2007 Team Predictions - New York Yankees

Should exceed their projection
1. Jorge Posada - a lighter workload at catcher early in his career should help him age a bit more gracefully than the average catcher.

2. Derek Jeter - I'd give him a very slight adjustment upward in playing time to take care of effects that Huckaby-induced injury a few years back has on his projections going forward. Otherwise, I think he has enough of an established record to go on.

3. Hideki Matsui - That was pretty much a freak injury, and I he's proven that his disappointing first season here was just him adjusting to a new country.

4. Philip Hughes - All reports are that his stuff should translate from the minors.

5. Jason Giambi - Whether he's just healthy since that tumor, or he's on something, he seems to be over his problems.

Should hit their projection
1. Doug Mientkiewicz - he sucks. We know it, and the projections know it, too.

2. Robinson Cano - he might be the best second baseman in the league, but I can't think of any reasons to adjust his numbers either way.

3. Johnny Damon

4. Bobby Abreu

5. Chien-Ming Wang - another player I could see in all three categories. He's got the stuff to be put in the "exceeds projection" category, but his lack of strikeouts suggests that he might be due for a harder time, at least until he changes his approach. I think the most likely scenario involving Wang is that hitters change their approach against him and are initially much more successful against him, but that Wang eventually changes his approach to start putting batters away himself. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a down year this year, then an improvment in 2008.

6. Mike Mussina

7. Andy Pettitte - I don't think he'll get to 200 innings given his injury problems, but I doubt any projections will put him there anyway

8. Carl Pavano - who the hell knows with this one? I have absolutely no idea what kind of projection he'll generate.

9. Mariano Rivera - I think everyone knows what they're getting from Rivera at this point

10. Alex Rodriguez - The pressure of playing in New York is something that's hard to predict - will a good start to the year shut people up, or will his struggles from last year continue? I think the risk of that roughly balances the fact that he's an exceptional talent, and basically never gets injured, but I can see the case that he wouldn't hit his projection.

Won't hit their projection
None

Maybe I'm overcompensating for hating the Yankees, but I don't see a great candidate on the Yankees to produce worse that their projection (it's likely that some of these guys will, of course, but we don't really know in advance).