This year's round of community projections will be limited to a few select players. This is because I don't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. You don't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. I checked last year's post, and no one from Aurilia's own family made a prediction, which indicates that Rich Aurilia's family doesn't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. So let's start with....

Barry Zito

Why not just dive into this one while the potential for hilarious predictions is at its highest? Here are Zito's spring stats thus far:

IP: 7.1
ER: 14
K: 0
BB: 6

...which lends itself pretty well to this projection:

IP: 200
ER: 400
K: 0
BB: 180

I can't put my finger on why, but I was optimistic about Zito heading into this season. Maybe his second-half turnaround last season didn't mean anything; maybe it meant a whole bunch. He started striking people out, after all. He didn't strike out hitters at the rate of a vintage Randy Johnson, but he at least struck out hitters at the rate of a present-day Randy Johnson with a catheter still attached after just getting out of back surgery. If that isn't worth $120M, I'm not sure what is. Last year's splits:

Pre-All-Star

IP: 104.2
ERA: 4.90
BB: 52
K: 66

Post-All-Star

IP: 92
ERA: 4.11
BB: 31
K: 65

That post-All-Star performance still includes a few starts of Wretched Zito. Apparently, his strikeout rate didn't jump as high as I remembered; the increased success was due to better control. After the horrific spring start, it might make sense to jump off the Zito bandwagon, do a barrel roll, and just keep running until the gunshots can't be heard anymore. Nuts to that, I say. Second-half Zito shows up for the whole season and pitches well enough to tempt teams into swallowing the rest of his contract. They won't, mind you, but they'll be a little tempted.

Barry Zito

IP: 208
ERA: 3.87
K: 121
BB: 73
HRA*: 15
SB*: 3

Baseball Prospectus projection (subscribers only).
ZiPS projection.
Last year's McCovey Chronicles community projection.

Comment starter: Your Zito projection

* HRA = Home Runs Allowed
* SB = Starlets Bedded

There's a "gamer" commercial aired every 10 minutes on KNBR. There's probably one on right now. If you live outside the Bay Area, you might not know what the "gamer" ad campaign is. It goes something like this:

That's the Giants' marketing campaign. A "gamer" bus followed me to work today. It had a picture of Omar Vizquel, and it read something like, "OMAR VIZQUEL: GAMER!" It frightened me.

Now, I understand that the marketing department had a tough task. The team ain't no good. It's tough to build excitement with "ain't no good." But this is the most irritating ad campaign in the history of history.

It does give us a perfect opportunity to create a lengthy list of "Gamer Facts", though. My brain still isn't working after the flu, so I'll just kick it off with one Gamer Fact:

A gamer bunts every chance he gets. Unless he's playing pepper. Because that's when he starts swinging for the fences.

What is a gamer, o denizens of McCovey Chronicles? I feel that the ads aren't telling us everything....

Surprise!

From Sports Illustrated (and pointed out by King Kaufman):

I wonder what it would take to validate the Bonds-hurts-his-team theory? If the Giants win just as many games as last year, does that mean the loss of production was made up for by increased chemistry?

I don't remember these commercials at all. I'm not sure if the tagline can still apply.

With Noah Lowry down, both Jonathan Sanchez and Kevin Correia should be in the rotation to start the season. Should someone else go down, we'll probably see Pat Misch.  My comment starter masquerading as a proper post: Who is the emergency starter after Misch? Call it the Travis Blackley Award, if you will. I'd guess that they'd stick with someone already on the 40-man roster, so Kelvin Pichardo is my guess.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to curl into a fetal position and sweat for a while.

Todd Linden and the Oakland A's play against the Scrappytown Gamers in a must-win contest.

The new Baseball Prospectus annual claims that the Giants treated Linden as if he were Justin Upton. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Today's post canceled on account of illness. I'm watching a USFL game on ESPN Classic and sucking my thumb. I think if I type any more, my skull will melt.