Delmon Young

Delmon Young has been a pretty hot topic in some trade rumors the last couple of days. Some of it stemming from this, this, and some more of this. As a 21 year old rookie in 2007 Young hit .288/.316/.408 with an OPS+ of 91 and played in 162 games. He was then traded to the Twins with Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie for Jason Bartlett, Matt Garza, and Eduardo Morlan. Last year Young hit .290/.336/.405 with an OPS+ of 102, a slight improvement. The Twins have outfield depth (Young, Carlos Gomez, Mike Cuddyer, Denard Span, Jason Pridie) and that seems to be the major reason for these rumors. I don't know if this is a result of other teams checking in to get Delmon Young on the cheap or what, but when Twins manager Ron Gardenhire says he doesn't prefer to have Young in his outfield something's gotta give.

Delmon was drafted 1st overall in 2003, and was a consensus top prospect, and even after a promising rookie year he was traded to the Twins, who had to give up a lot to get him. I don't think it'll require that much value to get him in a trade, and with the tools that he has he could be a steal for some teams. Obviously he hasn't lived up to his potential (only being a league average hitting last year) but he'll still only be 23 next year with 2 full seasons under his belt. For what it's worth he increased his BB% last year from 3.9% in 2007 to 5.7% and cut his K% albeit still too high from 19.7% in 2008 to 18.3%. It's not a good sign he hasn't developed any power, but a higher walk rate and decreased strike out rate are good signs. It takes a while to hit in the major leagues, not everyone does it right away and if they do they are older than Delmon, Ryan Braun was 23 in his rookie year the age Delmon will be this year.

You'd have to be stupid to think Delmon has lost his tools that made him a top draft pick, or a top prospect only a few years ago. He has definitely been worse than expected but if the Twins don't want him starting wouldn't a prospect or two be worth it to try him out? The Yankees could lose Matsui Damon and Nady after next year, and wouldn't really need to rely on Delmon to hit. He could play all the outfield positions and with Kevin Long's tutelage you could be looking at a bargain replacement for those guys in 2010.