As deadline nears, contenders shop for starters, bullpen help
With just 10 days left until the baseball trading deadline, this much we know: • Those teams looking for a difference-making starting pitcher — the Yankees, Twins, Brewers, Rays and Braves — may be hard-pressed to find one.
• All the other contenders seeking back-end relief help will have no trouble filling that need — the market is loaded with quality relievers whose talents are being wasted on losing or really bad teams.
• The Rays, who need starting pitching AND relievers, have the deepest prospect pool of any team in baseball and therefore, if they so choose, have the resources to get anybody they want.
• The Giants, who have a proven though faded “big game” starting pitcher in Madison Bumgarner, and two high end relievers in closer Will Smith and set-up man Sam Dyson, have to decide if their recent surge into wild card contention should now preclude them from trading off those assets and give beloved manager Bruce Bochy one last run at postseason glory (and an over-.500 lifetime record) on his way to Cooperstown.
• The Dodgers are clearly the best team in baseball, but if they don’t get a closer at the deadline to replace Kenley Jansen they are still going to looking for their first World Series title since 1988.
Starting with the starters since that’s where most of the trade scuttlebutt has been generated all season long, none of the pitchers being talked about — Bumgarner, Toronto’s Marcus Stroman, Detroit’s Matthew Boyd, the Rangers’ Mike Minor, Cleveland’s Trevor Bauer, Miami’s Caleb Smith or the latest “flavor of the month,” Arizona lefty Robbie Ray — would you put into the bona fide No. 1 category, like Justin Verlander,
Jon Lester and David Price , to name three such types who were moved in previous midseason deals. Everybody loves Ray’s arm (11.76 strikeouts per nine innings), but he’s always had command issues, has an ERA near 4.00 and leads the majors in walks. He is, however, controllable through 2021. Bumgarner is a free agent after the season, but that isn’t stopping the Giants from asking premium prospects for him, which is one of the reasons Yankee GM Brian Cashman has been looking elsewhere in his quest for a starter.
The Yankees like the New York-bred Stroman but view him as a No. 3, which wouldn’t be much of a rotation upgrade. Same thing with Boyd, despite his major league-leading 6.33 strikeouts-to-walks ratio, for whom the Tigers are also looking to make a haul. The 31-yearold Minor has the best overall record of all the potentially available frontline starting pitchers (8-4, 2.73 ERA, 122 innings in 19 starts), but the fact that the greatly improved Rangers have a decent shot at the wild card and he’ll be earning a modest $9.5 million in both 2020 and 2021 makes it highly unlikely they’ll trade him.
Of all the potentially available starters, the closest thing to a difference-maker might be Bauer, averaging 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings and leading the majors in innings. And it appears the Yankees have come around to that thinking as Cashman had his top assistant, Tim Naehring, scouting Bauer’s start against the Twins last Saturday. Like the Giants, the Indians have to decide if another World Series is realistic for them and if they can catch the Twins for the AL Central title. Even so, they know they are not going to able to afford the $20 million Bauer is likely to get in arbitration next year. If they decide to maximize Bauer’s trade value by moving him now rather than in his free agent walk year, there is the makings to a possible match with the Yankees. After letting the popular and productive Michael Brantley walk as a free agent last winter, the Indians left themselves with one of the lightest hitting outfields in baseball. As the lynchpin in any deal they make, they need a young, controllable power hitting outfielder — someone like the top prospect they traded to the Yankees for reliever Andrew Miller three years ago: Clint Frazier.
Both the Twins and Braves realize this is their year of opportunity to get back to the World Series — but only if they get themselves another dependable veteran starting pitcher to fortify their thin rotations. Both are waiting to see what the Giants decide to do with Bumgarner and the Rangers with Minor, but in recent days the Braves in particular, have shown a keen interest in Boyd, who is more to their liking in that he’s controllable until 2022. The Rays, meanwhile, are looking at Ray, Stroman and Minor because of their controllability (through 2021) and affordability.
As for the Dodgers, the deepest team in baseball, they have just one vulnerability — but it’s a big one. Jansen is no longer anywhere close to a lock-down closer with a 3.72 ERA, four blown saves and six homers allowed already this season. The Dodgers know they have to get a reliable closer. Right now, the Dodgers are aiming high — for Pittsburgh’s Felipe Vazquez and the Indians’ Brad Hand — but if turns out neither are available, they will focus on the Blue Jays’ Ken Giles and the Royals’ Ian Kennedy. In all of those cases, the Dodgers are facing stiff competition from the Nationals, who also feel they are only one dependable closer away from mounting a serious challenge on the Braves for the NL East.