The Dodgers are quite possibly the most disappointing team in baseball. Despite Clayton Kershaw, who is baseball’s most valuable player by leaps and bounds in 2016, LA sits 8 games behind the Giants entering Tuesday night’s slate of games and are just 5 games over .500.
Max wrote a few weeks ago about how the Dodgers lack of roster balance was killing them and nothing has really changed. Scott Van Slyke and Trayce Thompson are good ball players, but they can’t be starters on a World Series contender, especially not when stars like Adrian Gonzalez and Yasiel Puig aren’t pulling their weight. Howie Kendrick is their left fielder. Kendrick is a second basemen though and the Dodgers are bending over backwards to find ways to get both Kendrick and Chase Utley in the lineup at the same time. That’s distressing because Kendrick is batting only .243 with virtually no power and a negative WAR. That’s not a guy you should be working to find a spot for; you should have better options.
Speaking of options, the Dodgers thought they had a lot of them for the 2-5 spots in their starting rotation. Unfortunately, injury has absolutely devastated their crop of starters and the healthy ones that remain haven’t been great. Scott Kazmir‘s ERA is closer to 5 than 4 and Hyun-Jin Ryu, Brandon McCarthy, Brett Anderson, and Alex Wood are all on the shelf. Anderson and McCarthy are on the way, but Wood was good but inconsistent before getting hurt and Ryu keeps having disappointing setbacks in his minor league rehab.
But all of those options just scream of pretty good. None of those guys are causing opposing managers to stay up at night dreading facing a tough pitcher. The same can be said of the lineup as a whole. It’s made up of a bunch of pretty good players, none of whom are really all that great. The problem with this approach is that the Major Leagues are tough and almost everyone is pretty good. So what’s another word for a majority of the Dodger’s roster right now? Average. Consider: the Dodgers only have three players worth more than 1 Win Above Average and the Dodgers’ 6th, 7th and 8th most valuable batters by that metric are starting pitchers.
Essentially, the Dodgers need an influx of talent to give them a jolt. They need a top half of the rotation starter and a left fielder. They could also use an upgrade at Catcher where Yasmany Grandal and AJ Ellis have been below average. Fortunately, the fact that LA already has a ton of money committed to a number of their underperforming stars isn’t really an issue for the organization. They have a tremendous farm system and have more resources, in the form of cash and talent, than any other organization. They’ll make a move, and we think it’s going to be a big one.
The Dodgers have had a propensity for making big, out of the box moves and they’ve got to be tired of filling a lineup with pretty good players. They should trade some of those pretty good players for a great player. They’ll still have some pretty good guys around. So with that, lets take a look at what great players the Dodgers could go after. We know that we’re proposing some pretty big names here, but that’s kind of the point.
Jose Bautista, OF, Toronto Blue Jays
Bautista is the heart and soul of the Blue Jays, but the reality is that he’s a free agent at the end of the year and so is Edwin Encarnacion. The Blue Jays can’t afford to keep both of them this offseason, and would be wise to try to maximize their value via an in-season trade. Swapping Bautista wouldn’t necessarily be a white flag move for 2016 for the Jays; they could get major league pieces in return for their star outfielder. The Jays could probably use another starter depending on their innings plan for Aaron Sanchez, who has never thrown more than 100 innings in a year and currently sits at 97 innings pitched.
For the Dodgers, Bautista would represent a significant upgrade in the outfield and would immediately slot in wonderfully to their middle-of-the-order puzzle.
A deal centered on Bautista for Alex Wood, and a solid prospect like Grant Holmes seems to make sense.
Ryan Braun, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
Braun is an interesting player with the stigma of PEDs at his back, but the fact of the matter is that he’s produced well in each of the last two years while ostensibly playing PED-free. I have no idea what a return for Braun would look like since the outfielder is owed another $80 million after this year into his age 36 season. But the word on the street is that the Brewers would like to turn the page on the Braun chapter and the Dodgers are in critical need of a corner outfield bat.
Andrew McCutchen, OF, Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates seem to be weighing their options with Cutch, the perennial MVP candidate in the midst of the worst year of his career. ESPN’s Buster Olney covered the possibility that he gets traded last week, and had mentioned the possibility of his trading before the season even got started. Cutch is entering his expensive years, and the Pirates have an excellent outfield trio capable of filling the void that would be created with a possible McCutchen trade. He’s probably not going anywhere, not with the sentimentality and marketing value associated with a lifelong Pirate star carrying the torch for the proud organization.
The Dodgers are the most logical choice if McCutchen is dealt. They have the resources to overwhelm the Pirates, and the Dodgers could use a guy like Cutch. Any team could use a perennial MVP, but it’s this type of move that I would like to see from the Dodgers. A move that fills their lineup with star players instead of pretty good players (and Kershaw and Seager).
Sonny Gray, SP, Oakland Athletics
Gray came into the season as one of baseball’s top pitchers and was the hot name in trade talks all winter. A disastrous start to the season and early DL trip took pretty much all the wind out of those sails.
Lately though, Gray has been more or less back to his old form. He has an ERA over 5 for the season but his June ERA is just 3.23. This month he has surrendered only 11 runs in slightly over 30 innings and struck out 22 to go with 5 walks. In LA, Gray could slot in near the top of the rotation and be an excellent Game 2 playoff starter between Kershaw and Scott Kazmir if the Dodgers make it that far.
If Gray returns to form, the Dodgers could have one of the game’s best young right handers going forward, he’s the top end quality their mob of mid-rotation starters lacks. Getting Sonny, though, is both more of a risk than one would have expected this winter and not going to be easy. The A’s know they have a precious commodity. The Dodgers might not be willing to part with the talent it would take for such a risky pitcher.
Chris Sale, SP, Chicago White Sox
This one’s probably not happening. The ‘White Sox should trade Chris Sale’ stories are great fodder for bloggers but not really the basis for anything in real life. Sale is one of the game’s most dominant lefties, maybe the best in baseball besides Kershaw and on one of the game’s most team friendly deals. The reason trading Sale is even coming up is because the White Sox have faded badly over the last month or so. They are now below .500, and their big trade to add James Shields has backfired spectacularly. With the team going nowhere but down, it’s reasonable to wonder if the White Sox should cash in their biggest trade chip to try and bolster their roster elsewhere.
They shouldn’t. And probably won’t. But if they did, the Dodgers would be one of the best places to move Sale. It would take king’s ransom to pry him from the Sox and the Dodgers have just the farm system to do it. Obviously, with Sale in the fold, the Dodgers would be a serious contender in the NL and a real problem for teams in the playoffs. We’ll see.
We know that we’re proposing some pretty big names here, but that’s kind of the point. The Dodgers need a big time star to help anchor the lineup or provide some support to Clayton Kershaw in carrying the rest of the rotation. Kershaw’s back is already sore and it’s still June.
-Max Frankel and Sean Morash
