But Brignac has already burned through two options years which means that at some point during the length of Bartlett’s current indebtedness to Tampa Reid will either burn through his remaining option AND spend a season on the bench or he’ll spend two years on Tampa’s bench.

If it’s the latter, than Reid Brignac will likely do little to improve the Rays’ ability to win baseball games unless the preferred choice at SS gets seriously hurt. And once Bartlett leaves as a FA you’ll have only 4 years of Reid as the starting SS. (And don’t get me wrong, if you believe in Reid than that’s a beautiful thing! I have prayed for the A’s to find a competent SS for the past 5 years.)

Now, if you think that Bartlett is going to price himself out of Tampa before he hits his FA walk year and therefore you’ll need Brignac sooner than 2012 then that’s all you need to say to me. But if that’s not the scenario you see playing out than Tampa’s best case scenario with Brignac (time management category) involves a third season in AAA while using up his last option year plus a year on a big league bench. Basically, unless Bartlett leaves early there’s no way the Rays are getting six years of starting level production out of Brignac.

And for the record, Wuertz is under team control for two more years.

 Inn…. DPR RngR ErrR UZR UZR/150
 4,910 (0.4) 1.0 (0.4) 0.2 0.4

This uses the table that is awfully-formatted above, but uses innings as a weight, as well as weights of 5/3/2/1/1 for 09/08/07/06/05. His best years were partial seasons, so maybe Jaybles just gets worn down over the course of a season (or more likely the sample size approaches more reasonable levels), but with these weights his UZR has been 0.2 over the term looked at.

You might want to consider opening up a free account on google to use their online spreadsheets. I can’t read the numbers you posted, looking at that jumble gives me a headache.

Like I said above, if you think the better move is to trade Bartlett and keep Brignac then that’s all I need to hear. I just don’t see the wisdom in keeping both over the next two years if the goal is to try and beat the Yankees for the division. If that’s not the plan than we’re groovy.

Having a good bullpen does not help you win games when you have replacement level production at 1B, 3B, SS and in the rotation.

At the same time, your bullpen didn’t do the Rays any favors last season, did they? You do have IF depth, which is why it makes some sense (on a theoretical level, at least) to explore trading some of that depth for improvement at a weaker position.