Division-by-division Dodgers trade targets: AL Central

As the Dodgers continue to run unopposed at the top of the NL West, the AL Central is one of the evenest divisions in the game.

The Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins both won over 90 games last season, and both have made the playoffs with a limited degree of consistency over the last couple of years, especially when compared to Dodgers rivals like the San Francisco Giants or Colorado Rockies. But outside of these two teams, the rest of the division is in a rebuilding and retooling phase much like the NL West.

The Chicago White Sox may lose first baseman José Abreu to free agency this offseason, and the rest of their offense is young and still needs to prove it is consistent. The Kansas City Royals and Detriot Tigers are even further from contention, and thus are even more unlikely to want MLB-ready pieces from the Dodgers beyond depth pieces who could provide surplus value.

The teams that match up best with the Dodgers for trades may actually be some of the competitors, as while the Twins and Indians both are playoff contenders, they lack the depth pieces the Dodgers have. The non-contenders in the AL Central are mostly prospect-heavy, which could be interesting for a Dodgers front office that loves to restock the system whenever possible.

As the offseason grinds to a slowdown preceding the Winter Meetings, I’ll be going through each division in the MLB and determining potential trade targets (and discounting some along the way) and creating potential trades for them that the Dodgers front office could do.

Thus, in this article, I’ll focus on trade targets from the Indians, Twins, and the rest.