The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s John Hickey reports that fringe players Jeremy Reed and Ben Broussard stand a decent chance of being dealt this spring. With Ichiro in center and Vidro at DH, one or both may be expendable.
Reed remains a valuable commodity, a perfect guy for a team like the Marlins to acquire at fifty cents on the dollar. He enters his age 26 season having survived a trade from the White Sox, a partially torn wrist ligament, Red Sox trade rumors, a serious wrist sprain, and a broken thumb. The Fielding Bible called him "an up-and-coming elite center fielder" a year ago, but he’s without a starting gig now.
Can Reed bounce back from an awful .217/.260/.377 line? Baseball Prospectus has him at .267/.333/.399 for ’07; ZiPS calls for .262/.335/.393. We have a consensus. The average AL CF hit .275/.334/.437 last year; it was .264/.335/.418 in the NL. There’s reason to believe Reed could provide league average offense and excellent defense for a good price for some team in ’07.
Broussard is a 30 year-old 1B/DH. He’s been used as a platoon guy, but doesn’t really have the splits to back that up. As a $3.55MM bench player, he doesn’t have much use for the Mariners. On the plus side, he is a talented beat-boxer.
