Projection recap: Ray Durham

Here's the link to the community projection for RayRay.  As a group, we mostly  underestimated Mr. Durham.  To wit:

                                           AVG.      OBP      SLG       HR       AB

  Ray Durham 2008:     .289       .380       .432         6        370

McCoven prediction:    .266       .335       .407         12       412

AVG:  There wasn't a wide range of expectation;  Evan predicted .298, and ChrisHero predicted .214, but they were our clear outliers.  Our winner is NeifiChicken with .288.  Moggeee came in second with .292, and The Gene Hackman was third with .285.

OBP:  ChrisHero was the pessimist here with a .309; top optimist was moggeee with .372.  Given Ray actually posted a .380, moggeee is our clear winner.  tedfordfan was second closest at .366.  Tobias was third with .363.

SLG: Tobias (.465) and walrusman (.463) were the high guesses.  Lowest guesses were by Lyle(.367), Animal Mother (.368), and groug (.369).  The closest prediction was .425 by allfrank.  Second place ended in a tie between Evan (.444) and scotterduder (.420).  Just behind in fourth place was the optimistic NeifiChicken's .445.

HR:  Our group wisdom foresaw 11.85 HRs from Ray, not the 6 he actually hit.  This can be explained by whatever moggeee was smoking just prior to predicting a McCoven-high 30 homers for Durham.  Lowest guess was 4 by groug.  The winner with an exact prediction of 6 was scottsdale.  stutteringjohntamargo came in tied for second with 5, as did ChrisHero with 7.  Tied for fourth were groug(4) and Animal Mother(8).  Poe predicted 9, and six of us predicted 10.

AB:  We predicted 412 ABs, but Durham only managed 370.  Lowest guess was groug's 318 (seeing a trend here), and highest guess was moggeee's 546(see above).  Poe was our winner with a prediction of 365.  Scotterduder came in second with 400, and imovermyhead was next closest at 338.

The highlights were the comments about how Ray's season would go.  Grant thought no one would want Ray at the trading deadline.  Cynema the Band accurately foresaw that someone would want Ray as a pinch-hitter coming off the bench, but thought Sabean would either hang on to Ray for his "leadership" or trade him for "someone like Livan Hernandez and a PTBNL."  Kitspool jokingly suggested Ray would be traded for Jeff Kent at the deadline.  I thought he'd hit well enough in the first half to be an attractive trade target, but then get injured and end that possibility.  The Gene Hackman accurately predicted "a trade to a contender" and thought Ray would "contribute in a big way" to that contender's playoff run.  WilliamVanLandingham foresaw a brilliant first half, followed by a season-ending hamstring injury, leading Sabean to look at the first half numbers and sign Durham to a 3yr/7million contract.  Scotterduder figured there would eventually be a Durham injury, imagining a 3-way collision with Rowan and Frandsen as a result of too much hustle.

It's hard to choose an overall winner.  I'd lean toward Poe, but I'd like to hear others' opinions.