DODGERS NEWS/RUMORS thread

understand we'd need to give up something to get kluber
i just really like verdugo [homo]
seems to have the right approach at the plate, and appears disciplined
not sure what cleveland would say if we offered guys from the joc/kiké/peters/heredia/kendall pool instead...
actually, check that... i do know what they'd say
again, i like verdugo... but if he gets us kluber i think you have to do it

Bellinger remains off limits, but Verdugo may be in play
by Daniel Starkand | Dodger Blue — 23 December 2018

Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman made his first big trade of the offseason on Friday, clearing up payroll by sending Yasiel Puig, Matt Kemp, Alex Wood and Kyle Farmer to the Cincinnati Reds for Homer Bailey and two prospects.

The trade is believed to be a prelude to other big moves this winter for the Dodgers as they now have payroll and roster flexibility and a couple extra prospects to potentially use to address other needs of the club.

One potential trade partner that the Dodgers have been linked to all offseason is the Cleveland Indians considering they may be willing to trade two-time Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber.

According to Jon Morosi on MLB.com, the two teams are still involved in discussions and while the Dodgers are not willing to discuss Cody Bellinger, they may be willing to include top prospect Alex Verdugo in a trade:

• "The Dodgers won’t trade Cody Bellinger — on whom they have five years of control before free agency — for Kluber, whose term could stretch to 2021 through club options. However, one source indicated the Dodgers are willing to discuss outfield prospect Alex Verdugo as part of a Kluber trade."

With both Kemp and Puig no longer being with the team, Verdugo currently projects to be the starting right fielder if the season were to start today. He played in 37 games for the Dodgers in 2018, hitting .260/.329/.377 with six doubles, a home run and four RBI.

Verdugo spent a majority of the season with Triple-A Oklahoma City where he slashed .329/.391/.472 with 19 doubles, 10 home runs and 44 RBI in 91 games.

The Indians are in search of outfielders, so Verdugo could definitely be the headliner of the package going back to Cleveland for Kluber if the Dodgers are in fact willing to include him in a deal. No trade is reported to being close to completed at this time though.​

 

Dodgers blockbuster trade has to lead to more
by Eric Stephen | SB Nation

For the second year in a row, the Dodgers have made a Christmastime trade that was more financially motivated than anything else.

The Dodgers traded outfielders Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp, pitcher Alex Wood, and catcher Kyle Farmer to the Reds for the salary of Homer Bailey plus minor league prospects Jeter Downs and Josiah Gray. Bailey — who has battled injuries and has a 6.25 ERA over the last four seasons in just 46 total starts — won’t pitch for the Dodgers. As a condition to waive his no-trade clause, Bailey was granted his release and is now a free agent. The Dodgers owe him $23 million in 2019 plus a $5 million buyout of his 2020 option.

Even in taking on Bailey’s $28 million in guaranteed money, the Dodgers from a cash standpoint saved about $7 million in this trade. From a competitive balance tax standpoint, the Dodgers’ 2019 payroll decreased by roughly $16 million.

The threshold for the competitive balance tax in 2019 is $206 million. The Dodgers, should their remaining arbitration-eligible players get paid their projections, will be at roughly $185 million or so after this deal, leaving them room to maneuver.

In reality they have as much room as they choose, with any amount over the threshold taxed at a 20-percent rate. That rate reset after the Dodgers paid a total of $150 million in competitive balance tax from 2013-17, having the highest payroll in the sport for five years running. But they stayed under the $197 million threshold in 2018 thanks to a different December trade involving Kemp, this one a five-player accounting trick with the Braves that was cash neutral but lopped roughly $24 million off the Dodgers’ CBT number last season.

This is where we are at now. The Dodgers, with their $8.3 billion (with a B) television contract while playing in the second largest market in the country, are making moves to save money.

Put another way, a two-time defending National League pennant winner traded three regulars a year away from free agency for a player they released and two prospects. This isn’t the type of moves big market teams make, unless followed up with something else.

This trade with the Reds has to be the first domino in a series of moves for the Dodgers this winter. Los Angeles had a surplus of both outfielders and starting pitchers, so a move like this was definitely predictable.

“I just think they’re talented enough where things will lineup and make sense, where it works out well for our team and an acquiring team,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said at the winter meetings less than two weeks before this trade. “I can’t see [not making a trade] happening.”

The knee-jerk reaction to the Dodgers clearing salary is that this clears the way for making a run at free agent Bryce Harper, but even that seems implausible if the club plans to avoid paying the competitive balance tax again.

