Tim Brown of Yahoo’s MLB Experts Blog has a list of players GMs will be monitoring for trades in coming months:
- Devil Rays: Carl Crawford, Elijah Dukes, Al Reyes, Carlos Pena. Brown sees Dukes as the most likely trade candidate. Does his recent offense make that more or less likely? Both – it should increase the Rays’ need to get rid of him but decrease the number of interested teams. The Rays probably knew about the incident with the 17 year-old girl before it became public. I expect TB to build around Crawford, but Reyes and Pena should be worth dealing. Bet the Tigers wish they still had Pena.
- White Sox: Mark Buehrle, Jermaine Dye. Brown names contenders for Buehrle: Phillies, Indians, Mariners. I just don’t see Kenny Williams helping the Tribe though. Brown thinks Dye should stay in the AL, though other reports have NL West teams after him.
- Marlins: Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera. Of course this pair has been surfacing for quite a while now as the two expensive vets on a low-budget team. Brown notes the Yankees’ love of Willis. I would be concerned for Dontrelle’s ERA pitching as a Yankee. Brown believes an L.A. team could go after Cabrera, which would be exciting. But there really hasn’t been buzz around Cabrera lately.
- Rangers: Eric Gagne, Sammy Sosa, Kenny Lofton. Brown names a slew of teams that could pursue Gagne: Indians, Tigers, Mariners, Braves, Mets, Yankees. The latter four haven’t really gotten play as Gagne suitors yet. I think the Ms should really focus on boosting their rotation somehow. Their pen looked pretty good against the Cubs last night.
- Orioles: Steve Trachsel. You know what I think of Trax’s sub-4 ERA.
- UPDATE: A second post from Brown names Omar Vizquel, Mark Grudzielanek, Jason Jennings, Brad Wilkerson, Brian Fuentes, Tadahito Iguchi, Ray Durham, and maybe Matt Kemp and James Loney as additional trade candidates.
