Shaun- put Hunter in the Yankee lineup and a better hitter he will be. He will not be expected to go .300-30-100. He will hit around 6th or 7th, and his Defense is second to none.

I won’t even touch the price tag…because, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t want Hunter for one simple reason – he makes too many outs, and doesn’t know how to walk. He’s 31 next year, and his numbers have been going down since his peak age-27 season. My guess is he’s out the bigs by 34 (or should be). Ditto Preston Wilson.

Bradley, however, off-field problems aside, I’d take his production and defense in a second.

Obviously, throwing is just one aspect of fielding, but it’s hard to ignore when you see stats like these from Gabriel Desjardins at ProTrade :

bases saved on fly ball outs :

Hunter : 3rd best, 11.2 bases saved
Lawton : 5th worst, -8.4 bases saved
Bernie : 2nd worst, -14.5 bases saved

http://www.protrade.com/insight/InsightArticleDesjardinsBestOutfieldArm.html

So Mr. “The Yankees don’t have any fun” looks like he’s not having much fun anymore either in the Twin Cities. Perhaps he can move in with Selena Roberts.

As an update, he has performed better in the recent past – 2002 till now.

http://tinyurl.com/dys6m

For what it’s worth, Torii (gotta love that spelling) would be due 10.75MM in 2006, with a club option for 2007 (the option is for 12MM with a 2MM buyout).

Also, maybe I don’t get fielding statistics but I had always assumed that he was a great CFer. Apparently, that hasn’t been the case for the last 3 years (though he seems to have rebounded this year). Weird.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/hunteto01.shtml

And he hasn’t been…ummm…stellar…in his Yankee stadium appearances.
http://tinyurl.com/dxg27