="heep"]My pont is you really have know way of knowing that. 30 homeruns, he hit over 30 last year alone between AA and ML. ithink the point is that while there is a chance, and i'll consider it fairly slight, that mike jacobs will hit 30 homers next year, there is a significantly greater likelihood that delgado will hit 30 homers next year. delgado is a tremendous offensive player. i expect that to continue, with some decline, granted. last season he was one of the ten best hitters in the league, and is not old enough that you would fear him falling off the proverbial cliff. jacobs, on the other hand, had a superb 100 at bats last season. he slugged friggin' .710! but do you really expect him to repeat that ths coming season? do you really expect him to continue to make such significant strides forward, or do you concede that his next season will likely see far more of a regression to the mean, given a full season's worth of at bats? you say you expect him to hit 30 homers next year. how many players have managed that feat in their first full season in the majors? is jacobs to be that good? i doubt it. delgado is the sure thing here. jacobs has a bit of potential, but as has been said elsewhere, that potential is unlikely to bring him to match what you can get of delgado now, and there's no waiting involved. and petit... well, truly rare is the pitcher who contributes meaningfully to a pennant chaser in his first go around, and there's a whole lot of scoutly disagreement as to his true ceiling. now, its hard to argue his performance, and the statistically minded side of me says to look to that as an indication of future performance, but there's just way too much subjective dissent for me to be a true believer. maybe his "unlikely" performance will bring him meaningfull success, but i'm more skeptical. while we had him, i remained hopeful, but that's all i had. hope. i typically bend against the TITTS side of these things, but in this case, i can hardly find fault. i really liked the player we gave up in jacobs, but in getting back delgado, i find a more than adequate salve.