Dodgers Potential Trade Deadline Strategies

As the trade deadline inches closer, it’s time to look at the players the Dodgers could show interest in.

The Dodgers are in a really weird position. They entered the season with a million question marks in their pitching staff and a mostly reliable offense, but their pitching has kept them in contention while their offense has been horrid.

As we near the end of June and come closer to the August 1st trade deadline, it’s about time to start thinking about how the Dodgers are going to improve the team, both in pursuit of playoff success in 2016 and sustained success in the near future. If you haven’t accepted by now, you should probably know this front office will never go “all-in” for one year and sacrifice future assets for a better chance in one year. Current Dodger front office member Alex Anthopoulos did that in Toronto last year, and it got them a really cool walk off home run and an ALCS loss. Nothing can guarantee success in the postseason, the only formula for winning a World Series is making the playoffs and then having a really good month.

This front office works very quietly. I don’t remember hearing rumblings before most of the moves they’ve made, maybe with the exception of the Dee Gordon and Matt Kemp trades from the Winter Meetings a few years ago. Here’s an excerpt from Dodger Blue, who quoted ESPN’s Jim Bowden, who was live on ESPN during Monday night’s game talking about potential trades for the Nats and Dodgers.

“The Dodgers have told me there’s three areas they’re targeting: they want a starter, a reliever and a bat. No. 1 on their list is they want a young starter in his mid-20s. They want a long term, not a short fix. There’s two guys who are on their list: Julio Teheran of the Atlanta Braves and Sonny Gray of the Oakland A’s. What they love about [Teheran] is he is signed through 2019 at approximately $26 million. The big question there is [Gray] healthy and is he going to perform? Remember, Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi has a close relationship with Billy Beane and Sonny Gray. Not sure if they’ll be able to pull off a deal, because it will take a big haul. But those are the two names the Dodgers are looking at.”Bowden added the club unsurprisingly doesn’t have interest in trading Clayton Kershaw, Corey Seager or Julio Urias:“The Dodgers have made it clear that Urias, Seager and Kershaw are going absolutely nowhere. So to make a deal like this, they’d have to center it around Jose De Leon, Frankie Montas, and I think they would move Yasiel Puig at this point. It’s going to take a pretty big package to get a Teheran or a Gray.”“The Dodgers have told me there’s three areas they’re targeting: they want a starter, a reliever and a bat. No. 1 on their list is they want a young starter in his mid-20s. They want a long term, not a short fix. There’s two guys who are on their list: Julio Teheran of the Atlanta Braves and Sonny Gray of the Oakland A’s. What they love about [Teheran] is he is signed through 2019 at approximately $26 million. The big question there is [Gray] healthy and is he going to perform? Remember, Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi has a close relationship with Billy Beane and Sonny Gray. Not sure if they’ll be able to pull off a deal, because it will take a big haul. But those are the two names the Dodgers are looking at.”“The Dodgers have made it clear that Urias, Seager and Kershaw are going absolutely nowhere. So to make a deal like this, they’d have to center it around Jose De Leon, Frankie Montas, and I think they would move Yasiel Puig at this point. It’s going to take a pretty big package to get a Teheran or a Gray.”

I caught the gist of it on the broadcast, but shoutout Matt Moreno for getting it word for word.

ESPN put up a graphic with three targets for each team. Bowden claimed the Dodgers were targeting Sonny Gray, Julio Teheran and I believe Andrew Miller or Aroldis Chapman was the third slot. Gray and Teheran would obviously be much better number two starter options than Scott Kazmir or Kenta Maeda and Andrew Miller would be a phenomenal 8th inning arm and great insurance in case they fail to lock up Kenley Jansen. Obviously, the price for either of those three would be huge, and Chapman comes with a whole other stigma.

The Dodgers usually keep quiet, so while I’m sure they’re in conversations for everyone mentioned by Bowden, there’s probably hundreds of other guys they’re discussing as well. That’s the fun of it. We can basically take every team that’s slowly falling out of contention, assume they’re going to be listening and trying to build for the future, and see what can come of that. That’s why it’s not completely idiotic to think of a world where Mike Trout gets traded to the Dodgers. Will it happen? Almost surely not. But the Angels are out of it and have no farm system to speak of. If the Dodgers told them to pick six players not named Clayton Kershaw or Corey Seager in exchange for Trout, they’d have to at least sleep on it.

While the Dodgers will probably be active in the trade market, there’s other ways for this team to improve. Andre Ethier, Hyun-jin Ryu, Brandon McCarthy and Frankie Montas could feel like deadline acquisitions, as the team could have all of them on the roster and healthy for the last two months of the season. Alex Wood will be back and if he looks like he did just before getting hurt, the Dodgers might not need another number two starter. Yulieski Gourriel could be signed and spark the offense. There’s a lot of ways the team can improve without gutting the farm system.

Next: Dodgers Acquire Chris Taylor

The coming weeks are going to be full of speculation and rumors. Most of it will be unsubstantiated, but it’s safe to say the team will look different on August 2nd. In the coming weeks, we’ll look closer at potential trade targets, how they would fit, what they would bring and what it would cost.