As it stands, the Dodgers after dealing Puig and Kemp still have Joc Pederson, Chris Taylor, Cody Bellinger, Kiké Hernandez, Alex Verdugo and Andrew Toles in the outfield, with Taylor, Hernandez and Bellinger capable of playing the infield as well.

“We needed to make some moves in the outfield. With [Max] Muncy coming on and Bellinger moving more to the outfield, we had enough depth to field two starting outfields,” Friedman said Friday. “It’s much more functional at this point. Having six-plus outfielders isn’t fair to anybody.”

Maybe this move clears a path for Verdugo, a consensus top-50 prospect in baseball who is still just 22 with two years of Triple-A experience under his belt.

“I think he’s done everything he can control to put himself in a position to take down a significant role at the major league level,” Friedman said of Verdugo.

On the whole, second base was a dud offensively for the Dodgers last season, hitting just .209/.307/.332 as a group, ranking last in MLB in batting average, 29th in slugging percentage, 28th in OPS (.638), tied for 23rd in wRC+ (78), and 22nd in home runs (13).

The position could in theory be filled by Taylor and/or Hernandez, though they only started a combined 27 games at second base in 2018.

“I think we have some very good options at second base,” manager Dave Roberts said at the winter meetings. “Kiké is a plus defender at second base. We like Taylor over there.”

Someone D.J. LeMahieu at second base, or A.J. Pollock if they still want to add an outfielder, seems more like someone the Dodgers would bring on board than a big-ticket item like Harper. But neither is the biggest hole on the team.

The Dodgers’ biggest need is at catcher, a position the club has excelled at for the last few years.

Yasmani Grandal was the primary driver of those catching numbers the last four years, starting two-thirds of the games, but is now a free agent. He declined the Dodgers’ qualifying offer and is expected to sign a multi-year contract somewhere else.

The Dodgers are looking for more of a short term solution at catcher, with top prospects Keibert Ruiz and Will Smith waiting in the wings.

Ruiz is the more offensive-minded of the two, but the switch-hitter is just 20 years old. Both would be best served with more development time in the minors, though Smith especially could contribute at some point in 2019.

“I think he could catch defensively in the major leagues right now, and be upper echelon,” Freidman said. “We think he’ll grow more potential with the bat by getting more at-bats and more reps, we think it will be helpful to put him in better position to get to the major league level and hit the ground running.”

The bridge to Smith and Ruiz is also dependent on Austin Barnes rebounding after a terrible season. He followed up an excellent .289/.408/.486 year in 2017 by hitting just .205/.329/.290 in 2018.

“He had a bad year offensively, and he knows it,” Roberts said. “Him behind the plate, blocking, receiving, relationship with the pitchers, is next level, is elite. So I expect him to come back ready to compete. I trust Austin, and he’s a winning player for me.”

The big fish in the backstop market is J.T. Realmuto of the Marlins, with two years before free agency and coming off a stellar season in Miami. His cost would be mostly in prospects, with the Dodgers adding two more minor leaguers in the trade with the Reds.

“The catcher spot is still something we have to address,” Friedman said Friday. “I still expect us to add someone from the outside.”

 

Dodgers see 'real upside' in Joe Kelly, the reliever without a specific role
by Pedro Moura | The Athletic -- 18 hours ago



In Joe Kelly, the Dodgers did not acquire a dependable reliever with a sterling track record of success. Rather, they signed a failed starter who has exhibited the potential for greatness and a penchant for inconsistency but a willingness to heed his team’s advice.

For their privilege, they will pay him at least $25 million over the next three seasons. They plan to use him as a multi-inning bridge between their starting pitchers and closer Kenley Jansen. If Kelly takes over for Jansen due to injury or ineffectiveness, the Dodgers will pay him significantly more per season. They built a provision into the contract where they can retain his services for a fourth season (in 2022) at a closer-level cost. By then, Jansen’s contract will be complete.

Kelly, 30, spent most of the first seven seasons of his professional career as a starter. He only moved to the bullpen in July 2016, when he was “broken-down and washed-up” as he put it. There he found freedom in the feeling of not knowing when he might next pitch. Starting tired him mentally. The days in between starts restored his arm but taxed his brain, as he revisited his past failures. Relieving relieved him.

The Dodgers do not have specific innings in mind for him. Neither does he, which he prefers.

“I’m not dedicated to any specific role,” Kelly said Friday, the day his deal with the Dodgers became official. “If you wanted to name a role, it’s me pitching whenever the big outs are. That’s when I perform the best, and when I feel the most comfortable.”

