(Yeah, I know I rhymed go with go.)


As you probably know the Jays had a pretty big hole in the middle infield this past year. How bad was it? Here are the non-Aaron Hill numbers (also excludes Glaus at SS):

Player	AB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	WARP1
John McDonald	260	0.223	0.271	0.308	0.579	-0.2
Russ Adams	251	0.219	0.282	0.319	0.600	-0.2
Edgardo Alfonzo	37	0.162	0.279	0.189	0.468	-0.1
Ryan Roberts	13	0.077	0.143	0.308	0.451	-0.1
Luis Figueroa	9	0.111	0.111	0.222	0.333	-0.1
Total	570	0.212	0.269	0.304	0.573	-0.7

Not only were the Jays bad, they were below replacement level. So to have a middle infield position as a priority this offseason makes sense.

From today's Sun:

As for an infielder, Ricciardi said his club has interest in shortstop Julio Lugo, but Lugo is said to be looking for four years and $32 million.

If that's true, it would seem to be beyond what the Jays can and are willing to pay.

"We'll just have to see what the final figures are," Ricciardi said. "We know what we can afford and if the bidding gets too high, then we'll go to Plan B. But right now things are up in the air and I don't know where we're going to land. We'll just have to wait and see how things play out."

A couple of things I picked up here: Lugo appears to be the 'Plan A' in the middle infield for the Jays. They just aren't willing to get in a bidding war for him which is a reasonable stance to take. Also, the writer assumes that the Jays wouldn't be willing to pay that amount for Lugo. I'm not sure I agree with that. Eight million/year doesn't seem outlandish to me, especially if the Jays can take the payroll to $90 million.

In the event that the Red Sox sign Daisuke Matsuzaka they will have used up a lot of cash. They apparently have also already made an offer to JD Drew which I'd have to imagine is more than the $11 million/year he gave up. If that's the case I can't imagine that they'd have a lot left over for Lugo.

The Mets were the other main team expected to be interested in Lugo, but they re-signed Jose Valentin yesterday so I wouldn't expect them to have interest any more.

So there's a chance that the Jays might be the top suitor for Lugo.

But should they be? Here's a look at some of the middle infield options:

Player	Age	05 WARP1	06 WARP1	2 Yr ave
Lugo	31	8.4	3.4	5.9
Gonzalez	30	1.5	2.6	2.1
Durham	35	4.2	5.0	4.6
Loretta	35	3.2	2.3	2.8
Kennedy	31	4.2	4.5	4.4

Lugo was injured at the beginning of 2006 and after being traded to the Dodgers and filling a utility role he didn't play all that well. The 3.4 WARP1 he put up was in 72 games with the Devil Rays. The two year average of 5.9 WARP I think is a decent estimate of what to expect from Lugo, at least for next season. At the very least I would expect a 4 WARP1 from Lugo for the next few years.

Baseball Prospectus has estimated that one marginal win is worth about $2.14 million. And that study was from 2005 so it's certainly higher than that today. Lugo has the potential to be a 6 win player for the Jays, which would make $8 million/year look like a bargain.

The other benefit of signing Lugo, over someone like Durham or Kennedy, is that it allows Aaron Hill to stay at 2B which almost everyone feels is his stronger position (he did hit better as a SS, but I think that's just randomness).

Assuming the Jays have $22 million to work with this offseason they could spend $8 million on Lugo, $5 million on Zaun (probably a high estimate, but a possibility) and then still have $9 million left over to sign a starter. That'd leave some potential weakness in the rotation, but the Jays have a lot more internal candidates to fill out the rotation that could be as good as a $6-8 million/year free agent starter than they do to fill the middle infield hole at a similar price.