SBG Looks For a Young Craig Monroe

After Gleeman claimed that the Twins should have gone for the inexpensive, young version of Craig Monroe rather than the expensive, old, real version, SBG decided to go In Search of Craig Monroe, Int'l League Edition.

It's a pretty good read, and an interesting way to look for prospects to target. You take a guy who's getting close to over the hill but who had some good years, then you look at his stats before he got to the majors, and try to find prospects with similar stats. It's reasonable to think that anyone with stats as good or better than Monroe's AAA stats would end up at least as good as Monroe in the majors, considering the fact that Monroe didn't really live up to his potential (and some people actually do).

As a 24 year old in AAA: .280/.353/.512
As a 25 year old in AAA: .321/.382/.511

Yeah, those are pretty good. So who's that good in AAA right now? Ubelmann narrows it down pretty quickly to Shelley Duncan, Ryan Raburn, Jason Pridie, Justin Ruggiano, Ben Francisco, Brandon Moss, and Adam Lind.

Duncan is on the Yankees, who seem to be wising up to the value of building from within. Raburn is with the Tigers and Francisco is with the Indians, which rules a deal for both of them out. Moss is with the Red Sox, who probably won't want to deal him, especially with the aging Manny and the crappy Drew manning the corners.

Ubelmann assumes the Blue Jays won't be quick to deal Adam Lind, given his age and his career line of .316/.377/.505 ... and that makes sense, except that MLBTradeRumors is reporting that the Jays may be planning to deal Lind because of financial commitments to Thomas, Overbay, and Stairs. It would be unwise to do that because of short-term commitments to old players on the way out (Lind will be 24 next year), but the Blue Jays GM (JP Ricciardi) has been known to do things that don't seem to make sense to me.

The conclusion is that Ruggiano (with the Devil Rays) is the most likely target, since he's outside the division and is blocked by about 5 guys who are young and talented ... but I think Lind would be on the table and would be a better acquisition for us. Especially since the Jays just dealt 2 AA pitchers to Oakland for Marco Scutaro, they might be pretty open to giving us Lind for 1-2 of our lower level guys. The Twins can definitely afford to deal guys comparable to what the Jays gave up.

Scutaro cost the Jays Kristian Bell and Graham Godfrey, both 23 year old starters. In 2007, Bell had a 5.33 ERA for Class A+ Dunedin, and Godfrey had a 3.98 ERA with Class A Lansing. It's a bit tough to find guys in our organization who match up with them exactly, because we have a lot of good pitchers (almost all of them are better than this).

At Class A Beloit, Adam Hawes (24) had a 4.37 ERA and Brian Kirwan (20) had a 5.30 ERA. Those are the only two starters at Beloit with an ERA over 4.00 this year. Matthew Fox (24) had an ERA of 3.50, which might interest the Jays a bit more.

At Class A+ Fort Myers, we had no starters with an ERA over 5.00 in 2007. Zachary Ward (23) had an ERA of 4.08 and Errol Simonitsch (24) had an ERA of 4.17, which made them the bottom two performers among the starters on their team, in addition to being among the oldest. The fact that they would both be significant upgrades over what the Jays gave up means it's possible they'd be considered.

Basically every pitcher in our organization is better than what the Jays paid for Scutaro, so if they make a deal with us they're improving the state of their pitchers. However, given that Lind has legitimate value, they may want someone better. Either a A+/AA guy with potential, or a AAA guy who's close to the majors.

In that respect, I think guys like Anthony Swarzak, Ryan Mullins, Brian Duensing, Oswaldo Sosa, Dave Gassner, or Nick Blackburn are more in line with what the Jays would want for Lind. I'd rank their value as such:

  1. Swarzak
  2. Duensing
  3. Mullins
  4. Sosa
  5. Blackburn
  6. Gassner
Basically, if they give us Lind for either Blackburn or Gassner and one of the lower level dregs type guys, I think we have to pull the trigger on the deal. If they demand Swarzak or Duensing ... well, they need to give us another guy in addition to Lind. I doubt the Twins will give up Swarzak for anything short of a knock-our-socks-off-and-make-us-feel-warm-and-fuzzy kind of deal. Kind of like how Swarzak felt immediately before getting suspended for abusing drugs.

Ubelmann's doing some excellent work over there, and I can only hope Bill Smith and his guys in the organization are doing the same kind of work searching for hitters to stock our system. I'm thinking I'd like to see Lind enter our organization ... even if it costs a real pitching prospect.

Posted by Sean Schulte at 2007-11-19 15:48:37

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