before we get to the clement numbers, a bit of news; the cards hired gary larocque as special ass't to the GM. larocque spent the last decade in the mets' organization, running the draft and farm system for most of that tenure. he got busted down a rank in september 2005 season amid a big front-office shakeup caused by the owners' dissatisfaction over the farm system's performance --- odd timing, in that homegrown products jose reyes, david wright, and aaron heilman all stepped forward as big-league contributors that year. there's a bit of discussion about his role with the mets over at Metsblog; check the comments thread.

other items:

• the cubs' ZIPS projections are up; in szymborski's view the cubs "aren't an elite organization, but I think they're still the best in the Central and don't have any gaping holes. . . . When I look at the roster, I feel like there are only a few players that Ed Wade would sign for the Astros, which is a Very Good Thing."
• idle speculation: according to the sf chronicle, the giants' negotiations with pedro feliz have run aground, which might cause them to "intensify trade talks for Scott Rolen, Joe Crede or any other third baseman who might be available."
• el alberto has an award named after him.
• dave cameron of USS Mariner breaks down the proposed adam jones for erik bedard trade and concludes: bad move for the mariners. jones is seattle's version of colby rasmus, so mentally substitute his name into the article in place of jones' and you have a cogent case for why the cards ought not to consider a trade of that type.

i can't find a ZIPS forecast for this player; i've got an e-mail in to dan szymborski and will add that to the table when he responds. the PECOTA forecast comes from last year's set of projections (the new ones aren't out yet) and i believe is indexed to fenway park; take it with a grain of salt. i include it only because clement hasn't pitched at all since that projection appeared; the numbers might not change all that much when PECOTA is updated for 2008. one final PECOTA caveat --- that projection assumes 11 relief appearances in addition to the 14 starts.

the comparison shows our projection to be wildly optimistic re the quantity of clement's pitching, if not the quality. i went back and compared our projection to my year-old review of rotator-cuff returnees; that, too, shows that we're counting on a lot from clement. very few pitchers returning from this surgery have ever posted a line like the one we're projecting for clement. it's not unprecedented, but it's uncommon.

however accurate our projection turns out to be, it as at the very least an internally consistent one. i plugged our numbers in to tangotiger's generic FIP formula; for those not familiar with the concept, FIP yields an estimate of a pitcher's era based on nothing more than homers, walks, strikeouts, and innings pitched. clement's FIP, based on our projected component numbers, is . . . . 4.48, identical to our projected era. right on the button. ah, the wisdom of crowds.

finally, the quintessential projector for matt clement was one of VEB's oldest posters, glennrwordman: