers for each of our 2007 offensive loadbearers:

For Lance Berkman, pick--
Batting Average?
Walks?
Slugging Percentage?
Total Bases?
Home Runs?

For Carlos Lee, please let us know your best guesses at--
Batting Average?
RBIs?
Slugging Percentage With Men On?
Runs Scored?
Home Runs?

I mean, feel free to guess at other stuff, too, but these are the five categories we'll look at for the contest.

To give you a jump, I've unearthed last year's stats, as well as career averages.

I'll leave each duo to be projected up for a few days before we move to the next pair, and what say we make a deadline of Spring Training's first pitch?