Jay Witasick for D’Angelo Jimenez? It’s not quite Ed Sprague for Dennis Tankersley and Cesar Saba, but it’s still a heckuva deal. If you’d told me at the beginning of the season the Padres would trade a 28-year-old middle reliever with a career 5.76 ERA for a 23-year-old shortstop with career .274/.353/.407 numbers in the minors, I’d have asked what you were on and could I have some, too. Jimenez is a kid who reached Triple-A at age 20 and put up respectable numbers, then followed it up with a tremendous .327/.392/.492 campaign at age 21. Not that he’s the prospect that Derek Jeter was, but for comparison’s sake, Jeter hit .317/.394/.422 at age 21 in Triple-A. The following season he was AL Rookie of the Year, and you know what he’s been doing ever since.

Some years ago Bill James devised a system for translating minor-league performance into equivalent big-league numbers. It’s not perfect but it gives a pretty good indication of what a player is capable of doing. Here are Jimenez’ Major League Equivalencies (MLEs) for 1998 and 1999 (he missed most of last year due to a broken neck sustained during the off-season):

Essentially this suggests that, had he played in the majors at age 20, Jimenez would’ve hit roughly like Chris Gomez. That’s not great but it’s also not terrible, and if a kid can even hold his own in the bigs, that’s usually a harbinger of good things to come. At age 21, his translated numbers strongly resemble those of Miguel Tejada at age 23 (.251/.325/.427); better batting average, less power. Of course, the difference is that Tejada actually did this in the American League, whereas MLEs only indicate what Jimenez’ numbers at Triple-A likely would have looked like had he played in the AL.

Jimenez, after missing most of last season due to the neck injury, hasn’t returned to his 1999 levels, but in 56 games at Columbus he hit .262/.333/.393 while splitting time between second base and shortstop. He’ll be in the Padres lineup tomorrow against the Rockies, and while I wouldn’t expect too much offense just yet, I do believe this kid’s got a chance to be one of the more productive shortstops in the National League within a few years. We’ll see…