Huff Era Over, Now Aubrey's a Tiger

Aubrey Huff has been traded to Detroit for minor league reliever Brett Jacobson.

Once Huff cleared waivers early last week, you had to figure that Baltimore would try to move him but I was surprised they found any takers. But the Tigers, who appear headed for the postseason, were looking for more left handed hitting and parted with a young reliever to get him.

You had two options when it came to Huff. You could trade him now or offer him arbitration in the offseason and see if another team signs him giving the O's an extra draft pick. But the risk was that Huff would accept arbitration and remain an Oriole. That wouldn't have been good. Huff was not having a good year and there is little sign that he will ever get better.

Before the Orioles signed him, I wondered if Kevin Millar might just outperform him at a fraction of the price...

WAR     Huff   Millar
2007    0.8     0.7           
2008    4.2     0.0
2009   -0.4    -0.4

Huff made $20 million, Millar made $7.4 mil. Was that one great year worth $12.6 million to the Orioles? Probably...

But Huff's gone. Who is Brett Jacobson?

Jacobson is a right handed reliever drafted out of Vanderbilt in the 4th round of the 2008 draft. The 22-year-old is listed at 6'6" and 205 pounds. The stats:

        ERA   IP   SO   BB   HR   WHIP
2008 A  1.52  29.2  31    5    0   1.04
2009 A+ 3.74  55.1  44   17    6   1.23

Decent stats, nothing earth-shattering. According to MinorLeagueSplits.com, Lakeland has a pretty fair stadium in terms of pitching so what we see here is what we get.

What kind of prospect is he? John Sickels had him listed as the #3 prospect in the Tiger system (although in fairness, he didn't like the system a ton anyway). Baseball America did not have him listed in their top ten. Nor is he on the TopProspectAlert.com list. But most reports I can find describe him as a power arm. For 6 weeks of Aubrey Huff, that seems to be a fair return.