Trayd Rayis? Not exactly.

I don’t mean to disparage Mauer as he has been the best player in the majors since his return and has quite possibly deserved two MVP awards in the last three seasons. However, his HR explosion this year is very clearly a mirage. His 26.5% HR/FB is way out of line w/the 10.5% figure he sports over his entire career. We can’t posit that this power has been developed recently since he’s posted HR/FB figures of 6.5% and 7.2% in his last two seasons.

HitTracker supports a healthy skepticism of his power as well. (Here.) Nine of his 13 HR have been to the opposite field, all of which traveled less than 400 feet. Eight of his shots have come at the Homerdome, two each at Yankee Stadium and Comiskey, and one at Wrigley Field.

So I’m not sure exactly where I was planning to go with this other than to say, yes, Joe Mauer is great, but it’s not reasonable to expect more than 15 HR/year from him. And that means that after 2009, a season in which he may hit 25 or even 30, he’s going to be overvalued.

And he had less perceived injury risk. I mean, its crazy just because there’s so much talent moving around, and that doesn’t happen often. But if it went down, I can’t see how I could object, and it really would benefit each organization in the exact way they’d be trying to help themselves.

The Red Sox would get the premium position star they so desperately crave. And from their perspective, with outfield and pitching depth to spare and a tentative desire to keep Jason Bay around, two years of Jose Reyes looks more appealing than one of Joe Mauer.

The Twins leverage one year of their superstar for many years of talent in the future. They get a bat to put behind the plate, a true power arm, a rotation filler arm, and another more long-term project.

The Mets leverage Jose Reyes’s team friendly contract for lots of much needed young MLB ready depth and a market rate contract for Joe Mauer. Essentially, the Mets have spent $10 million to substantially enhance their roster at SP, 1B, and OF while swapping strength at SS for strength at C.

Wow, I’m kind of stunned by BA’s take on Guerra. I always felt like he was viewed as lots of projectability and a kinda balky shoulder. I was honestly surprised the Twins didn’t get a bit more, I thought Gomez was a pretty solid haul at the time, but the deal was light.

As for Guerra, I remember the glowing scouting reports, but they all seemed to have disclaimers too. His velocity was inconsistent and he’d had shoulder issues, but his size and plus changeup screamed projectable. Mejia’s about six months younger, but still spent his entire age 18 season in the FSL as well, and though he’s smaller, his velocity was much more consistent already and he didn’t have the injury issues. And Mejia’s also one of the greatest examples of a “helium” prospect I can think of off the top of my head. He wasn’t Top 100 going into the season, and now Sickels is talking about him potentially being Top 20 by the end of the year. Guerra probably had similar potential, but the risk was clear with him, as it would have been with Mejia five months ago.

As for the other prospects, Humber was coming off an age 24 season in Triple A where he posted a 4.80 FIP and 5.12 tRA. His peripherals were decent but his results were poor despite a .276 BABIP and 8.79 HR/FB. Reports were that his fastball lacked life and that his formerly dominant breaking ball was looking a little lazy, especially deep into the season, which is reflected in FIP’s over 5.00 in each of June, July, and August.

Mulvey wasn’t ranked, and he was a better prospect than Humber. Humber wasn’t a terrible prospect as far as fourth players in a package go, but his upside was back end starter and downside was organizational filler by this point, and the recent signs weren’t positive. In fact, Gee is very similar to both of these guys. They all spent their age 23 seasons in Triple-A and put up similarly decent strikeout and walk rates to go along with middling GB/FB ratios, and they were all pitchability-first guys, and not power upside arms (at least not anymore, in Humber’s case).

But you may be right about the Twins plans, this isn’t quite like 2008 when the Twins had a number of players to consider locking up like Morneau and Nathan as well. At the same time, Mauer would be the best free agent option in the 2011 class by a whole lot. Have the Twins ever handed out a nine figure deal? It’d be tough for a team that’s trying to keep payroll between $50-$75 million to commit >$15 million per year to one player over so many years.

What I’m saying is, if Mauer decides to test the market, the Twins will have a tough time being players. There’s a huge gap between him and the rest of the market in that class. I have no idea what Mauer’s intentions are, and I’d be curious if he’d ever expressed any.

Still, my point is that this is a viable strategy for the Mets, try to leverage Reyes’s two year bargain into MLB ready and near MLB ready depth, and then leverage some of the lower system depth into and extra spending money into more polished talent, maybe even a replacement superstar if you can snag an expensive or soon-to-be FA away from a small market team.

Its kind of silly that Guerra was ranked higher than some of these guys. Joey Votto? Really? The dude was clearly about to break into the majors and was coming off excellent years in Double-A and Triple-A. This is a gross misappropriation of ARL. I love upside, but advancement is always more important. An advanced 20 year old is more impressive than an advanced 23 year old. But while a successful season in the FSL for a projectable 18 year old is impressive, it doesn’t create a better trade commodity than a 22 or 23 year old with plus stuff and consistent mechanics coming off a good year in Triple-A.

Look at Flores and Marte, they’re both having hellish times in the SAL despite some early ARL magic. They’re still great prospects, but its hard for another team to go out of their way to put a big investment in a guy like that.