Test your prognostication skills in the 2005 Batter's Box Predictions Contest!
In 2004, Simon held off 78 other contestestants to win the 2004 Contest. In 2003, I somehow won. Will this be your lucky year?
The prize for winning this year's contest may or may not include one of the following:
- Buster Olney's two-volume set Productive Outs: Theory and Practice and Fun With Scattergrams.
- A copy of Quiet Dignity: The Ozzie Guillen Story.
- A genuinely terrifying 24x36 picture of Jose Canseco, suitable for framing.
On to the Contest!

The following story will appear in the April 1 and April 15 editions of American Way magazine, the award-winning inflight magazine of American Airlines. It is republished here in full with permission of the author.
Each year, I always enjoy seeing the Jays' upcoming schedule: look at all that baseball waiting to be played! The following are some random ramblings on the subject.
I tried to post this on a really cold day here in the Greater Toronto Area, just to rub it in. Enjoy!
Please be sure to include Tom and his family in your thoughts and prayers over the coming weeks. Batter's Box wishes him a successful surgery and speedy recovery, and if you'd like to add your good wishes for Tom please do so in this thread.
I've always thought that predicting an individual player's performance was next to impossible: there are just too many factors to consider, one of which is just plain luck. But, just for fun, I thought I'd make two predictions for each Blue Jay hitter and starting pitcher likely to make the team in 2005. The first prediction will be wildly optimistic, the second wildly pessimistic.
There's a lot of sound and fury in sabrmetric circles today, and it's the doing of Bill James. He wrote an article for SABR's Baseball Research Journal titled "Underestimating the Fog," and he's gotten a lot of folks pretty riled up in the process. We don't have access to the essay itself, so here's a link to an article that discusses it.
Well, forget it.