Wow, winter is starting to wind down and spring training is in full swing. It's the time of year when baseball is close enough for people to start making predictions but not close enough for them to lose their optimism. All over the league, fans are starting to put together what they think will happen this year, whether you believe Eric Milton will give up less than 40 HRs this year or if you think that Adrian Beltre and Jim Thome will hit 40 HRs again, this is the time for you. The realities of the season haven't set in and your player predictions can be as optimistic as you want them to be. In the same vein, we here at YanksBlog.com are going to be trying something new for the upcoming season: community player projections.

I first saw the idea in use over at John Sickels' fantastic Minor League Baseball site. With Mr. Sickels' blessing, we're going to see how it can work here because who knows the Yankees team better than Yankees fans, right?

For each player presented, we'll give you his three year stat profile and an outlook. Most of the people who read this site regularly know the rest of the story. Based on that, we'll be asking everyone to post your reasoned estimates/optimistic projections/wild guesses of his batting line for 2006. We'll be posting a different player (including pitchers) every day and then we can review, both during and after the season to see how we, collectively, are doing. The basic premise is that the more predictions we get, the more realistic the community projection will be. Here are the players covered so far:

C: Jorge Posada
1B: Jason Giambi
2B: Robinson Cano
SS: Derek Jeter
3B: Alex Rodriguez
LF: Hideki Matsui
CF: Johnny Damon
RF: Gary Sheffield
DH: Andy Phillips & Bernie Williams

SP: Randy Johnson
SP: Mike Mussina
SP: Chien-Ming Wang
SP: Shawn Chacon
SP: Carl Pavano
SP: Jaret Wright

SP/RP: Aaron Small

RP: Kyle Farnsworth
RP: Octavio Dotel
RP: Tanyon Sturtze
RP: Ron Villone
RP: Mike Myers

CL: Mariano Rivera