And Cash-haters, I'm the amateur.
MLBTR reports that the Twins are seeking bullpen help (which surprised me a little given that the Twinkies posted better than average ERA, BB/9, and K/9. With Nathan and Crane they have one of the best (if not the best) bridges in baseball, and someone's going to be lucky and mimic Craig Breslow's 47IP, 34H campaign, 19BB, 39K campaign. Plus Nathan is a fellow SUNY grad, so that's pretty cool, too. Either way you slice it, when the Twins go looking for help, they're looking to enhance a strength.
Bullpen depth is one of the areas that the Yanks enter 2009 poised to deal from. Bruney, Albaladejo, Veras, Edwar, Robertson, Giese, and Steven Jackson are all movable in my mind.
While I value 2 out of the 4 fastball-slider pitchers (Bruney, Jonny A., Veras, and Robertson). I'm open to moving whichever reliever other teams are most interested in.
Veras is the oldest of the group (28), while Bruney is closest to free agency (Cot's hasn't updated their service times to reflect the 2008 season, but I believe that since Bruney spent most of the year on the MLB DL that counts toward free agency, so his service time should be at 3 years and change).
Robertson is the most valuable because he's youngest and may not even have lost his rookie status yet (he pitched 30 innings and the cut off is 50, but I'm not sure about service time, and he debuted at the end of June). So he's the most valuable, but it's a fractional sort of value among the interchangeable young relievers.
And my trade target: 25 year-old Denard Span. He's the Twin's RF and back-up CF, though they still have Michael Cuddyer on the roster ($6.75M '09, $8.5M '10, $1M buyout on '11 option). Carlos Gomez (center-piece of the Santana deal) is going to be given a lot longer to prove he can't handle center before he's relegated to bench duty and LF is locked up into the future by Delmon Young.
Span's .294/.387/.432 line would fit very nicely in center in the Bronx. He's got the speed (18 SB in 93 games) if not the instincts on the basepaths (7 CS). And he's under team control for the foreseeable future. He'll beat out Melky and BG for the starter's role in Spring Training, and then the Yanks can use him in either center or right in 2010 once Matsui and Damon are off the books.
So could a deal of Veras and Robertson reel in Span? I'm conscious of having overvalued Yankees in the past, and my gut is telling me that the Twins would want at least another player from A-AA.
Veras and Coke? Veras-Robertson-Gardner? Robertson-Bruney-Pope?