John Sickels has posted his community projections for Khalil Greene. They peg him at .279/.352/.458. Sickels himself expects a slight decrease in power this year due to his home park and looks to 2006 for a breakout. My personal expectation is that Greene is going to shock some folks with numbers around .274/.345/.490. I’m perfectly well aware that this is above and beyond what most rational people are projecting, but I’m heavily influenced by four factors:

1. Greene has shown a good ability to make adjustments. He hit .293/.351/.540 after the All-Star break last year; in 2003 he hit .275/.327/.406 at Double-A Mobile, and .288/.346/.442 after promotion to Triple-A Portland.
2. Lots of doubles, improving plate discipline. This is always a good sign.
3. Natural strength. He did put a ball on top of the Western Metal Supply Co. building in left field last year. It landed foul, but that was as impressive a shot as I’ve seen at Petco. Greene isn’t a kid with marginal power; he’s a guy making the adjustment to big-league pitching and learning how to drive the ball at that level.
4. We still don’t have enough data points on Petco to know exactly how it will play going forward. If last year was even a little bit of a fluke in terms of being an extreme pitchers park, it’s not unreasonable to think he could hit 10-12 homers at home, as opposed to the three he hit as a rookie. If he does that, repeats his road performance, and stays healthy, 25+ home runs isn’t out of the question.

Okay, I realize that’s a lot of “if’s” but I don’t think this scenario is as far fetched as it might initially seem. Let me put it this way: If Greene significantly outperforms most projections for him, I won’t be among those surprised. On a more global note, this reminds me of one of the shortcomings of the current “stathead revolution”: In predicting the future, we tend to use previous outputs as inputs into systems that deliver more outputs. This makes sense because (a) we know that much can be learned about the future by looking at the past and (b) it’s difficult to quantify other factors that may deserve consideration. There’s not much to say about the first point, but with regard to the second, the fact that something isn’t easily quantifiable doesn’t justify its exclusion from an equation. Dismissing intangibles or whatever else doesn’t show up in the stat line makes no more sense to me than taking it on a scout’s faith that a kid’s 95+ mph fastball alone is going to make him a front-line starter in the big leagues. Numbers may not lie, but they can withhold the truth. Unfortunately I’m much better at asking questions than answering them, so I’m not sure how to resolve this dilemma.

On another note, if anyone else has projections for Greene, feel free to leave ‘em in the comments.