Before October, Kelly threw two breaking balls, a changeup, and two fastballs — an unusually large repertoire for a one-inning reliever. During the playoffs, he consolidated his curveball and slider into one slurve and essentially stopped throwing his two-seam fastball. He believes the mergers made his command better. Wildness was a primary concern as a starting pitcher, and even now he has never walked fewer than three men per nine innings in a season.

But he was in control and dominant during the postseason, particularly in the World Series, when he struck out 10 Dodgers and walked no one over six scoreless innings. He did not issue a walk over 11⅓ October innings.

“Whether that continues, we will see. But talking to him, he’s got a really good feel for why it happened,” Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said. “He had a light-bulb moment. But, even without that, we feel his stuff really plays against both righties and lefties.”

The Red Sox were better than the Dodgers throughout 2018, but their biggest edge in the World Series was the bullpen. Jansen struggled, and manager Dodgers Dave Roberts found few others he could count trust to pitch in relief. By contrast, Red Sox manager Alex Cora could turn to Kelly or a number of his starters in any inning.

“Without having a good bullpen,” Kelly said, “I think it’s very, very hard to win a World Series.”

The Dodgers resolved to improve their relief group this offseason, and they felt Kelly offered more upside than other relievers in his price class. Because of his multi-inning capability, he could provide value even if he does not dominate those innings.

Innings are innings, and if the Dodgers manage to extract 80 or 90 innings of elite relief production once during the deal, they will feel like winners.

“It’s not often in free agency when you have a chance to get real upside,” Friedman said.

Kelly is training for next season locally, in Rancho Cucamonga, near where he and much of his family resides. He grew up in Corona as a Lakers fan, and he remembers watching the early-2000’s Lakers parades on television. He attended games at Dodger Stadium.

In 2012, he said he never really liked the Dodgers growing up and thusly tried harder to beat them, a quote that fans seized on when his errant fastball broke Hanley Ramírez’s ribs during the 2013 National League Championship Series. Ramírez was not the same player the rest of the series, and when he and Kelly became teammates in Boston two years later, Kelly momentarily wondered if his Red Sox teammates would have his back in the event of a dispute.

So, Kelly said, he understands that many local fans will never forgive him for the Ramírez episode until he wins a World Series in Los Angeles.

 

Nationals showing interest in Brian Dozier
by Connor Byrne | MLB Trade Rumors — 37 minutes ago



The Nationals have expressed interest in free-agent second baseman Brian Dozier, Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post reports.

Dozier joins the previously reported DJ LeMahieu and Josh Harrison as free agents who have been on the radar of the second base-needy Nationals this winter.

At the outset of the offseason, MLBTR predicted Dozier would head to D.C. on a one-year, $10MM accord. Had he reached free agency a year ago, though, it’s likely Dozier would have landed a much more lucrative payday. Dozier was then coming off a five-year stretch with the Twins in which he racked up 21.7 fWAR (17th among position players) and 145 home runs (13th). Along the way, he authored a pair of the most powerful years in the history of second basemen – the 2016-17 campaigns, during which he combined for 76 homers (including 42, an American League record for his position, in ’16).

Dozier’s stock was certainly high 12 months ago, but it may now be at a nadir relative to the rest of his career. As a member of the Twins and Dodgers last season, Dozier did mash another 21 HRs and steal 12 of 15 bases in 2018, giving him five consecutive campaigns with 20-plus long balls and six straight with double-digit stolen bags. However, across 632 plate appearances, the 31-year-old only managed a .215/.305/.391 line – good for a 90 wRC+, the worst full-season mark of his career – and his lowest ISO (.175) since 2014. Statcast suggests Dozier didn’t deserve better than his offensive production, as his paltry expected weighted on-base average (.288) actually fell short of his real wOBA (.304). Dozier also earned negative marks in the field, with minus-8 Defensive Runs Saved and a minus-6.4 Ultimate Zone Rating. In all, the 2018 version of Dozier was worth less than a win above replacement at FanGraphs.

 

difficult to tell how much of his struggles were physical vs psychological
some guys crave the big stage and excel there
others get there and freeze up





Logan Forsythe and Yu Darvish like this.

 

Puig can have a big year become a FA and come back!
Or the reds could suck and be out of it while the dodgers need some help.
So Puig comes back to the Dodgers alongside fellow cuban Rafa iglesias and new friend scooter gennet.
They can have Ross, Brock, Toles, Heredia, Yadier, Santana, Ferguson.