Delmon Young ... Cuddyer for Vasquez?

How about the month Delmon Young is having so far? He has more HRs so far this month than he had the entire previous 4 months. Sure it's only 4 HR, but there are almost two more weeks left this month. Young has said that this is the best he has seen the ball since he was in AA. That is a good thing for the Twins as Young hit .336 with 20 HRs in 84 games when he was in AA. We all have known that Young has the talent and it's all dependent on how comfortable he can get and right now he looks better than ever since he joined the Twins. With that said, I would be all for trading Cuddyer this offseason for a quality arm. Sure Cuddyer has been solid this year, but if Young gets 500+ at bats, he should hit around .300 with around 20 HRs. Granted his OBP will be lower than Cuddyer's, but I'll take the higher average with risp that Young offers (.323 avg with 2 outs and runners in scoring position) compared to Cuddyer's (.145 avg with 2 outs and runners in scoring position). If Cuddyer is traded, it would allow Young to move back to his natural RF position and allow Span to play LF with Gomez in CF and Kubel being the 4th OF and obviously the DH. For those of you who have not played LF and RF (we're talking baseball and not softball here), there is a big difference. The ball tails different and comes off the bat different in RF compared to LF.

Now last year, there was a lot of people who wanted to see Cuddyer traded, but he really did not have a lot of value. With the year Cuddyer is having, he would draw significant trade interest. He is putting up similar numbers to Alex Rios and signed for significantly less. Also, Cuddyer has just one more year on his contract, so a team that has some talent coming through the minors, but wants a very solid player to be a stop gap could use Cuddyer - see Atlanta Braves. The Braves have been linked to having interest in Cuddyer in the past and the Braves have some pieces the Twins would want. Yunel Escobar would fit in nicely here, but I think the Twins would need to give up more than Cuddyer to get him. I think the player that would fit perfect in a deal for Cuddyer would be Javier Vasquez. Vasquez, like Cuddyer, has one more year on his current deal and the Braves deep with pitching similar to the way the Twins were deep in pitching when they traded away Matt Garza. The Braves have an option to keep Tim Hudson next year who could fill in for Vasquez's spot or they could go with minor leaguers Kris Medlin (5-0 1.19 ERA at AAA) or Charlie Morton (7-2 2.26 ERA at AAA).

Vasquez would give the Twins a reliable starting pitcher to go with Baker, Slowey, and Blackburn. I would like to see the Twins sign a free agent pitcher to give them more options as well, but it looks unlikely they would attempt to sign someone like John Lackey, Jason Marquis, or even Randy Wolf. It would be nice to see the Twins having these options available as long relievers or guys to fill in for injury situations: Perkins/Swarzak/Duensing. You could add Liriano to that group if they keep him for next year, but like I posted in a previous post, I think the Twins should aggressively shop Liriano for JJ Hardy.