Today we project the first basemen. The ground rules are the same-- slash lines and playing time-- and here's the format for the projections:

.avg/.obp/.slg (PA)  Fielder
.avg/.obp/.slg (PA)  Backup

.300/.350/.400 (75)  Starter last name
.270/.330/.400 (25)  Backup last name

The player capsules will be the same for all of the players. The player's name links to his CHONE projection page. The first slash line is his career stats, second is 2008 performance or MLE, and the 5-row table is the player's 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, and 70th percentile CHONE projections.

Use as many players as you need, and make sure the amount of plate appearances totals 100 percent. Again, we don't need percentage signs, just the whole number is fine.

We encourage everyone to participate, once again. If you haven't helped in our catcher projections yet, please go there and do so. The catcher projections story also contains the background for this whole project. If you personally dislike projecting catchers and want to help us with first basemen, jump on in here.

A few notes: Fielder received about 98% of the first basemen plate appearances last year, 694/707. Brad Nelson's CHONE projections are included, you can also project Mike Rivera for any playing time here; if you do this, just give the percentage of plate appearances he'll receive if you've already projected him in the catcher thread. Keep in mind that Nelson is out of minor league options.

Some trends our projectors might find relevant: Fielder's HR/FB ratio went down from 23% in 2007 to 18% in 2008. His overall amount of flyballs hit also went down. His line drives stayed quite constant, with an increase in ground balls taking away from the amount of fly balls.

Finally, I played around with some HTML scripting to format these horizontal rules and tables. If anything looks funny or strange, let me know in the comments so I can fix it. Firefox seems to align the tables to the left like I want them to be, and Explorer puts them in the center, though it still looks fine.

In tomorrow's post, I'll wrap up the catcher projections and open the second basemen projections. We'll allow two days for each one, so you can take your time if you want to think it through. Thanks for your participation.

Prince Fielder

Career: .278/.370/.533
2008: .276/.372/.507

Brad Nelson

Career (minors): .269/.347/.439
2008 (AAA MLE): .249/.345/.398