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Again, don't let the stats blind or bias you. Everyone who is serious about projecting players knows it's an inexact science. In their best years, the various systems struggle to project even 1/5 of the players to within 10 percent accuracy. A very nice summary of various systems and their pitfalls was written by Dan Schlewitz in Ken Ross' book, A Mathematician at the Ballpark.

I do respect the hard work these professionals put into their projections. Their willingness to be so precise in their forecasts provides us all with a great starting point for preseason conversations and analysis.

So, many thanks to those we cite below. The father of the sabermetric movement, Bill James, is represented as published in The Bill James Handbook. We use the PECOTA system of Nate Silver as published in the Baseball Prospectus annual; that system was partially inspired by James' "player similarity scores" but is more rigidly modeled. And Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections come courtesy of BaseballThinkFactory.com, which consistently lives up to its name. ZiPS looks at similar skills more than players in calculating projections.

Some rules: OPS is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. At-bats and counting stats like homers, RBIs and steals will be cited when I think they're most useful. We start at the top of the projected lineup and work our way down.

Johnny Damon, OF/DH: James: .769; PECOTA: .772; ZiPS: .752. James projects a normal season's worth of plate appearances. Damon's shaky health last season isn't reflected in his 2007 stat line. If he misses the mark, it's more likely going to be a result of performance issues than injury. The power is not likely to return at age 34. Two of the past three years, he's been well below average in converting fly balls into homers (7.8 percent last year). And his ground ball rate spiked last year, too. He's not losing his legs, as James' Handbook says his running generated 39 extra bases. That's in the top 10 in baseball and far better than Derek Jeter (plus-14) and superior even to Alex Rodriguez (plus-31).

Derek Jeter, SS: James: .828 (15 homers, 17 steals); PECOTA: .772 (8, 13); ZiPS: .821 (13, 15). Why does PECOTA hate Jeter so? BP says he turned into a singles hitter in the second half who grounded into too many double plays and, as James demonstrated, lost his baserunning edge. He's such an extreme ground ball hitter (third-highest rate in baseball) that he has little chance to smack even 20 bombs. The 21 double plays aren't surprising at all in that context. And even when he hits a fly ball, a below-average percentage cleared the wall. Given the declining speed, batting average projections should be closer to .300. The decline in walk rate probably just means pitchers aren't afraid to throw him strikes. PECOTA looks right to me.

Bobby Abreu, RF: James: .862; PECOTA: .813; ZiPS: .837. PECOTA really takes a huge bite out of Abreu's counting stats: 15 homers and 69 RBIs in 581 plate appearances. Unless manager Joe Girardi bats him seventh or eighth, that RBI total is impossible. Oddly, though, the Yanks lack another three-hole candidate, unless Robinson Cano garners consideration later in the season. Sure, A-Rod can bat third. But then who hits cleanup? Abreu rallied in the second half and while I should take credit for predicting the rebound during his darkest 2007 moments, he's clearly in decline. He has lost his power with homers on 9.2 percent of fly balls (average is around 10 percent). The line-drive rate went from well above to just about average. The walk rate crashed because who is going to be afraid to throw strikes to Abreu given the guy on deck?

Alex Rodriguez, 3B: James: .992; PECOTA: .951; ZiPS: .993. He might be the greatest player ever. Just for fun: James says there's an 81 percent chance he gets 3,000 hits and a 41 percent likelihood he hits 800 homers (17 percent for 900). Not bad for a guy who probably should still be playing shortstop.

Jorge Posada, C: James: .854; PECOTA: .859; ZiPS: .827. I'll take the under on Posada even with all forecasting systems predicting a return to sanity when it comes to turning balls in play into hits. He hit .400 on balls in play the first half and .380 the second half. The average is .300. His line-drive percentage spiked mildly, but doesn't explain that surge (he hit about .300 on balls in play the prior four seasons). At 36, he's very old for a catcher and the power is showing signs of serious decline (homers on 22 percent of fly balls in 2003; 13 percent last year).

Hideki Matsui, OF/DH: James: .887; PECOTA: .832; ZiPS: .844. PECOTA gives him 18 homers, ZiPS 20, James 25. Last year, he stopped being Groundzilla in the second half, boosting his fly-ball rate by over 20 percent and also increasing his rate of turning them into homers from 11 to 13 percent, about the historic norm for him. Looking deeper, though, he smacked 13 homers in one month: July. In June, August and September combined: 18 extra-base hits. Sell, sell, sell!

Cano, 2B: James: .872; PECOTA: .795; ZiPS: .837. Was the second-half power for real? No. He's still an extreme ground ball hitter. So, as it always was with Jeter for the same reason, the prospect of future power is a mirage. The second-half fly-ball rate was the same as in the first half. But he went from hitting homers on 4 percent of fly balls to 18 percent. Maybe Pettitte and Clemens gave him Brian McNamee's cell number. Cano did narrow the gap between strikeouts and walks in the second half. But it all screams fluke to me. Bet on PECOTA. Note he's less than zero on the bases: James has him at minus-10 bags in '07.

Jason Giambi, 1B: James: .894 (391 at-bats); PECOTA: .816 (254 at bats); ZiPS: .880 (340 at bats). He converted just 21 percent of balls in play into hits the second half. But a lot of that is explained by a line-drive rate that 50 percent below average. Again, I'd lean PECOTA here because I don't believe the mild second-half power spike but am concerned about his inability to make contact after his '07 return from the foot injury -- he struck out in 30 percent of his at-bats.

Melky Cabrera, CF: James: .749; PECOTA: .746; ZiPS: .771. I'd go with the over on all of these. PECOTA says Carlos Beltran and Pete Rose are his comps and then projects just about zero growth. Remember, in the second half, he had a .742 OPS and that's not insignificant with such a young player. I expect him to settle in as an .800 OPS hitter for years.