Dodgers: LA should offer whatever it takes to acquire Felipe Vazquez

Well Dodgers fans, its that critical time of year again. We have made it to that ultimate fingernail-chewing, hair-pulling, a frustration-inducing moment of the summer: the July 31 trade deadline.

This year’s deadline carries even more significance than in year’s past, as there is no longer a separate waiver trade deadline in August.

This be-all, end-all trade deadline will lead to plenty of exciting headlines over the next few days. So the question becomes, as it has the past two deadline seasons, “Will the Dodgers acquire the biggest name on the block?”

At the last two deadlines, this has been the main question, with the sub-header to all Dodger fans pleading cries to the front office being “Will we add an impact reliever? PS: We’d prefer a lefty.”

Now, in 2019, after two failed World Series attempts, the team is in position to answer these same questions once again. This time though, I would implore the Dodgers to answer both sets of questions with the same answer: a left-handed flame thrower from the Pittsburgh Pirates named Felipe Vazquez.

Many of you may want to stop reading right now and explain how Felipe Vazquez is not even on the block because the Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said as much just two days ago. And I know this and continued to write this article in spite of that report.

Because after reading this quote from MLB.com, an idea sprung to mind for a type of trade that the Dodgers could pull off to land the one man that would have the best chance to bring the rings back to LA:

"“My job is to listen when someone makes the call, but we’re not the one placing the calls to see what’s out there. If somebody wants to explore anybody on our club, we have to. Back in the day, we had to explore on anybody and it’s no different. It’s our job. The rumor mill takes it where it takes it. “But we always have to entertain ways to make this organization — and ideally this current club — better. Sometimes you make the future clubs better, but we fully anticipate Felipe will be closing the next playoff games that we’re a part of.”"

Basically, all of this bluster is Huntington saying that he would need to be blown away by an offer to consider dealing Vazquez. Luckily for the Dodgers, they have just the combination of prospect depth and prospect talent to pull off an astronomical blockbuster, the likes of which have not been seen at the trade deadline in recent memory.

Disclaimer: I am obviously not a GM and I do not have delusions of grandeur about becoming one. But I do think that after consuming so much baseball and after conducting heavy research that I am qualified to speculate about the type of prospects who would need to be included in a Felipe Vazquez package.

In the rest of this article, that’s exactly what I intend to do.

First, I will breakdown the prospect package that I believe will be needed to land Vazquez. Then, I’ll get into how Vazquez compares to other elite relievers, with the ultimate goal of conveying how talented he is, and how worthy of an unheard-of cost Vazquez is.