Can you believe it? Tomorrow is Opening Day. I’m pumped. Went out to Costco tonight and bought myself a 5-pound bag of peanuts. Bring it on, fellas.

I’ve mentioned Chris Reed’s work over at ProtospectWatch.com before, and now he’s at it again. He and Mark Jerkatis have developed a tool for projecting the future performance of current minor leaguers. This isn’t a straight translation like MLEs, but rather a look forward at how a prospect might do at his peak based on his current minor-league performance. Intriguing, no?

Chris has been kind enough to allow me to reprint his "Peak Projections" for some Padre prospects. For an explanation of the system and a more complete listing of projections, check out his site.

Meantime, take a look at these:

pitchers

                    W  L  ERA DIPS  IP   H HR  BB  SO
Bynum, Mike        12 12 5.03 5.05 216 240 34  90 141
Cyr, Eric          15  9 3.45 3.71 216 200 16  78 171
Fikac, Jeremy       5  3 2.99 3.93  72  58  7  24  54
Herndon, Junior    11 13 5.66 5.72 216 268 35  95  77
Howard, Ben        12 12 5.15 5.17 216 221 26 148 167
Lawrence, Brian    15  9 3.60 3.72 216 220 18  54 147
Middlebrook, Jason 13 11 4.63 5.17 216 222 35  81 127
Peavy, Jake        15  9 3.66 3.75 216 201 22  76 196
Perez, Oliver      12 12 4.91 5.09 216 224 35  99 160
Tankersley, Dennis 15  9 3.44 3.88 216 189 24  69 189

hitters

                 AVG  OBA  SLG  OPS  RC
Burroughs, Sean .339 .405 .504 .910 110
Nady, Xavier    .301 .365 .530 .895 107
Johnson, Ben    .263 .336 .452 .788  82
Crespo, Cesar   .252 .351 .416 .767  82
Donovan, Todd   .287 .352 .352 .705  67
Castro, Bernie  .267 .352 .331 .683  63
Faison, Vince   .231 .292 .352 .644  54

I don’t know anything about Chris’ methodology, but most of these "feel" more-or-less right to me. Among pitchers, the projection for Cyr seems a bit optimistic, while those for Howard and Perez seem low. But I understand, given the available data, why this is so. Cyr is coming off a monster season and Howard has had serious control problems throughout his career. Not sure why Perez’ numbers are so poor; perhaps lack of experience?

Among hitters, I really can’t take exception to anything here, although I suspect Burroughs’ slugging percentage will be higher than .504 at some point during his career. There’s nothing in the current numbers to suggest a power surge. That’s just a hunch on my part, based on what I’ve heard and seen of Burroughs. Still, the projection Chris gives is basically John Olerud, which I’ll take at third base any day of the week.

Fascinating stuff. It will be interesting to look back at this 10-15 years from now to see how close this was to reality. Thanks again to Chris for allowing me to post these here. I encourage you to take a look at his site; there’s lots of fun and useful stuff over there. It’s well worth the trip…