Dodgers division-by-division trade targets: AL East
Over the last few seasons, the American League East has added some of the biggest fish around via free agents and trades.
From Chris Sale and David Price to Giancarlo Stanton and James Paxton to Charlie Morton and Tyler Glasnow, the AL East is surely loaded with recent additions. Can the Dodgers serve to benefit from an AL East exchange, and are there any teams that match up well with the Dodgers?
The Boston Red Sox beat the Dodgers in the 2018 World Series, but injuries to Chris Sale and a slightly down year from Mookie Betts led to the team missing the playoffs. The BoSox have nine players making more than $10 million next season, and have a payroll over $200 million. This will more than likely keep Boston from resigning Steve Pearce and Brock Holt (both free agent options that could replace David Freese for the Dodgers). Without these veteran utility men, the Red Sox could need to add some depth pieces, something the Dodgers have plenty of.
For the New York Yankees part, it is unlikely that they make any sorts of trades beyond potentially dealing from their outfield, which is the same area of depth the Dodgers have. The only rumored trade possibility for the pair of historic rivals involves LA native Giancarlo Stanton (which I’ll get into more later on).
The Tampa Bay Rays are the only competitive team in the division that is unlikely to make any trades with the Dodgers, despite Friedman’s connection to the team and an existing trade history (remember Logan Forsythe?).
The Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays both are quite a way away from being competitive, and thus most of their big league ready veterans could be subject to be dealt for prospects for the next few seasons.
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.