A Headscratcher

Not to sound like Mel Kiper Junior, Draft Expert, or anything like that, but this trade kind of makes me realize why the Tampa Bay Rays (minus the Devil) have a high pick every year.

They just swapped Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and minor leaguer Jason Pridie for Minnesota's Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and minor leaguer Eduardo Morlan.

Young, who just turned 22, was considered a major Rookie of the Year contender entering 2007 and had a solid, albeit unspectacular year for Tampa, going .288/13/93 with 10 steals and 38 doubles. Garza, another promising youngster who just turned 24, went 5-7 with a 3.69 ERA from July on. Of his 16 starts, just 6 were quality starts, mostly because he didn't often pitch 6 innings.

Not that I'm a Rays' fan or anything like that, but it seems to me they got taken. Young was the first overall pick of the '03 draft and I don't think there's any question his ceiling is significantly higher than Garza's, not to mention he's 2 years younger. I know Tampa wants to straighten out its pitching staff and Garza will be a nice compliment to Scott Kazmir, but they gave up too much here.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Young be a younger, more potent, less-inclined-to-be-a-regular-on-web-gems version of Torii Hunter, and soon. As for Garza, who knows what his ceiling will be? Is he a perennial 17 game winner? I think the odds of that are a lot lower than the odds of Young making Minnesota fans forget about Hunter in 2008.