Minor League Free Agents

Jason Dubois, Earl Snyder, Ernie Young, Dan Denham, Jolbert Cabrera, Zach Day, Marshall McDougall, Jake Gautreau, Einar Diaz, Ricardo Rincon, Ivan Ochoa, Lee Gronkiewicz, Scott Sauerbeck

If they're selected in the Rule 5 draft, they get added to that team's 40-man roster and are on a major league contract.  For that matter, their current team could still add them to the 40-man and keep them.

Hello Rusnakjd,

According to The Baseball Cube, here are Brownlie's 2007 stats at AA Akron:

9 G, 8 GS, 1-2, 3.17 ERA, 48.1 IP/42 H/21 R/17 ER/5 HR/14 BB/37 K/4 WP, 1.16 WHIP

He just turned 27 in October, and he was drafted in the 1st Rd. of the 2002 Draft by the Cubs, one spot ahead of the Indians drafting Jeremy Guthrie.

Why I say that it probably wouldn't hurt much if we did lose him is because, some over at MinorLeagueBall.com who have heard and seen him more say that his stuff has regressed a bit from the days when he was drafted in the 1st Rd.  (Sorry, can't find the link - this was a few months back when this was mentioned.)  I don't recall if he had surgery (I think he did, but am not entirely sure of that,) but I think he has missed some time in the past with an injury, which hasn't helped his progression through the Minors.

Plus, looking over his track record more, he still hasn't totally figured out AAA - he had a decent year at AAA Iowa at age 24 in 2005:

6-7, 4.74 ERA, 27 G/14 GS/104.1 IP/98 H/56 R/55 ER/11 HR/42 BB/73 K/4 WP/1 BK, 1.34 WHIP

but wasn't all that great mostly coming out of the AAA Iowa bullpen in 2006 (SSS understood):

0-3, 10.80 ERA, 8 G/1 GS/11.2 IP/24 H/15 R/14 ER/4 HR/6 BB/14 K, 2.57 WHIP

As a reliever, he might be an interesting option, but outside of the 8 games he appeared in for AAA Iowa in 2006 (14 K in 11.2 IP,) his K rate really hasn't benefited that much from moving to the bullpen (staying between 6-7 K/9 IP for the most part, which is decent, but not great,) so I don't know if he'd be a high-K reliever at the ML level.

I think if he stays, he could be a nice option, but he'd really have to perform better than he did in 2007 (including a very poor AA postseason that included giving up 6 ER in 3.1 IP in Akron's final game of their season against the Yankees' AA EL-Champion Trenton team) to really force the issue (and 8 of the 9 games he appeared in for AA Akron in 2007 was as a starter,) as I think we have younger, better options with more potential than Brownlie.  Therefore, I don't think losing him would hurt that much.

Just my 2 cents.  :-)

From the PD...